From a student activist in undergrad to studying the region’s history as a graduate student, and my professional work as a historian and analyst, I have been following the developments of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict my entire adult life. Throughout this time, one observation has been consistent: the Western perception—especially in the United States—is predominantly removed from the history or realities on the ground.
This is true of U.S. foreign policy more broadly, particularly when it comes to the Middle East, which has captivated public attention and seen major U.S. interventions in recent decades. Though Western leaders and rhetoric have often championed the principles of a global rules-based order, U.S. policies continually contradict that very order. Whether it is the coup of 1953 that thwarted Iran’s democratization movement, the Cold War with the Soviet Union that wreaked havoc throughout the world and supported extremism in Afghanistan, or the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the unrest left in its wake, U.S. policy has put American dominion above international law and order for decades.
However, despite this already tarnished record, nothing has exposed Western hypocrisy quite like Gaza. A genocide against Palestinians—livestreamed for all the world to see with the unconditional backing of the United States—is the antithesis of every supposed value the American-led liberal order vociferously espouses.
As Palestinians endure the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of Israel, with the full support of the most powerful actors in the Western world, the rest of the world is forced to confront the breakdown of the so-called international rules-based order. The global system that pledged to liberate humanity from the scourge of war and promised self-determination and rights for all has, in practice, largely served Western interests. Gaza has shattered the shiny façade of that failed system. Yet, the headlines that circulated across the world from the most influential media institutions told a very different story.
1. Rules for thee, not for me
While Western leaders in the United States and Europe used the customary rhetoric of fighting terrorism and Israel’s right to self-defense to rationalize Israel’s actions in Gaza—and their continued material support for it—they ignored the rules of war and the laws that give meaning to having any such rights.Footnote 1 In a just society, a right is a legal entitlement that belongs to everyone. Yet, you never hear officials in the United States say Palestinians have a right to defend themselves, or that states like Lebanon, Syria, or Iran have the right to defend themselves against Israeli attacks and occupation.Footnote 2
Rather than leading the international community in its efforts to end the genocide in Gaza, the United States repeatedly vetoed and blocked international efforts for a ceasefire.Footnote 3 At the same time that the Biden administration invoked international law to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and call for accountability for Russian war crimes, the administration refused to apply the same laws to its ally in Tel Aviv.Footnote 4 Despite a mountain of evidence, Biden officials never concluded definitively that Israel had committed any war crime in Gaza.Footnote 5
Showing a total disdain for international institutions, the Biden administration spurned bodies like the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials, rejected reports from the UN and global human rights organizations that concluded Israel is committing genocide, and even dismissed the findings of their own agencies to deny that Israel was deliberately blocking aid into Gaza.Footnote 6
This selective application of laws and rights undermines the whole international system that was built in the aftermath of World War II. Countries and peoples in the Global South have long criticized these double standards. Though some critiques have been expressed within Western nations, the prevailing political and media discourse and views of the populations—particularly in the United States—have greatly favored Israel.
However, the overwhelming atrocities in Gaza and the brazen disregard for human life by Israel have facilitated a shift in global perceptions. A Gallup poll from early March of 2025 showed that less than half of Americans expressed support for Israel, “the lowest in 25 years of Gallup’s annual tracking of this measure.”Footnote 7 From Los Angeles to London, Western capitals and cities saw massive protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, including American universities whose Gaza encampments were violently repressed by police in the spring of 2024.Footnote 8
The crackdown on pro-Palestine campus protests under the Biden administration, which characterized them as chaotic, violent, and antisemitic, paved the way for the Trump administration’s escalations to target student activists. The detention and effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. legal permanent resident and Palestinian graduate of Columbia University, served as a chilling reminder of the fragility of our own rights and the consequences of eroding the principles and institutions designed to protect such rights.Footnote 9
What explains, at least in part, this unprecedented moment and the changes we have seen in American attitudes toward Israel? Unlike wars and brutalities of the past, the Western world’s control of the narrative was challenged in real time through social media, Palestinian journalists on the ground, humanitarian workers, and activists online. The constant stream of horrific images from Gaza was so impactful that it drove a campaign by U.S. lawmakers to ban the social media platform TikTok—another assault on freedom of expression in the United States in service of Israel’s genocide.Footnote 10
U.S. officials obstinately refused to acknowledge this reality, engaged in genocide denial, and knowingly took part in crimes against humanity. That Israel was given free rein to carry out countless atrocities by the Democratic administration of Joe Biden, who in many ways represents the status quo of American establishment politics, makes this historic cruelty all the more revealing of the country’s core political attitudes. The continuity in Israel policy between the Republican administration of Donald Trump and his Democratic predecessor demonstrates that fact.
