Starved of Morals: How the Media Looked Away from Israeli Hostage Horror Rachel O’Donoghue
https://honestreporting.com/starved-of-morals-how-the-media-looked-away-from-israeli-hostage-horror/
The footage is horrific.
In two separate videos released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israeli hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appear gaunt, broken, and visibly emaciated. In the first, Braslavski – barely able to speak –says: “I’ve run out of food and water. If before they gave me a little bit, now there’s nothing. Today I ate three falafel crumbs – three crumbs.” In the second, David, also starved, is seen digging what appears to be his own grave in a Hamas tunnel.
These are the kinds of scenes that should have dominated headlines. The images are not only harrowing, but evidence of months-long torture, war crimes, and psychological warfare. Yet, the international press mostly averted its gaze.
Where were the front-page splashes? The expert panels? The outrage?
These men have been held hostage for over 660 days. Their skeletal forms should have shocked the world. Instead, the media largely ignored the videos, or buried them in the coverage.
And here’s where the double standard becomes impossible to ignore.
News organizations that eagerly ran unverified images of starving Palestinian children – some later revealed to be suffering from congenital illness – offered only cautious, passing mention of the Israeli hostages. NBC News, for example, published the now-debunked photos by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini, describing the child as “severely malnourished,” without confirming their authenticity. Yet when it came to footage of Evyatar David, whose voice and body clearly indicate his suffering, NBC noted it could not “independently verify” the video.
The New York Times and Washington Post both prominently featured al-Arini’s image on their front pages. But neither Braslavski nor David’s faces made the splash. The Post didn’t even consider the videos newsworthy enough for a standalone story, mentioning them only in passing in coverage about U.S. envoy Steven Witkoff’s visit to Israel.
Then there’s the BBC, which published an interview with Anadolu Agency photographer al-Arini, allowing him to falsely claim his image represented widespread starvation in Gaza. In reporting on the hostage video, the BBC led with a pre-captivity photo of Evyatar David and buried a single still from the actual footage further down in the article.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark. When a photo fits the narrative, journalistic caution is suspended. But when it challenges that narrative – when it shows Israelis as victims of starvation and torture – the same outlets suddenly rediscover their editorial restraint.
The (Hefty) Hand of Hamas
As disturbing as the lack of media attention was, some of the limited coverage managed to be even worse, insinuating that Israel bore responsibility for the hostages’ condition.
The BBC, for example, not only referred to the hostages as mere “prisoners” but also gave prominent space to Hamas’s denial that Evyatar David had been intentionally starved. It was an absurd caveat, as though his skeletal frame might be the result of some tragic clerical error.
The Guardian went even further. Rather than focus on the war crime committed by Hamas, its report appeared to link David’s appearance to Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza, implying that his tormentors had no agency in his fate – and that Israel was somehow to blame for not delivering better rations to his captors.
But the truth is spelled out plainly in the video itself. At one point, David is handed a small can of food, said to be “for a few days.” The hand offering it is plump, clean, and unmistakably well-nourished. It belongs to one of his Hamas captors. It’s a grotesque image of power and cruelty: a well-fed kidnapper doling out crumbs to a man he is slowly starving to death.
When Victims Don’t Fit the Narrative
Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David should have been household names this week. They are symbols of Hamas’s brutal hostage strategy and walking evidence of the suffering inflicted on Israelis since Hamas started the war on October 7, 2023.
But for much of the Western media, they didn’t fit the preferred narrative.
There were no outraged op-eds, no breaking-news banners, and no solemn on-air monologues decrying their treatment. Instead, headlines were downplayed, the footage was buried, and the coverage was marked by hesitation and deflection.
The media knew how to amplify claims of starvation when they served to indict Israel. But when Hamas inflicted clear, documented deprivation on Israeli civilians, the coverage all but vanished. So too did the moral clarity that journalism is meant to uphold.
Comments are closed.
