What the media isn't telling you about the Israel-Hamas war

It’s subtle but the choice of words is important because they show up a serious imbalance in how the suffering of Palestinians is portrayed compared to that of Israelis.

Outright censorship is easier to spot and call out. Last week, the BBC “edited out” multiple calls for a ceasefire in Gaza which were made during speeches by filmmakers and actors at the Scottish Bafta awards.

But too many people had watched the live coverage and spotted the huge difference in the version the BBC made available afterwards on its streaming service, iPlayer.

When challenged, the BBC said it was complying with its “editorial guidelines on impartiality”. But surely “impartiality” would mean omitting some of the speeches, not all of them?

The BBC has a long history of “editing out” references to Palestine. In February 2011, it covered up the word “Palestine” in a freestyle performance on Radio 1Xtra by rapper Mic Righteous with the sound of breaking glass.

The lyrics were “contentious”, the BBC argued, because they implied that Palestine is not free, and this is why it made the “edit”. But international law and world opinion regards Palestine to be occupied by Israel, which surely counts as “not being free”.

A few years earlier, the BBC provoked widespread outrage when it refused to air a Disasters Emergency Committee humanitarian charity fundraising appeal for Gaza after Israel’s bombing campaign in 2008-9.

READ MORE: BBC apologises after 'editing errors' in Gaza report

This was the first and only time the BBC has done this.

These are all very visible and clumsy examples of censorship. But given they are being implemented by the UK’s leading news source it should be ringing alarm bells.

With its Bafta move, “Auntie Beeb” is deliberately airbrushing out of history the voices of leading British public figures – actors, filmmakers, musicians and humanitarians.

We should be able to hear these opinions and judge them for ourselves because they provide a critical counterpoint to the UK government which has clearly taken sides and is sending war ships and spy planes to assist Israel.

READ MORE: Amir El-Masry breaks silence after Gaza ceasefire call censored by BBC

There have been some accusations of pro-Palestine bias in the media, particularly towards the BBC, but not on the same scale. Besides a few rare exceptions, the media mostly falls in line with its government’s stance.

Since October 7, there has been a wave of suppression and censorship of Palestinian voices and of those expressing solidarity with Palestinians in western media.

Censorship

I experienced this myself, from the UK’s leading international affairs think-tank, Chatham House. Noting this increase in censorship, The Guardian commissioned US lawyer Dylan Saba to write a piece on it.

Then, without a hint of irony, the paper dropped the article, blaming the decision on someone “higher up”. Simultaneously, the newspaper recently dismissed satirical cartoonist Steve Bell over his depiction of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bell had been with The Guardian for more than 40 years.

This type of outright censorship is very visible. What is more difficult to point to and criticise is the selective framing of events.

Israel's military violence against Palestinians is always reported as a response to Palestinian attacks. This framing has been used in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018...

I could go on, using every year going back decades and referencing different Western media outlets. But the headlines and message remain the same: Palestinians carry out “terror attacks”, Israel is “defending itself”.

Providing historical context is difficult in the fast-moving media environment, but it needs to be done otherwise how can people understand what is going on?

Double standards

The BBC has been accused by eight of its UK-based journalists of not portraying the situation accurately and of using terms such as “massacre” and “atrocity” only when referring to the Hamas attack on Israelis on October 7 and not about the attacks of Israel on Palestinians in Gaza.

In a letter to the broadcaster Al Jazeera, the journalists – who wrote anonymously fearing reprisal further charged that the national broadcaster was “humanising” Israelis by using their names, covering funerals, and interviewing family members, but failing to do the same for Palestinians.

Such double standards led to its journalists “crying in the toilets”.

READ MORE: BBC flew in face of journalistic ethics by cutting Gaza from Baftas

The tabloid press is even worse. The Sun ignored the UK’s responsibility for creating the conditions for the conflict, omitting to mention the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British colonial bias against Palestinian-Arabs.

This is what led to a Jewish state in the Holy Land and the dispossession of Palestinian-Arabs. I haven’t even dared to read the Daily Mail.

How the media reports on the situation in Israel and Palestine matters because it helps to shape public opinion. History did not begin on October 7. Israel has been occupying, colonising, and building an apartheid regime over Palestinians for 75 years.

If we do not understand this basic fact, history will keep repeating itself and more people, particularly Palestinians, will be killed.

 is professor of conflict, peace, and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester