How the American media failed — and is still failing — in its coverage of Israel and Gaza
If you want to know the truth about what’s happening in the Middle East, you won’t find it on PBS or NPR
Islamic Jihad and Hamas fighters hand Israeli hostage Arbel Yehud to a Red Cross team. Photo by Getty Images
Aviya Kushner February 7, 2025
On many nights since Oct. 7, I have stayed up to watch the Israeli news. There is an eight-hour time difference between Chicago and New York, and Israel’s news begins at 7 a.m., or 11 Chicago time. I am often astonished at the difference between what was reported on mainstream American news outlets in the evening, and what Israeli news focuses on a few hours later. But nothing prepared me for the chasm I experienced a week ago, on an early Thursday morning; one week later, I can’t stop thinking about it.
By “it,” I mean the seething mob scene I watched, in real time, for more than an hour and ten minutes, between 2 and 3:10 a.m. Chicago time, as Hamas delayed the release of Arbel Yehud, a 29-year-old woman who had been held alone by Islamic Jihad since Oct. 7. Eventually, heavily armed men in Hamas uniforms forced her to walk through what looked to me like a lynch mob.
Exhausted yet riveted, terrified for Arbel, I found myself watching the live feed of Al Jazeera, which Israeli news was broadcasting. Then it occurred to me: I was watching hundreds of armed Hamas fighters in uniform in real time — something no American broadcast has shown at length since Oct. 7.
Apparently, this war has been fought out of uniform.
And despite all the destruction in Gaza, these uniforms have survived. So have the people who iron them all for the cameras. Everyone in this mob was filming. I watched as scores of men aggressively pushed their way in to take a last photo of Arbel — a trophy for their memories.
And I thought — the media coverage of this war has failed.
It has simply not covered Hamas.
A hunger for honest coverage
The Hamas operatives — I believe anyone who burns someone’s home, kidnaps them, and puts them in a cage to beat, starve and taunt them is a terrorist, but let’s go with a neutral word — looked to be in good physical shape. They did not appear malnourished in any way.
I thought of the unrelenting headlines about starvation in Gaza and how they have left out a key word: Hamas. What was the role of Hamas in distributing food, stealing food, or making food available to themselves and not others? On Israeli television, the question of guarding food safely so it could get to civilians, and the problem of looting was discussed regularly. Yet in American media, it was always the same angle — Israel denying food, Gazans starving.
I can’t remember any headline, or any American journalist expressing concern, about hostages starving. I can’t remember any headline about Hamas deliberately starving Israeli hostages.
When Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Eden Yerushalmi’s bodies were found, both were emaciated. But there had been no coverage of their food situation in captivity.
“There was deliberate starvation,” the mother of recently released former hostage Romi Gonen told Israeli news.
We need more coverage of that, outside of Israel.
This didn’t make the English-language news
Arbel Yehud looked like someone who had not been fed in a long time. The fear in her eyes and the wan hesitation in her body was evident. Her body told its own story, even if international media was silent, even if no international women’s organization ever expressed concern about a young woman taken out of her house by force and held alone for more than a year. Photos of Arbel before and after captivity, which she spent entirely alone, are widely available; what I noticed in the early morning was that the part on her hair was zigzagged, uneven.
It meant no comb, no mirror. Or that she had lost the strength to part hair normally.
The media, which quotes the Red Cross in any natural disaster, and positions it as neutral, never seems to note that no one has visited Hamas hostages or Islamic Jihad hostages to see if they are eating or need medical attention. It was to Hamas’ advantage to have no one checking in, including the Red Cross.
There have also been zero diplomatic check-ins, and somehow all the aid organizations run by famous chefs, the United Nations, and seemingly everyone else, have never managed to see even one hostage. Nor has anyone at the UN, the Red Cross, or the various aid organizations demanded access.
And yet there is the Red Cross, chit-chatting with Hamas.
I wondered what the transcript of that chitchat would look like, and what it meant. And then I watched in utter horror as that enormous mob took shape. I know Hamas was trying to show strength — but I also saw hundreds of people, including women and children, who one could only describe as civilians.
A jubilant woman who looked to be about 30 proudly spoke to an interviewer in Arabic, explaining that she was from Jabaliya.
“What is your reaction to the exchange?” the interviewer asked.
“We are all pride,” she said. “I am among the residents of this area, and despite all the deprivations we experienced, the sorrow, we stood strong, we kept the prisoners in our house throughout the entire war.”