When it comes to Israel, both Republicans and Democrats are willing to violate every law and norm—including international law and U.S. domestic law—without remorse.Footnote 11 But this normalization of war crimes goes beyond U.S. government policies. The media has been crucial in telling the story and whitewashing Israel’s crimes against humanity, which helps to explain the disconnect between public perceptions and the realities on the ground.
2. The illusion of the Western free press
The role of Western media in manufacturing consent for genocide in Gaza cannot be overstated. While U.S. officials provided Israel with diplomatic cover on the international stage, and American weapons and taxpayer dollars in the billions that made the mass slaughter of Palestinians possible, the mainstream media of the Western world acted as stenographers for governments engaged in gross human rights abuses.
From problematic headlines that erase Israel’s culpability in crimes and language that dehumanizes Palestinians, to censorship and outright disregarding major stories, Western media’s pro-Israel bias is tantamount to collaboration. In April, 2024, an investigative piece at The Intercept exposed the clear institutional partiality at The New York Times after a leaked memo showed how the prominent newspaper instructed staff to avoid words like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “occupied territory.”Footnote 12 As such, they were told to sidestep the precise language that would convey the reality of what Israel was doing to Palestinians and that provided needed context.
Staff at other major Western media platforms, such as CNN and BCC confirmed similar organizational bias in their coverage of the Gaza genocide. In early 2024, CNN staff asserted that they faced pressure from the top to report Israeli statements as fact while casting doubt on reports from Palestinian authorities, in what they said amounted to “journalistic malpractice.”Footnote 13 Some reporters issued resignations as a result of the imbalanced approach of their newsrooms, while recognizing that such “internal bias began before 7 October 2023.”Footnote 14
A former reporter at the BBC who quit over their coverage of Gaza, Karishma Patel, became outspoken about the pro-Israel bias. Patel recounted the shocking level of editorial inconsistency when comparing the coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with Israel’s genocide, stating, “Journalists were actively choosing not to follow the evidence—out of fear.”Footnote 15 This kind of systematic control over the way Israel’s assault on Gaza was reported contradicts the foundation of a free press that the Western world claims to advocate and lead.
As of this writing, the genocide in Gaza is not over despite a nominal ceasefire that went into effect in October 2025, and Israel’s assault on Palestinian life is rapidly accelerating in the occupied West Bank. Israel carried out airstrikes and raids, destroyed infrastructure, and displaced over 40,000 Palestinians in the West Bank in early 2025.Footnote 16 Though some commentators have tried to contextualize this aggression within the context of Hamas’s October 7 attacks against Israel, the territory has actually been under Israeli military occupation for decades—in which illegal Israeli settlements continued to expand—Hamas does not rule over the West Bank, and 2023 was already the deadliest year for children in the West Bank in decades—prior to the October 7 attacks.Footnote 17
This is only part of the essential context that is missing from the media’s framing and account of the Palestinian struggle. Rather than providing this crucial background, most articles on the genocide against Palestinians fail to call it a genocide, separate the territories of Gaza and the West Bank as if it is not all connected to the core issue of Israeli occupation and destruction of Palestinian life, and use October 7, 2023, as the starting point for this decades-old struggle.
