As hunger spread in Gaza, Israeli media began to focus on Palestinians washingtonpost.com

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Amid reports of starvation in Gaza and growing international outrage, news of the worsening crisis began to break through into mainstream Israeli media.

TEL AVIV — Over nearly two years of war in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s news broadcasts focused almost exclusively on Israeli victims of the conflict: hostages, both alive and dead, or still held in captivity; soldiers killed in battle, then buried at home.

The civilian suffering in Gaza, in which nearly 2 million people have been displaced and critical infrastructure destroyed, was rarely, if ever, mentioned. As missiles fell on Israeli cities and most of society hardened following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, there was an unwritten rule, journalists and media experts said, that kept Palestinian civilians mostly out of sight in domestic coverage of the war.

But last month, amid reports of mass starvation in the enclave and growing international outrage, news of the worsening crisis began to break through. The flood of images and condemnations, even from Israel's allies, gave Israeli journalists "a way into the story," said one prominent investigative reporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. "You see how much they've been waiting for it," she said.
Mainstream Israeli news outlets began showing footage of civilians in Gaza for the first time, including men on foot hauling sacks of food from aid distribution sites and children screaming as they crowded around the few remaining soup kitchens – results, the reports said, of Israel's months-long blockade of the Strip.

The moment was brief: Newscasts this week have returned to more familiar areas of coverage after Hamas released videos of an emaciated hostage, horrifying Israelis and triggering mass street protests. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also proposed a full reoccupation of the Palestinian territory, causing tensions between his government and military officials who oppose the plan.

Israel has barred outside journalists from entering Gaza, except for brief, controlled embeds with the military. Palestinian journalists, however, have produced a steady stream of coverage from enclave, filing for global news wires and other international outlets. They have "continued reporting despite killings, injuries, and arbitrary detention at the hands of Israeli forces," according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which says 178 reporters have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

But many Israelis, who are still grappling with the visual archive of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants live-streamed thousands of hours of body-camera footage as they rampaged through southern Israel, remain skeptical of media reports coming out of Gaza. Some also distrust international media, accusing some outlets of downplaying coverage of the hostages.

As a result, few Israelis "make the effort to leave their feed, their bubble, whatever social media platform, and get to whatever other place to see what is happening" in Gaza, said Oren Persico, a reporter for the Seventh Eye, an investigative magazine focused on Israeli media and freedom of speech. "The algorithm knows already what you want to see."

According to Asa Shapiro, head of the advertising and marketing department at Tel Aviv University, the act of acknowledging, let alone sympathizing with, Gazans posed a dilemma both for journalists and viewers, who remain gripped by the fate of Israel's hostages. Fifty hostages are still in captivity, 20 of whom are presumed to be alive.