I thought I would vomit.
I turned to X, formerly known as Twitter. Was anyone watching with the same reaction I was? Was the entire world as delighted as this woman?
My Israeli friend said the woman expressing pride may not be telling the truth, and besides, she may have meant all Gazans, or all the Gazans in the neighborhood, not just herself in her house. I wasn’t reassured.
“Watching appalling scenes of two hostages, Gadi Moses and Arbel Yehoud, an old man and a young woman, forced to make their way through a threatening and armed crowd,” Steffan Siebert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel tweeted. “What a despicable way of letting them go after 482 days! Stay strong, Gadi and Arbel.”
That didn’t make English-language news, either.
Where was the UN?
“Everyone in Gaza is Hamas,” released hostage after released hostage has said to Israeli media in simple, declarative Hebrew.
I remember the first time I heard this was in an interview with Mia Schem, who refused to speak with non-Israeli media. In Hebrew, she explained how she was held in a regular family home, and how the woman or mother of the house treated her. I remember this because a Russian poet asked me about it; eventually someone translated her comments on YouTube from Hebrew to Russian, and then Hebrew to English, and I rushed to update the poet.
“It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” Schem told Channel 13 news. “I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists — there are no innocent civilians, not one,” she said. “[Innocent civilians] don’t exist.”
“For 50 days, I was kept alone, suffering from an unbearable pain in my hand without any treatment,” the Jerusalem Post quoted Schem saying. “A Hamas terrorist sat in front of me in a dark room with a gun pointed at my head. Not a single humanitarian agency saw me or treated me even as my arm got worse. Where was the Red Cross? Where was the UN demanding that we have access to us?”
Where was the UN is a good question, which no journalist seems to ask.
I thought of British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari, whose mother Mandy told Prime Minister Keir Starmer that Hamas “held her in facilities belonging to the UN refugee agency UNRWA,” as The Guardian reported.
If I didn’t regularly consume non-American media, I wouldn’t know what these two young woman had to say.
Who counts as a civilian?
Last Thursday morning, exhausted from my late-night vigil, I found myself listening to American media — namely, NPR — as I drove to work.
I was certain that the news would discuss this mob, the hostages, Hamas.
Let’s discuss Hamas, I thought. If the only thing left standing in Gaza right now is Hamas, let’s talk about it.
Let’s get real about the mob. Now.
Let’s talk about how this war’s goal — the elimination of Hamas — hasn’t happened, and how that’s a failure for Benjamin Netanyahu. And let’s talk about who, exactly, is a civilian. Does the jubilant woman count? And can we have some coverage of what Gazans think of Hamas, to the extent that is possible?
Instead, NPR had a long interview with UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma, who, the station noted “explains what the ban means for Palestinians who depend on the organization.” It was as if Emily Damari and her mother had been speaking to the air, not to Prime Minister Starmer. It was as if Arbel Yehoud’s long and terrifying walk, alone, to the Red Cross vehicle, surrounded by a wild mob had not happened.
Predictably, the interviewer focused on humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and made it sound like Israel had falsely accused UNRWA of holding hostages — when Israeli media is literally quoting Emily Damari, who just returned, with a few fingers blown off, as being held in a UNRWA facility.
I listened as Touma said the organization had immediately let accused employees go with “no evidence” when Israel “claimed” employees had been involved in 10/7.
I thought — forget the United Nations. I teach at a college. How many colleges would employ professors accused of holding hostages in their home? How many companies would be OK with it? It’s a completely reasonable reason for immediate dismissal.
Once I was out of the car, I Googled “Juliette Touma NPR”.
Her name sounded so familiar, and that is because she is interviewed frequently. But I cannot remember NPR interviewing a former hostage who was held by a UNRWA employee. That, it seems, is something only for non-Americans to be concerned about.
The words we use to describe a mob
That night I watched the PBS NewsHour, which very briefly covered the release of Arbel Yehoud. But the brevity did not capture the horror of that hour and ten minutes. It of course did not quote the German ambassador to Israel.
“The day’s other headlines start in the Middle East, where Hamas freed eight hostages and Israel handed over more than 100 Palestinian prisoners in a third round of exchanges,” PBS News anchor Geoff Bennett said, in what sounded relatively neutral to me.
“Israel briefly held up its side of the swap after a chaotic handover in Gaza,” Bennett continued, in a phrasing that made it sound like Israel, again, was the party being unreasonably tough.
