People who care about Israel around the world know that the effort to get positive – or even somewhat fair – coverage of the Jewish state in the international media can be a Sisyphean task.
The mythological Greek king Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to eternally roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time it came close to the top. There was no mercy or empathy for Sisyphus. And there has been almost no mercy or empathy for Israel in the international media since the horrible attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 – with three notable exceptions.
Israel received positive coverage on Oct. 7 itself, until the IDF got its act together and started fighting back later that day. And the media was empathetic again when Iran launched its missile and drone attacks on April 13 and October 1, 2024.
This and favorable reports on Monday’s International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust (except for shows such as Good Morning Britain on ITV that forgot its Jewish victims) proved the thesis of Dara Horn’s 2021 book People Love Dead Jews.
Those looking for empathy from the media over the past two weeks for the nine young Israeli women, and one elderly man, who finally returned to their loving families – and for the nation that prayed for them – were left largely disappointed.
The lead photo on the cover of The New York Times International on Monday, January 20, the day after Romi Leshem Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and UK citizen Emily Damari were released, was yet another picture of Khan Yunis with the headline “Gazans dreaming of home.” The regular American edition had a massive photo of the Jabalya refugee camp and a smaller one of Damari.
BEFORE CONTINUING to bemoan the coverage, exceptions to the rule must be celebrated. CNN’s Bianna Golodryga reported from Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva on Saturday, interviewing Daniella Gilboa’s aunt and uncle and allowing them to convey the mixed emotions of the day to the world.
“She’s the daughter of a lioness, they are fighters. Proud Jewish girls who never lost hope.” Released hostage Daniella Gilboa’s uncle Razi, tells me. CNN was the only international network to witness in real time the return of four female hostages alongside their families today. pic.twitter.com/gWmEgJB52w
— Bianna Golodryga (@biannagolodryga) January 25, 2025
Daniella’s uncle Razi talked about how it felt to have a niece whose freedom had been taken away for 15 excruciating months and watch her “walking proud in the Hamas theater” as a “proud Jewish girl who never lost hope.”
“They were kidnapped from their home, from a party, from a celebration,” Razi said.
“It is amazing and ridiculous that Hamas is trying to present them as prisoners of war. They are hostages, and we are waiting for all of the hostages to come back home.”
While he was saying that on CNN, the overwhelming majority of the international media was broadcasting Hamas’s deceitful narrative, willingly playing into the hands of a terrorist organization and implicitly justifying kidnapping and holding hostages.
The BBC falsely claimed, during a live report, that Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag were released wearing the same IDF uniforms they wore when they entered Gaza. Did the publicly funded British media giant really think the world had forgotten the searing images from Hamas’s own footage of the bloodied women abducted from their beds in pajamas and underwear and paraded through the streets of Gaza? Australia’s ABC News and other outlets also bought this dangerous lie.
Why does it matter so much that the world media got this wrong?
It matters because Hamas was deliberately trying to insinuate that these “soldiers” were legitimate military targets and was using the press to deliver this message around the world.
The four young women were forced to ascend a stage with a banner – erected with the surplus money that Gaza suddenly has – delivering Hamas’s message of “the victory of oppressed people vs Nazi Zionism.” The Hamas terrorists were wearing uniforms, clean and pressed, to make the world forget that they normally operate in plain clothes.
By facilitating Hamas’s sickening PR stunt, the world media gave it legitimacy and humanized the terror organization that will keep trying to murder as many Jews as possible. The rehabilitation of Hamas’s image did not stop there.
The vile murderers released from Israeli prisons were treated sympathetically as victims of Israel. No one expected top international media outlets to call them terrorists, but their etymological flexibility was downright scary. The New York Times called them “activists,” The Washington Post referred to them as “political activists,” Reuters said they were “prominent Palestinians,” and never to be topped, The Guardian said they had been “imprisoned for anti-Israel operations.”
The media told stories of Palestinian prisoners embracing their children for the first time without bothering to mention that they were in jail on multiple counts of murdering innocent Israeli civilians.
For instance, The Washington Post spotlighted infamous Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist Khalida Jarrar, arrested six years ago after participating in a PFLP terror attack that murdered 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.
“In an astonishing act of journalistic omission, The Washington Post conveniently ignored her [Khalida Jarrar’s] direct ties to violence, instead painting her as yet another misunderstood political figure rather than a key player in a terror organization,” media watchdog HonestReporting wrote.
Media reports from last week’s prisoner release were no better. Sky News posted a video of what it described as “heartwarming” celebrations in Gaza following news of the ceasefire. Sky shared a clip of a large crowd chanting “Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud” – a well-known and explicit threat invoking the slaughter of Jews – with the word “Khaybar” referring to a place where Jews were massacred in the year 628. The end of the chant is “jaish Muhammad soufa ya’oud,” meaning “the army of Mohammed will return.”
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Top media outlets consistently minimized the tragedy on the Israeli side. NBC’s headline Monday was “Hamas says 8 of remaining 26 hostages are dead,” forgetting that at the time there were still 90.
Even Fox News got its numbers wrong, writing that “Hamas will release 33 hostages over five weeks while Israel will release some 90 Palestinian prisoners.” The true comparison was unfortunately, three for 90 and 33 for 1,900.
HonestReporting compiled a breakdown of 733 Palestinian prisoners whose names have been released by the Israeli government with their gender, age, the charges against them, and their terror affiliation.
Contrary to their portrayal in the international media as primarily wrongly imprisoned women and children, 91% are men; 91% are between ages 18 and 59; 609 of the 733 were convicted of violent offenses; and 87% are members of terror organizations.
Just last weekend, Hamas publicly executed 11 Palestinians it accused of being collaborators, but as expected, that got no coverage.
The international media will face additional tests in the weeks ahead. If the Bibas boys are brought home in body bags, will that finally bring about empathetic coverage?
Even if empathetic coverage never comes, we will never relent in the important effort to change the international narrative and improve Israel’s image. That challenge may be an immense boulder, but we will leave no stone unturned. The writer is the executive director of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.