Since October 7th, American Media Has Been a Shameless Propaganda Organ for Israel

One year ago, Hamas militants breached the wall Israel has trapped Gaza within, and perpetrated a terrorist attack that killed over a thousand Israelis. Israel said the final death toll from the October 7 attack is 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, 71 foreigners and 373 security forces for a total of 1,139 people killed one year ago, while 101 hostages remain missing.

If all you consumed is mainstream American media, you may believe that Hamas is responsible for every single one of those deaths, but Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, spent the last year doing capital-J journalism and highlighting the inadequacy of mainstream American print media and all the liars on cable news like Jake Tapper. As Haaretz reported on July 7th, the “IDF ordered [the] Hannibal Directive on October 7 to prevent Hamas taking soldiers captive.”

This was not the first order given by the division with the intent of foiling kidnapping even at the expense of the lives of the kidnapped, a procedure known in the army as the “Hannibal procedure.”

Documents obtained by Haaretz, as well as testimonies of soldiers, mid-level and senior IDF officers, reveal a host of orders and procedures laid down by the Gaza Division, Southern Command and the IDF General Staff up to the afternoon hours of that day, showing how widespread this procedure was, from the first hours following the attack and at various points along the border.

We do not know how many soldiers and civilians the IDF killed on October 7, the United Nations says at least 14, but as these IDF sources and documents informed Haaretz, the number very likely isn’t zero and the philosopher who wrote the IDF’s code of conduct called this policy “unlawful, unethical and horrifying.” This is an important detail in the story of that fateful day, because it establishes a pattern of Israeli military recklessness and callousness towards life that existed well before Hamas’s terrorist attack and has been the defining trait of the past year. One would think our Very Serious American journalists would want to add this additional information in their job of presenting the truth as it is.

Instead, they prove time and time again that their real job is to present the truth as the globe’s preeminent imperial power wants it to be, and its prize colonial project is beyond question. Searching “Hannibal procedure” or “Hannibal directive” on their own websites yields a grand total of zero stories about it from the NYT, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and Fox News.

The Washington Post is the only mainstream media outlet who has even mentioned it, when they noted Haaretz’s report in a story about the IDF’s self-proclaimed “failure” to protect Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th. Fox News reprinted an AP wire on the Hannibal procedure in 2018 and WaPo wrote about this “murky” IDF policy in 2014, so we can assume that at least those three know what it is, and yet, a report from Israel’s oldest daily paper that it was activated on 10/7 and that the IDF very likely killed Israeli civilians did not make it into a single mainstream American media writeup, save for one.

This is what a media blackout looks like. This detail, which does not change the fundamental nature of October 7 being a terrorist attack where Hamas killed most of the victims, is an important tell. This Haaretz report from IDF sources makes the Israeli military look bad and the story of 10/7 more complex, and it runs diametrically opposed to the black and white fairytale the American media wants to “report” where Israel is a perpetual victim and can do no wrong. American mainstream media has largely proven that it prefers stenography to journalism when it comes to Israel.

As Al Jazeera reported, journalists inside of outlets like CNN and the BBC report rampant bias on the part of upper management. One journalist at CNN said “after October 7, the ease with which I saw news lines that supported the Israeli narrative come out really shook me. There were times where CNN was happy to push hard. But on balance, it’s very clear where we lie, regrettably. And it’s not entirely with the truth.”

The “lie” allegation could be directed at CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson, who laundered IDF propaganda through his own reputation without doing the work that journalism requires to verify basic facts. After bombing al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, the IDF took CNN’s imperial stenographer inside, and IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari pointed to a document on the wall written in Arabic and said it was a “guarding list [for Hamas.]” CNN published a “report” about this lie on their website too.

This had already been debunked online before CNN broadcast it on air, as people who actually speak Arabic, or at least are a good enough journalist to get on the phone with someone who does, read what was written on the wall and it was just a calendar.

But to CNN, it was proof that bombing a children’s hospital was justified. This is far from the only time that Western media has printed Israeli propaganda as fact. Back in May, the NYT and WSJ both made Benjamin Netanyahu’s lie their front-page headline when he killed seven World Central Kitchen workers. Justification for Israel’s impending assault on al-Shifa Hospital ran rampant in Western media before it decided it didn’t care about providing justification for bombing hospitals anymore, and pretty much everyone “reported” that Israel said it was the central hub of a Hamas network. WaPo provided one of the few counterweights to this stenography sold as journalism, as they published an investigation which concluded that the “evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center.”

Not all mainstream American media has repeated Israeli propaganda over the past year, and reporters at places like The Washington Post and CNN have demonstrated that there are honest to goodness journalists doing good work in a sea of falsehoods perpetrated by their bosses. However, simply contrasting Haaretz‘s reporting to most mainstream American reporting since October 7th tells the story of two completely different universes, and good reports like the one referenced above are the exception to the rule from the past year.

American media serves American empire, and Israel is the primary foothold of American empire abroad. The average coverage we get here around Israel is closer to North Korean propaganda than it is to the daily reality that Palestinians provide images of. We are then told by those dedicated to the cause of empire that the videos from Gaza are actually Chinese propaganda on Tik Tok, and that we need to ban the app doing the work that so many mainstream American journalists are fundamentally incapable of doing.

Like after the Iraq War, countless media personalities and outlets have forever degraded their credibility since October 7th, and their alliance with their imperial masters has never been more obvious. Also like after Iraq, these same liars and charlatans will still likely have media jobs the next time our empire needs its dutiful lapdogs to obfuscate the truth over its atrocities abroad, because that is why these imperial stenographers exist in the first place.