Many narratives now permeate the media space on the Israel-Palestine issue. History shows that we should take the words of militaries with a healthy dose of scepticism, particularly when it comes to civilians. 

As the Hamas-Israeli war escalates into a new and more dangerous phase, I’ve been re-reading Phillip Knightley’s The First Casualty, a magnificent book on war reporting, the title of which is taken from Senator Hiram Johnson’s 1917 declaration that “The first casualty when war comes, is truth.”  Despite the nightly barrage of shocking and heart-rending, on-the-spot coverage on our television screens, that statement is as true today as it was in the Great War over a century ago.

Phillip Knightley wrote that The Independent newspaper praised the “miraculously few casualties” of the Gulf War (meaning the few British and American casualties, most of them the result of American “friendly fire”) while the horror of up to one quarter of a million Iraqis slaughtered by US-led forces was consigned to oblivion. It is just one of a myriad of examples, drawn from wars from the mid nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, of distortion and mistruths which are painstakingly chronicled by Knightley.

In many cases, journalists were willing accomplices to the lies they were fed by officials. Robert C. Miller, a United Press correspondent covering the Korean war in 1952, put it bluntly: “There are certain facts and stories from Korea that editors and publishers have printed which were pure fabrication … Many of us who sent the stories knew they were false, but we had to write them because they were official releases from responsible military headquarters and were released for publication even though the people responsible knew they were untrue.”

The fact of the matter is, the military are often ordered by their governments to distort the truth in the “national interest.”  Military manuals set out basic principles for dealing with journalists: “Appear open, transparent and eager to help. Never go in for summary repression or direct control. Nullify rather than conceal undesirable news. Control emphasis rather than facts. Balance bad news with good. Lie directly only when certain that the lie will not be found out during the course of the war.” We would be well advised to bear these dictates in mind as we read or hear the news.

During the Gulf War, respected weekly newspaper, The Economist, said that once the war started, it was right to “suspend the normal play of democratic argument” and urged correspondents to do the same, adding “The truth about the Gulf War … must await the end of the fighting.”  Little has changed in the last 25 years. Just weeks ago, following the ferocious and deadly attack by Hamas on 7 October, when some 1,100 innocent Israeli civilians and 300 military personnel were brutally slaughtered, the BBC referred to Hamas as “freedom fighters,” leading UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to protest to the director-general of the national broadcaster.

We have endured the nightly repetition of facile statements such as “Israel has the right to defend itself,” as the Israeli Defence Force drops bombs on and aims missiles at centres of Palestinian population far away from where Hamas terrorists lurk. Simultaneously, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) is named on British and European television news channels as responsible for the bombing of the main Gaza hospital, which claimed hundreds of casualties. The report turned out to be false; we are now told it was a stray missile fired towards Israel by an extremist Arab group.

The focus for global leaders today is on halting any further incursion of Israel’s ground offensive on Gaza to avoid inevitably high civilian casualties, and to provide more time for the Qatar-led negotiations for the release of the 222 hostages to bear fruit. By 1 November, Gaza’s health ministry was claiming over 8,000 Palestinians killed, many of them children, mostly the result of Israeli missile and air strikes. The EU’s former foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, a frequent visitor to the Gaza enclave between 2009-14, told the Financial Times, “You want to avoid casualties of innocent people. And there are millions. 2.2 million people in Gaza, most of whom, the vast majority of whom, are totally innocent of this.”

An essential part of Israel’s plan to defeat Hamas and remove it from Gaza altogether has been to stop the supply of fuel, power, water, food, and medicines to the Palestinian state. Critics of Israel argue that this is a war crime; Israel defends it as legitimate military action to destroy an enemy. Meanwhile, the people, who were already living in one of the world’s most densely populated urban areas, are now being crowded into even more restricted ones, in increasingly desperate conditions, and unable to escape.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke of “clear violations of international law” in Gaza as the US and others urged the Israeli government to pause its air bombardment of the besieged coastal enclave and allow in more aid. Guterres told the UN security council, “Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields, [and] … does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.” The United Nations chief, in what some see as misguided comments, said that the deadly assault by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” This was followed by the addendum, though, that their grievances could not justify the “appalling attacks.” Predictably, his remarks triggered a furious response from Israel, which called for his resignation. That will not happen, and neither side is likely to shift its position.

Wars end through defeat, sheer exhaustion, or through negotiation. It is hard to see how one side can possibly win this conflict. Catherine Ashton, who was at the heart of Middle East talks during a period of great turmoil some ten years ago, is right to say that we need to find ways to be both supportive of the Palestinian people and supportive of the state of Israel. Right now, she said, we need “to do this better, so that Israel can feel the strength of Europe’s support … But that is not to say there’s not more to be done for the Palestinian people.”

There was a glimmer of hope this week when Qatar finally persuaded Egypt to allow some seriously wounded people out of Gaza through the Raffa crossing, to get to a hospital. As the world bears witness to the horrific pictures from Wednesday’s bombing by the IDF of a Palestinian refugee camp, the pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire is growing. The central question now being asked of Jerusalem: “Is Israel’ s response commensurate with the crime committed by Hamas?”

Colin Chapman FAIIA is a writer, broadcaster, public speaker, who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He is a former president of AIIA NSW and was appointed a fellow of the AIIA in 2017. Colin is editor at large with Australian Outlook.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.