Advice for How to Read News About the Israel-Gaza Conflict
When it comes to the Israel-Gaza conflict, there is a lot of spurious news, misinformation, rhetoric, and propaganda playing in our media streams.
Remember, there is a battle for hearts and minds right now, and certain state actors are trying to persuade us that one side is the victim and the other side is the aggressor, even though such neat bifurcations are rarely the whole story.
Added to that, some news outlets are not so much concerned with impartial and independent reporting, but combine their reporting with advocacy for a particular perspective.
This is why I always consult the news site Ground because it factors in the biases of the media and their sources.
So be careful what you read, how you read, and what you do with the news reports about Israel and Gaza.
First, remember that war is a time when actors on all sides are running deception operations and propaganda campaigns. The media can be oblivious to these deceptions or sometimes be complicit with them. One has to factor in the “fog of war,” misinformation, misreporting, and propaganda. So don’t believe everything you read and hear.
A big factor in Russian military and political strategy is what the Russians call Maskirovka, “deception,” the attempt to make things appear to be other than they are. Or else, the Russians flood the media sphere with so much information of varied veracity that nobody knows what is true and false anymore.
There’s a lot of deception, rushed hypotheses, and fake news about Israel and Gaza right now.
When I heard reports that the al-Ahli Anglican hospital had been bombed by Israel in Gaza, everyone was rushing to condemn it, but I had a hunch it wasn’t quite so clear. As it turns out, the explosion at the hospital might have been caused by a Hamas rocket misfiring, not by an Israeli missile strike. It’s hard to know for sure! But you have to resonate with journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon’s righteous tirade against the mainstream media for going along with it.
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