The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is now entering its second century, is taking place on two parallel battlefields. The first concerns the violence on the ground which has reached new heights in recent weeks. The second is the less visible but equally virulent battle in the media and public information sphere in North America and Europe, where Israel and its surrogates have intensified their attempts to silence journalists who express pro-opinions. -Palestinian or balanced and historically contextualized.
For years, right-wing pro-Israel groups like the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and the Canary Mission have attempted to silence academics, activists and journalists who offer Palestinian perspectives, so that Israeli views prevail. Some people who fear losing their job or not being hired or promoted give in.
A sinister new tactic is trying to silence journalists not because of their reporting, but because of the opinions they posted on social media, sometimes years ago.
Since the start of the latest Israeli war on Gaza, a number of media workers have been fired or suspended under such circumstances. Philadelphia sports reporter Jackson Frank was fired by PhillyVoice.com due to his tweets supporting the Palestinian cause.
Zahraa Al-Akhrass was fired by her employer, Canada’s Global News, because of her social media posts drawing attention to the suffering of Palestinians. Kasem Raad was fired from his job at Welt TV, a subsidiary of German media company Axel Springer, for questioning internal pro-Israel policy.
Issam Adwan, an Associated Press journalist in Gaza, was suspended over recent and past social media posts criticizing Israel as an apartheid regime. And at least six Arab journalists are the subject of an internal investigation at the BBC regarding their activity on social networks, which allegedly reflects their “anti-Israeli bias”.
All of this comes amid reports that some Western media companies are instructing their staff not to provide context for the Israeli war on Gaza or even downplay Palestinian losses.
When asked to explain this trend, Nader Hashemi, a veteran academic analyst of North America-Middle East interactions and professor at Georgetown University, told me: “For In the West, for both the media and politicians, this is first and foremost a story about Israel. The Palestinians are just an appendage to this story. This is linked to the long history of Western anti-Semitism and the Nazi Holocaust. In this framework, the humanity of the Palestinians is, at best, a secondary consideration. Everything we have seen on CNN and from the White House since October 7 confirms this truism.
My own analysis, based on five decades of documenting and combating Israeli propaganda in the United States, is that its proponents are worried – because their old tactics no longer have the same impact on Western audiences. Perhaps this is why accusations of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism are now so common; they have worked well in the past, but appear less effective today when arbitrarily used to target people who are neither anti-Semitic nor adept at terrorism.
While there have been dismissals and suspensions of journalists, some have also received support from their media employers. Los Angeles Times editor Sara Yasin, for example, has been accused of being pro-Hamas in some of her retweets criticizing Israel’s actions, but her management has flatly rejected these claims as false.
Abdallah Fayyad, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated opinion journalist who recently spent three years on the editorial board of the Boston Globe, says there is a widespread “culture of fear” in many newsrooms. He told me that most editors are not experts on foreign policy or the Middle East, and so their coverage tends to follow the pro-Israel U.S. State Department and the White House on these issues.
“Most journalists don’t interrogate this issue like they do others they cover, like Black Lives Matter. So when they are hit with a flood of letters, criticism on social media, or threats to end their subscriptions because of their more balanced coverage, they tend to take the easy route and continue the pro-Israeli trend in mainstream media.”
This culture of fear also manifests itself in the way the media chooses to comment on events in Israel-Palestine. Over the past three weeks, a number of Palestinian American commentators have claimed that either they were excluded from television appearances or that their pre-recorded comments were not broadcast. Among them are Noura Erakat from Rutgers University, Yousef Munayyer from the Arab Center in Washington and political analyst Omar Baddar.
They believe they have been sidelined because they contest the media coverage of major American television channels which favors Israeli and American government lines.
But there has also been a backlash against pressure and intimidation campaigns targeting pro-Palestinian voices. Arab Americans and their progressive allies have mobilized to protect citizens’ constitutional rights, document and call attention to incidents of pressure and harassment.
Palestine Legal, a U.S.-based civil rights organization that monitors anti-Palestinian incidents, notes in its latest report that people who openly demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza face greater intimidation. It documents that increased harassment of Palestine advocates resulted in more than 260 “attempts at harassment and censorship.” He concludes that Palestine advocates face “a wave of McCarthyite backlash” that continually affects their personal and professional lives.
The young but vibrant Association of Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists said it was “deeply troubled by reports that journalists of Middle Eastern and North African origin face prejudice at work and are excluded from reporting or comments on the current war…(while) suggestions for nuance, balance and the use of precise language in reporting are ignored in newsrooms.”
When I asked them about campaigns against individuals or companies that challenge unbalanced pro-Israel rhetoric, they responded: “Targeting or isolating journalists for honest coverage that contrasts with a privileged opinion constitutes censorship and should be opposed by anyone who values press freedom. . Bombing or shooting journalists working in the field or their families is a war crime that we unequivocally condemn.
This media battleground bears watching closely because, for the first time in a century, Zionist tactics aimed at maintaining a pro-Israel line in the United States and elsewhere in the West are being more effectively controlled and countered by the supporters of balanced media coverage.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.