It has been inspiring to see the five networks that make up the rotating pool of White House TV coverage (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) boycott the White House after Trump banned CNN, MSNow and Politico from press access to the presidency. These networks all said the principle of free speech is more important than their need to cover every Trump utterance. So in solidarity, they resolved to deprive the president of his “oxygen,” his access to cameras. And anyway — they wouldn’t miss much, because others would still film the president, and the networks would air it if it was newsworthy.
The press needs to show the same backbone when it comes to Gaza. For three years Israel has prevented international press from entering Gaza, as the regional power visits genocide and starvation and ethnic cleansing on a territory the size of Philadelphia.
Major news organizations need to boycott Israel until it opens up the brutalized Strip to international coverage. They should shut down their reporters in Israel until there is equity in access.
Many leading news outfits have reporters posted to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, where they live comfortable, unfettered lives. Routinely the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR air stories from these correspondents. Just yesterday NBC’s Raf Sanchez reported on the Riyadh airport attacks from Tel Aviv.
The result is unconscious bias – stories that treat Israel as a robust democracy with some flaws. For instance, the New York Times regularly reports on Israel’s upcoming election with little or no mention of Jewish parties’ racist ban on building governing coalitions with Arab parties. NPR does the same. All these news organizations report human-interest stories from Israel, including scientific breakthroughs.
By contrast, the 2 million people of Gaza are absolutely off limits. Yes, Gazan journalists have informed the world about the genocide for the last three years. Yes, they have demonstrated incredible professionalism and bravery, even as Israel has killed hundreds of Gaza journalists.
But in any important story, it is necessary to get a range of viewpoints. In any important story, it is necessary to get a range of viewpoints. We can only imagine what allowing international journalists into Gaza would do to coverage. Every Gazan journalist is traumatized and has experienced death and displacement in their own family. Most Gazan journalists have never been out of the tiny strip in their lives. What would it do to our perspective if privileged unthreatened journalists were allowed to cover Gaza? It would be transformative. These reporters would view the horror with their own eyes and their own (comfortable) frame of reference. They would convey their shock and also the international context for Israel’s actions. Their presence would do something to protect Gaza’s journalists.
For myself, I will never forget going into Gaza in 2009 after Cast Lead and witnessing the complete demolition of the labs and classrooms at the Islamic University – a crime against civilization.
As it is, Israel is trying to hide its crimes. And news organizations have accepted Israel’s apartheid system of access. If they boycotted Israel – as Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC are boycotting the White House over Trump’s hateful ban – the effect would be instantaneous. Israel’s racist policy would be spotlighted and pilloried internationally. Israeli leaders would howl in protest of their isolation, and face real pressure to change.
Access to Gaza would put more pressure on American politicians and journalists to acknowledge that Israel is an apartheid state that has committed a genocide, as the Nobel Peace Prize winner Nava Pillay and countless other human rights experts have said. Lately I have heard two intellectual leaders – David Remnick of the New Yorker and Brian Lehrer of WNYC – say that the “genocide” charge is the rhetoric of the far left of the Democratic Party. If American reporters were routinely going in and out of Gaza and interviewing people in tents whose families had been decimated by Israel, the genocide label would become undeniable, and as commonplace in the U.S. as it has been in other historical episodes of mass-murder – Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, Bosnian Serbs treatment of Muslims, the Armenian genocide by the Ottomans more than a century ago.
As it is, Palestinians are dehumanized. And the Israelis, among whom the reporters are embedded, are humanized. So our press is normalizing Jim Crow.
The ban also serves a political purpose in Israel, preventing Israelis from having to acknowledge the magnitude of what they have done in Gaza (according to a J Street panelist).
You may argue that Americans need the international press inside Israel to expose the persecution of Palestinians and the settler violence on the West Bank. Agreed – we need that focus. Yet we would not starve for information. There is plenty of video coming out of the West Bank made by Palestinians and some Israelis, too. Many Israeli reporters provide coverage of the upcoming election.
But Israel should face the same rules order it applies to Gaza. The ban on reporters is grotesque, hateful, and discriminatory, and a hallmark of authoritarian governance. The international press should reject the discrimination with the same force they are rejecting Trump’s ban.
