Israeli Journalism Between Mobilization and Concealment: How the Narrative of the War on Gaza is Shaped

Since October 7, 2023, the date of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance, Israel has entered into an unprecedented military confrontation with the Gaza Strip. However, the war has not only been on the battlefield; it has extended into the media space, where Israeli journalism has played a central role in producing and framing the political and security discourse, shaping the Israeli collective consciousness regarding what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. This media role has not been neutral; rather, it has been divided between a mobilizing, inciting discourse that legitimizes violence and a critical discourse that attempts to hold the authorities accountable and expose violations.

In the first phase of the war, the narrative of "victimhood" dominated media coverage, framing the Palestinian attack as a brutal assault on Israeli civilians, without any attempt to provide the historical context of the conflict or to mention the ongoing occupation and the blockade imposed on Gaza. This media framing, which is considered one of the tools of symbolic domination, contributed to legitimizing the Israeli military response and justifying the intense bombing of residential areas and health and educational facilities in the Strip.

Media outlets such as "Yedioth Ahronoth" and "Ynet" relied on security discourse as a central axis in their coverage, publishing on October 20, 2023, a report titled "The Army Responds to Terrorism in Gaza," without any mention of the number of civilian casualties or the extent of the destruction. Meanwhile, the newspaper "Makor Rishon" wrote in its editorial on December 5: "What is happening in Gaza is not genocide, but a necessary cleansing of terrorism," in a clear disregard for the professional ethical standards that should govern media coverage in times of conflict.

Despite the enormous numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, which exceeded 168,000 martyrs and injured since October 7, most of whom are women and children, Israeli media rarely addresses this suffering in a humane or professional manner. It is noted that the prevailing media discourse adopts a "security profiling" strategy, portraying every Palestinian in Gaza as a potential threat, implicitly justifying targeting them, even if they are children, sick, or displaced.

In this context, the statements of the Israeli army spokesperson, Avichai Adraee, were repeated in media outlets such as "Ynet" and "Channel 12," justifying the targeting of civilian homes as "military sites for Hamas," without providing concrete evidence. In late August 2025, Israeli forces launched an airstrike on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, resulting in several casualties, including journalists. The Israeli army justified the attack by claiming that Hamas surveillance equipment was present inside the hospital, but subsequent journalistic investigations revealed that this equipment was part of filming tools used by international journalists to document events. This type of discourse is a model of media framing that legitimizes killing and strips victims of their humanity.

Israeli media also deliberately ignores displaying images of Palestinian victims or narrating their stories, in contrast to the intense focus on scenes of sorrow in Israeli settlements. This bias in coverage entrenches the monopoly of the narrative and excludes the Palestinian narrative from the public sphere, which is a form of media colonialism. In rare cases, Palestinian victims are mentioned, but this is often used in a justificatory context. For example, in coverage by the newspaper "Israel Hayom" on January 3, 2024, it was reported that "the killing of civilians in Gaza is regrettable but necessary to achieve the goals of the war," in a clear expression of legitimizing mass killing under the guise of self-defense.

This media discourse is not limited to ignoring victims; it extends to justifying the targeting of journalists themselves, who are supposed to convey the truth. Since the outbreak of the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, the Gaza Government Media Office has documented the martyrdom of 225 Palestinian journalists at the hands of the Israeli army by mid-September 2025, a toll considered the highest globally in the history of modern wars against journalists. International organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, "Forbidden Stories," and the United Nations have confirmed that many of these journalists were killed while covering events, during direct targeting of media offices, or even while at home with their families. These numbers not only reflect the scale of losses in the Palestinian journalistic body but also reveal a systematic pattern in targeting media professionals, in a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, which is supposed to provide them with special protection during armed conflicts.

In contrast, some media platforms have adopted an explicit inciting discourse, exceeding the limits of mobilization to direct calls for violence and extermination. Israeli Channel 14, for example, aired statements by broadcaster Shimon Riklin on November 10, 2023, in which he said: "Everything left of the infrastructure in