Media Struggle To Fit Gaza Anti-Hamas Protests Into Customary ‘Israel Bad’ Framing

So far, editors have chosen either to ignore the anti-Hamas protests, or to relegate them to brief mentions.

Khan Younis, August 15 – Journalism organizations whose reporting template calls for them to cast Palestinian suffering, wherever possible, as a function of Jewish malfeasance and cruelty, have faced difficulty in recent days covering the recent popular demonstrations in this coastal territory against the repressive, corrupt rule of the Islamist group that runs it, since the journalists have available no obvious or immediate way to cast blame for the repression and corruption on Jews.

News organizations and personnel accustomed to framing the situation in Gaza – from which Israel withdrew unilaterally in 2005 and removed thousands of its citizens, even their graves, and where not a single IDF soldier serves – primarily as Israel’s fault, regardless of the violence, cronyism, embezzlement, censorship, and abuse that the ruling Hamas faction inflicts on the Gaza Strip’s two million inhabitants, have struggled for the last several weeks to find a way to portray the protests – which Hamas has tried to suppress with live fire and the arrest in hospitals of the wounded – as Israel’s fault.

The forced departure from the default framing of Israel Bad has challenged reporters to focus on the failings and unfitness of the Palestinian leadership, rather than on “the occupation,” as is the reporters’ wont. It has also challenged editors used to giving prominence to news detrimental to Israel’s reputation, regardless its veracity or context, and to reckon with information that does not fit into the morality tale they have long sold about selfish, rapacious Jews and helpless, peaceful Arabs.

So far, editors have chosen either to ignore the anti-Hamas protests, or to relegate them to brief mentions on the inner pages of newspapers or as two-line briefs on their websites or Twitter accounts, with no elaboration or exploration of Hamas’s continuing decision to prioritize violence against Israel over meeting the needs of the Gaza population or even competent governance. International aid agencies provide most of the goods and services normally handled by government – in this case, Hamas.

“Typically we can pretend that everything wrong with Gaza comes from Israel’s blockade,” explained BBC presenter Ann Tissemit, referring to Israel’s ongoing effort to prevent Hamas and other armed groups from importing weapons, chiefly from Iran; food, medication, and consumer goods are unrestricted. “But this poses a challenge to which we’re not accustomed. For a bit, we could go with the narrative that Hamas was pushing, which was that the demonstrations were rallies in support of the organization and against Israel. But the growing incidences of arrests, shootings, and other types of suppression made that untenable, so we’ve either got to ignore the protests, to preserve our narrative assumptions, or risk undermining the view of Palestinians we’ve worked so hard to promote, one of no moral agency, of total victimhood.”

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