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The Mainstream Media Needs to Do Better in Covering Gaza
Here's one example that highlights some of the problems.
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Today’s New York Times featured a front-page story—which bills itself as a “news analysis”—by its Jerusalem bureau chief reporting that there had “been a new round of violence on Sunday” and that Israel and Hamas traded accusations about ceasefire violations.
Citing Israeli military sources, the Times’s report added that “two Israeli soldiers were killed and another wounded when Palestinian militants launched anti-tank missiles at an army vehicle…in Rafah in southern Gaza, on the Israeli-held eastern side of the ceasefire line.” Israel, according to the report, then initiated “a punishing bombardment of what it said were Hamas installations,” and, according to “Gaza officials,” 44 Palestinians had been killed. After shutting down aid deliveries to Gaza, Israel’s government later relented and deliveries “were back to normal” soon.
The story contained a meaningless and irrelevant quote from an American security expert, but nothing to question Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim that Hamas fighters emerged from their tunnels and fired at IDF soldiers. Nor did it bother to turn to Palestinians (unaffiliated with Hamas) in the know.
The report noted that the two hardliners in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had voted against the approval of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, accused Netanyahu of caving to American pressure and demanded that Israel resume the war.
Bottom line: Netanyahu was under pressure, and so was the ceasefire—because of Hamas’s failure to stop fighting.
Several aspects of this report, all too common in American mainstream media, stand out.
First, the Israeli military’s version of events is presented at face value without any apparent effort to learn Hamas’s side of the story, save at the end where it’s mentioned that Hamas’s leaders said that they’d lost contact with their fighters in Rafah and couldn’t confirm that an attack had occurred but nevertheless disavowed responsibility.
The point is not that Hamas’s representatives are always truthful and IDF officials are always deceitful. It’s that the failure to explore Hamas’s explanation in greater detail so as to ascertain whether it had some basis in fact is problematic given the details provided in the news report on Israel’s account of why the ceasefire broke down for a time.
Second, the report leaves readers with the impression that the ceasefire is hanging by a thread (true) because of Hamas’s refusal to abide by its terms. This is the claim of Netanyahu and Trump—and it is presented as established fact.
Third, the Times’s story doesn’t use Palestinian sources, even though there are still well-informed Gazan journalists reporting news out of Gaza. Some have been bitterly critical of Hamas, but all of them know much more about what’s happening in Gaza than an American journalist sitting in Jerusalem.
There are also first-rate Gazan journalists living outside of Gaza (Muhammad Shehada being perhaps the best example) who once worked there but were forced to leave because their homeland had become a death trap for local reporters. As of the end of last month, nearly 250 of them had been killed—“more than in any other conflict in modern times,” according to the UN.
There are, in addition, knowledgeable Palestinian journalists and military experts within Israel and the occupied West Bank; yet the Times’s bureau chief chose to pluck a quotation—one that had nothing to say about the threats to the ceasefire—from a conversation with an analyst at RAND, a US think tank. Why not also turn to Palestinian experts who have tracked the war?
I don’t know what exactly happened in Rafah, but I do know that this sort of reporting is standard fare in the American press, and it can hardly be called balanced or thorough.
This particular Times piece leaves out important details about how the ceasefire came unstuck for a time and offers a largely one-sided account.
The cause of what happened in Rafah remains disputed. One alternative version is offered by Ryan Grim of DropSiteNews. Based on information gained from unnamed American sources, Grim reports that what occurred in Rafah was an explosion created by an Israeli bulldozer that plowed into unexploded ordnance, which, incidentally, lies beneath the rubble—some 60 million tons of it—that’s visible throughout Gaza. (It is of course possible that the IDF soldiers on the scene thought that the explosion was caused by an attack by Hamas.)
Grim adds that US officials knew the cause of the explosion, relayed that information to Israel, and pushed it to end the suspension of aid deliveries it had imposed in retaliation for the alleged Hamas attack.
Again, the point is not that the bulldozer version of what happened in Rafah is accurate and that the IDF’s is not; it’s that readers could be forgiven for concluding after reading the Times story that Hamas had carried out an attack in Rafah that put the ceasefire at risk, that Israel’s explanation is rock solid, and that there’s no need to look into whether it’s accurate.
The Times story, recall, focuses on ceasefire violations that put peace at risk. Hamas’s alleged attack in Gaza is mentioned, but Hamas alone seems to be the guilty party engaged in wrecking Trump’s peace plan.
Here’s what the Times’s account leaves out. Palestinian officials in Gaza have charged Israel with breaking the ceasefire 47 times and according to some accounts as many as 80 times (as of Saturday), since it took effect and killing nearly 100 people, including children. That’s twice the number reported by the Times. (We should of course assume that Hamas fighters may well have been among the dead, but while bearing in mind that a ceasefire is supposed to be in effect.)
On Friday, 11 members of a Palestinian family traveling in a bus were killed when it approached the Yellow Line, which demarcates Israel’s withdrawal perimeter. There have been other such incidents involving Palestinians who were on foot. The explanation the IDF offers is that these people moved toward the line in a manner that its soldiers on the scene deemed threatening.
But the Yellow Line is not something painted in bright colors so that it’s unmistakable; its contours are hard to see. This lack of clarity about what terrain is prohibited and which is legal to traverse increases the risk of incidents in which people get shot for crossing into forbidden ground.
Any thorough piece on the tenuous state of the ceasefire should mention this relevant detail and try to ascertain some relevant facts: Did the people appear to be armed, or was there at least reasonable grounds to believe that they might be? Were Arabic-language signs posted warning people that they were about to cross the Yellow Line? Did the soldiers call upon them to turn back, using loudspeakers? Did the soldiers fire warning shots after they issued verbal orders to stop? If so, did the Palestinians refuse to comply?
Perhaps all these precautions were taken, but somehow reports in the mainstream media seem to think that all that’s needed is to report what the victims did to provoke Israeli soldiers—without trying to investigate whether the IDF takes all feasible precautions to avoid killing civilians straying into occupied territory in Gaza or to find out whether the people who were killed in fact did what the Israeli military says they did.
The ceasefire hinges not only on the cessation of fighting but also on Israel’s willingness to stick to the pledge to open additional border crossings for trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies.
Aid has indeed been allowed in since the ceasefire deal was signed, but we have ample evidence from international relief agencies that the number of trucks Israel is now letting into Gaza is nowhere close to “normal”—and hasn’t been since the ceasefire took hold.
On top of that, dozens of aid organizations are still unable to deliver supplies to Gaza because Israel has yet to grant them approval.
Whatever all this adds up to, it’s not normalcy.
Trump’s plan mentions 600 trucks per day as a target. To be clear, it takes time to reach that level, especially in a war zone, and it’s not fair to blame Israel alone for what are still vastly inadequate aid flows into Gaza.
Still, to acknowledge that is one thing; to suggest, as the Times does, that normalcy has returned is quite another—especially when aid agencies say that 1,000 trucks a day are what’s needed, that five or six crossing points, including the one in Rafah, at the Gaza-Egypt border, need to be opened to bring in sufficient supplies, and that what relief organizations require is not the current “trickle” but “a flood.”
My purpose here is not to pick on a single news story but to highlight the sort of reporting that prevails on Gaza. Even allowing for the pressures created by deadlines, our media can do better, especially given that war involves not just battles in the traditional sense but also ones involving competing narratives aimed at blaming and discrediting the adversary, whether for ceasefire violations or the killing of civilians.
© 2025 Rajan Menon
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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