What are Western Cameras really Uncovering in Gaza?
Mohamed Elleissy writes from Cairo, assessing western media narratives surrounding coverage of the current conflict in Gaza
Alisdare Hickson via Flickr
Since the appalling attacks on the 7th of October, the Supreme Court of Israel has denied all appeals from international journalists to enter Gaza. Every now and then, a limited number of journalists are escorted by the IDF to capture what is left of the besieged territory or what the IDF decides to show them. In every case, their reports have to be reviewed before being published and journalists are not allowed to engage with Palestinian citizens. Thus, the Western media is given no choice but to adopt a singular narrative, bringing into question the supposed ideals of impartiality, human rights, and liberal press.
In this geography, it is clear that the same people broadcasting the latest news across the world are simultaneously transmitting subliminal messaging that make war and violence seem permissible. In other instances, and in more efficient fashion, they suppress certain voices from receiving the global attention they deserve. In every case, this entirely depends on the mediator; who controls the intermediate, or, in other words, who controls the media?
“The same people broadcasting the latest news across the world are simultaneously transmitting subliminal messaging that make war and violence seem permissible”
In his 1984 novel, George Orwell writes: ’He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past’’. Nearly 75 years past its publication, it seems a similar analogy is applicable within the digital era: ‘They who control the narrative control the people’s fate. They who control the media control the narrative’. While some commit to doing so, many nations no longer see the need for combatant invasions or on-ground security operations to enforce their foreign influence. The modern formula is much more simple: it is the choice between mobilising or weaponizing media.
Mobilising and Weaponizing Global Information Intermediaries
These two terms were first used within military contexts. While ‘mobilise’ mostly referred to the utilisation of available resources such as technical supplies or human-power to support governments in war, ‘weaponize’ denoted a more systematic discourse of transforming a nonviolent subject into a violent one; one capable of causing damage or inflicting harm. And, with some of the most influential global media outlets being either US or UK-owned, Western media outlets have long dominated the flow of global information. These outlets are mobilised in the interest of the state’s agenda, and, at other times, they are weaponized to disseminate questionable narratives, or simply omit unfavourable information. In all cases, their cameras are usually pointed towards the Middle-East, where the Western political agenda is more active. In this sense, wider public understanding and interpretation of events is dependent on the information being transmitted by the media, and it must be understood that these narratives are propagated with specific political goals in mind.
Broadcasting Networks and State Political Agendas
This relationship between media narrative and politics is best exemplified in the fact that administrative buildings are no longer the sole landmarks representing the policies of the regime. Massive demonstrations in front of the White House on the 13th of January calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, pro-Palestinian protests chanting ‘’CNN you can’t hide, you tell lies for genocide’’ in front of the network’s building in Washington DC on the 17th of December, demonstrate how a presidential residence and a communication agency are perceived by the public as shareholders of the same political agenda.
Furthermore, such homogenous perceptions of informal and formal agents of power are not modern phenomena. On the 15th of October 1940; during World War II, the BBC’s Broadcasting House in central London was targeted by a 225 kg bomb which resulted in the killing of seven of the BBC’s employees. And now, on the 15th of May 2021, an Israeli air raid destroyed the al-Jalaa building; a building that housed both residential apartments and multiple media outlets, including Al-Jazeera. While these two conflicts were nearly a century apart, the two media stations were fighting with similar goals in mind: unpicking disseminated misinformation and publishing critically underreported information. And as a consequence, they suffered the same military response from the powers of the time. For this reason, ‘media wars’ exist in parallel to major wars, and media outlets seem to propose an equally serious threat within a conflict as the state. We should question what war would look like without such media reporting. What would coverage look like if one side was permitted a complete monopoly over the flow of information?
Political Agendas in Practice
In our modern context, the magnitude of power wielded by Western media is boundless. In normal circumstances, one’s perception would have never normalised the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives. Yet, with the power of subtle rewording, some are now compelled to believe that those 28,000+ souls in Gaza were merely ‘lost’ in Israel’s constituent ‘right to self-defence’; certainly not massacred or collectively punished.
Through the use of precisive language and eloquent rhetoric, aiming to align the narrative alongside western interests, they penetrate the ethical layers of the public’s skin to accept the prospective genocide.
Even if one manages to pass the screening process and be handed the microphone, a preconditional question still remains: ‘Do You Condemn the 7th of October Hamas Attacks’. This event was an atrocity, that much is clear, but it is being used to justify an even greater loss of life. While Piers Morgan spouts that he takes a neutral stance on this war since he is one of the few who has opened their doors to host the voiceless and helpless Palestinians, he has consistently relayed this consensus with every anti-war interviewee he has hosted.
