Open letter to journalists who cover Israel - opinion

Dear journalists,

It’s been another busy week for all of you who cover this region, both print and online and, like every time Israel takes action to defend itself, you miss the point entirely. How media community members reported what happened last week in Jenin made it clear that the collective journalistic community cares not about accurate reporting, but prefers contributing to the well-established anti-Israel PR nightmare campaign.

As someone who reports on these issues, I know your job is no easy task, and I know the dangers and risks many of you put yourselves in while covering this conflict. You are likely overworked, underpaid and receive endless criticism from both sides.

It is wrong to assume that most of you have ill intentions; on the contrary, I hope that, as journalists, you value working by a code of honor. Yet, in your mission to report the story, many of you should question the biases you have been exposed to and how that has shaped how you report about Israel.

As journalists, your jobs are to accurately and fairly explain what happens in the region. Yet I am astounded at how many misrepresented what happened during the operation. I am not implying that I expect you to hide Israel’s actions or to shy away from the harsh realities here. Still, by reporting things out of context like so many of you did this week, you are harming the people who live here, unintentionally or not.

To the international journalists who work in Israel, many of you are in a lucky and privileged position. Israel is a country where you can live your comfortable life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, receive access to almost everything, go in and out of hostile regions, say whatever you want on camera and in print and then come back to the comfort of your home.

I don’t know any other conflict zone where this would be possible. In the end, you will not, more or less, be affected, as you are not a target for terrorists, and you do not have to face the long-term consequences of our army or government’s decisions.

Media downplaying the murders of Israelis

Those of you who report about Israel from the comforts of studios abroad have said some of the most outrageous things in the last couple of months. How you have managed to whitewash and minimize the murders of Israeli civilians has been astounding. A great example was when CNN’s Christiane Amanpour reported on live television that Lucy, Rina and Maia Dee (who were murdered by a terrorist at point-blank range) were “killed in a shootout.” A shootout implies that two parties were shooting at each other, which is not what happened.

The details of something like this are not small, and they matter. Terrorists and victims are not the same. In one sentence, CNN completely shifted how the world understood the story and minimized the murder of three innocent women.

This moral equivalency was evident in how some of you covered the Jenin operation. For those that need a reminder, Jenin has become the largest terrorist hub in the West Bank. Middle East analysts knew that Jenin was reaching a boiling point leading to a spike in terror attacks in 2023. About 50 shooting attacks from this year alone were committed by terrorists from Jenin.

Operation Home and Garden was difficult as the IDF faced 300 militant fighters dispersed in the crowded city among civilians. Jenin terrorists hid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in populated areas to target the IDF and endangered the lives of innocent Palestinians. The D9 armored bulldozers that the IDF sent into Jenin were there to detonate the IEDs and clear the streets of landmines.

Yet in the endless media coverage of this operation, several news outlets ignored the context of Jenin and terrorism, the numerous murders of Israeli civilians by Jenin terrorists and the dangers of the IEDs in a civilian-populated area. Instead of explaining all this, you broadcast devastating footage of Jenin and said we were using the vehicles to prevent ambulances from reaching civilians.

The Washington Post published a headline, “Israel invades West Bank city, killing at least eight Palestinians.” There was no mention of this being a counter-terror operation and that all eight Palestinians killed were armed militants.

The next day, while interviewing former prime minister Naftali Bennett, BBC news anchor Anjana Gadgil stated, “Israeli forces are happy to kill children.” Such a statement pushes the same blood libel of Jews being ruthless and bloodthirsty that has been repeated for centuries.

For a member of the journalistic community to use a platform like BBC’s to spread such a vile accusation is outrageous and puts us Israelis in danger. It minimizes that a significant portion of Palestinian terrorists who have attempted to murder Israelis have been as young as 13 years old, and that ignoring the terror activity in Jenin would have led to more murders of Israeli citizens.

Do you honestly think that Israelis want war? Do you think we want to send our 18-year-old teenagers to battle? Our army is made up of young boys and girls who are risking their lives and are often killed on duty as part of revenge attacks by Palestinians. Do you think that if our lives were not at stake, we would encourage an operation like this? Have Israelis not proven that we know right from wrong by protesting and rising against our government?

Any journalist who thinks we are “happy” about these deaths has clearly never lived in a war zone and is unfit to be a journalist.

The Israeli army reported that they confiscated 1,000 weapons, destroyed six explosives-manufacturing facilities and arrested 30 suspects. Anyone with a brain can see that this operation had nothing to do with harming civilians.

As journalists, you don’t need to advocate for us; you just need to tell the truth and report the whole story. You collectively failed to do so, and instead, you, once again, contributed to the conflict by pitting Israelis and Palestinians against each other.

You have to do better.

The writer is a social media activist with more than 10 years of experience working for Israeli, Jewish causes, and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and the COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.