“Chaotic” struck me as a mild term for what I saw, and I doubt it’s the word Arbel would use.
“Video shows a crowd surrounding the van carrying several of the hostages,” Bennett continued. “One of them was visibly shaken as she was escorted through the mass of people. Later, buses of Palestinians set to be released were seen leaving an Israeli prison.”
Sorry, Mr. Bennett. “Crowd” and “mass” do not describe it.
Bennett quickly moved on to discuss Israel’s ban on UNWRA, and the far-right Israelis who were celebrating the new policy.
By this point, Arbel wasn’t the only one who was visibly shaken. I was, too.
Why the news is different in Israel
By now, I’m used to the daily routine.
Shortly after 7 a.m. Israel time, an Arab affairs reporter shares what Arabic-language media is reporting. I always notice that in the English-language media, there is literally zero concern with what Arabic media is saying, as if the perspectives of neighboring Egypt and Jordan, not to mention crucial regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia, are irrelevant.
But in Israel, everyone keeps a close eye on it. Everyone understands that what happens in Lebanon can affect what happens in the rest of the neighborhood, which is, in fact, what happened when Israel decimated Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad fell in Syria.
Israeli television showed me what cartoonists around the Arab world were saying; if only The New York Times did the same.
Another difference: Israeli news is very concerned with what the army is doing, because nearly everyone has a relative in the army or is in the army themselves. There is extensive coverage on strategy; injured soldiers; the draft of religious soldiers. In American media, it often seems like the only goal of the IDF is to maximize casualties among Gazan civilians, with zero discussion of what Israel’s military campaign is trying to do. There has been little to no commentary on the hostages found in Rafah, and in the so-called humanitarian evacuation zone.
On Israel television, there is also coverage of the economic struggles this war has brought on, as well as the displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes because of Hamas and Hezbollah. And yes, there is coverage of Gazans and the effect of this war on them — though far, far, less than in American media, where that is the primary focus.
Part of the reason for the difference is the way the news is structured. A significant percentage of the Israeli news is delivered by a panel; there can be six or even eight people commenting, bringing expertise from areas like the Air Force, internal security, the religious community in Israel, the Arab world, the Arab population in Jerusalem, and the viewpoint of hostage families. There is an understanding that there is a world within Israel, not just the Israel-Hamas war. A key story in recent days has been the spike in murders in Arab communities in Israel, a topic which has not been covered in the U.S at all.
The typical Israeli news anchor asks very tough and sometimes invasive questions. But that degree of, well, nosiness, is not something I can see from an anchor like Geoff Bennett, who is more calm and measured — and also, frankly, far more personally removed from a story like the release of Arbel Yehoud than an Israeli anchor who knows dozens of relatives of hostages.
This is not to say that Israeli news is perfect; it is not. Sometimes panelists scream at each other. Sometimes someone airs an extreme view that shocks me — just as I am often shocked by views expressed by American figures, such as the health-care views espoused this week by RFK Jr. and accepted by senators who are also doctors, like Bill Cassidy. In Israel, as in the US, a significant percentage of the public has moved rightward, and the news reflects that.
But mostly there is a sense of seriousness, because being informed is a matter of life and death.
What the media needs to do
The stakes here couldn’t be higher, particularly with President Trump now saying that the US could take over Gaza. Americans must pay more attention. Whether or not Trump’s dramatic pronouncements have the slightest grain of truth, English-language viewers need to ask more of the media: What are other Arab countries saying? Why is my news source never covering the views of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar, a key intermediary in this war? Why does Egypt feel the way it does toward Gazans, who previously were part of Egypt?
But as my mind kept flashing back to Arbel, alone and terrified, the star of a sick Hamas show, I kept coming back to one thought — American news media needs to cover Hamas head-on.
With Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now agreeing that Hamas cannot control Gaza, it’s more urgent to understand who Hamas is, and to cover it accurately. No matter what drama may be unfolding onscreen, it doesn’t change the facts that Hamas hides behind fudged numbers, and in apartments that double as hostage dungeons. It doesn’t change the concern that Hamas may be using the Red Cross as a prop, and the news media as its unpaid publicity service.
Readers and viewers in the English-language world must demand more. A brief news clip and sentences that constantly make Israel the only aggressor can no longer cut it.
The mob is large enough already; we don’t need to unwittingly join it by letting ourselves be misinformed.
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