It’s not just Piers. It is near impossible to find any CNN or Sky News interview with a Pro-Palestinian where the interviewee does not receive this critical pre-assessment prior to the initiation of any sort of discussion. The conundrum with this security checkpoint is that if you answer ‘yes’, which you should, then according to the Machiavellian agenda, you should also automatically accept and justify the consequential atrocities being committed in Gaza. However, if you dare to say ‘no’ or ‘condemn both IDF and Hamas equally’ like Mohammed Hijab or Norman Finkelstein did on Piers Morgan Uncensored, then you are cornered into the standby category of ‘terrorist sympathizer’ or ‘anti-Semite’.
In all cases, Western media’s deliberate positioning of the October 7th attacks as a foundation for any discussion around finding a peaceful solution to the current conflict serves two objectives. Firstly, to sideline the crimes being committed in Gaza by misleading the audience into recapturing only the horrific events on the 7th of October by Hamas. Secondly, to serve as a gentle reminder that no matter what sort of scenes you come across on social media, of Israeli guns fired at Palestinians waiting for food supplies in Northern Gaza on the 11th of January, or civilians, like Ramzi Abu Sahloul, shot to death while waving a white flag as he approached Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis village on the 29th of January, a presumably IDF designated ‘safe-zone’, Western media dictated that it must be known that Hamas has started this, so therefore everyone must privilege Israel’s ‘Right to Self Defence’.
Defamation and Dehumanization of Opponents
“The West’s complicity in this war shows us that their cameras uncover more about their own political agenda than they do a clear and accurate conveyal of events.”
Tuning their narrative in line with Benjamin Netanyahu’s visual of Palestinians as ‘children of darkness’ living under ‘the law of the jungle’ and Israelis as ‘children of light’ under the ‘only democracy’ in the region, Western media has conscientiously constructed a perception of ‘Hamas’ and ‘Palestinians’ as one homogenous group who reside in the disgraced Gaza Strip. The media gradually and sustainably enlists the besieged Strip’s landmarks underneath one pillar: A possible control centre for Hamas’s military operation, including hospitals, refugee camps, and UNRWA’s detonated schools in Beit Hanoun. This could not have been achieved without the mobilisation of the largest media outlets across the planet.
Let’s imagine a digital world where Western media outlets were more generous in providing context alongside the news they publish. They have efficiently provided abundant and replenished context of the October 7th attacks, after every new report of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. However, what if they provided an analogous Palestinian frame of reference. For example, the fact that prior to the 7th of October Palestinians in Gaza have been living in the biggest open-air prison with Israel controlling the territory’s air, sea, and land. What if mainstream Western media headlined the 1,130 Palestinians; including 146 minors, who were already detained without charges by the IDF before October 7th, according to the Israeli Human Rights Organization B’Tselem? Or, the 125 Palestinians; including 28 minors, who have been killed in the West Bank, of which Hamas does not possess political control, 10 months before the 7th of October, according to casualty reports by OCHA? Would we now look at things differently?
Western media has successfully branded the IDF’s average killing rate of 250 Palestinians per day, according to Oxfam International, as a proportionate ’response’’ to the 7th of October attacks. Meanwhile, these same broadcasting networks have lacked the courage to fearlessly and equally condemn the killings of more than 10,000 children in less than 100 days. These networks granted the IDF a green-light to wipe Gaza's territory off the map when they mitigated the continuous targeting of journalists in Gaza, using the description “hit in head by bullet’’, as headlined in The Guardian’s article on the 8th of June 2023. And even more disappointingly, they failed to stand in solidarity and honour the 100+ journalists in Gaza who were killed in less than 100 days, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. Evidently, these agencies have been turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed in Gaza ever since the 7th of October.
The West’s complicity in this war shows us that their cameras uncover more about their own political agenda than they do a clear and accurate conveyal of events. Furthermore, it follows that the mobilisation and weaponization of Western media outlets, as they enforce the West’s agenda, has contributed to suffering within Gaza. Now, the elimination of Hamas is often propagated as an end goal, as an event that will end the war, but as CNBC’s Natasha Turak inquiry with US military analysts suggests, this goal is impossible to achieve via the current methods being used - meaning that this war seems to be destined to continue indefinitely. So when the current conditions are considered, when over 70% of houses in Gaza have been destroyed, when 1.9 million people have been displaced and when 335,000 children under 5-years-old are currently starving, what will the West say once the dust settles? Will the West apologise about the innocent souls they let die unseen, forgotten and in silence?