In doing so, Western media is repeating Israeli talking points that claim there was a “ceasefire” on October 6, 2023. However, if so-called news outlets were doing their job in reporting the facts, they would acknowledge that—for Palestinians living under military occupation and apartheid, having their homes demolished, being detained without charge, and killed without consequence—there was never a ceasefire.
What makes the mainstream media’s complicity in Israel’s crimes against humanity more appalling is the boastful rhetoric of a Western free press. The basic difference between a free press and a state-run press under authoritarianism is that a free press is unrestricted in its ability to criticize the policies of the state. In fact, the work of journalists is to uncover the truth, especially when politicians and state actors try to hide the truth from the public. Reporters are meant to report facts on the ground, not relay the statements of governments—especially genocidal governments—like an official state press release.
Not only did Western outlets fail in these most basic practices—often relying on what the Israeli military or other officials in Israel and the United States were saying and presenting it as fact—but they also failed to call out the unprecedented violence against their colleagues in Gaza. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists they have ever recorded.Footnote 18 What accounts for the extraordinary toll on reporters and media workers?
The answer is Israel, and its total disregard for international law, norms, and human life. Almost 70 percent of the journalists killed in 2024 were killed by Israel, with Palestinian journalists accounting for nearly two-thirds. In addition to the wanton airstrikes that have destroyed Gaza and indiscriminately killed Palestinian civilians, including journalists, the CPJ recorded several cases of Israel deliberately targeting and murdering journalists in Gaza.
This is part of Israel’s wider campaign to control the narrative of what is happening on the ground, as the CPJ states: “Many Gaza journalists became freelancers after their outlets were destroyed, their coverage proving crucial for global media outlets because Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Strip except on tightly controlled visits led by the military.”Footnote 19
Despite the important findings in the CPJ report, there was little coverage in the media, and major outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post appear to have overlooked reporting on it at all. While Palestinian journalists are being killed for doing their job, their colleagues in the West are protecting the killers. More than anyone, it is Palestinian journalists we owe a great debt to—for risking everything in service of their people and profession—and showing the world the truth.
3. Why I correct headlines
Over the course of Israel’s assault on Gaza, I have criticized the Western media’s genocide denial and corrected headlines that failed to mention Israel, cast doubt on the death toll, and whitewashed Israel’s crimes against humanity, for which the United States has been a partner in crime.Footnote 20 The Gaza Genocide is not the first time I have made these corrections because the media’s pro-Israel bias—in lockstep with powerful interests—is nothing new.
However, it is the gravity of Israel’s most recent siege on Palestinians in Gaza, and the brazen manner in which they carried out atrocities for the world to see, that captured people’s attention and sparked global outcry. We witnessed noteworthy attempts to hold Israel and its enablers responsible for their war crimes, such as ICC arrest warrants and a United States-based nonprofit urging the ICC to investigate former President Biden and members of his administration for “aiding and abetting Israeli crimes in Gaza.”Footnote 21 Any demand for accountability should also raise the question of the media’s complicity in such crimes.
In their seminal book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky argued that the U.S. media serves the interests of the state and the wealthy classes that finance them, in effect, playing a propaganda role in society. The authors state, “Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived.”Footnote 22
What may appear to be an obvious point to the authors still eludes many Americans and other Westerners, who are accustomed to believing their news as truth and the institutions behind them as pillars of a free society. This is, of course, not the case for everyone. There are indeed many critics of the media, myself included, and as the internet has opened space for alternative sources, there is a growing debate about what is true or “fake” news and the role of media in propagandizing for specific interests.
Nonetheless, the mainstream media still plays a substantial role in broadly shaping public perceptions. This is particularly true of U.S. policy concerning Israel because of its bipartisan support. Though Democrats and Republicans may appear to be more divided than ever, their squabbles regarding Israel tend to be over who is the more fervent advocate for unconditional support of Israel. Repeated administrations of both parties have used the exact language of America’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel, maintained the flow of military aid and weapons, and ignored Israel’s destabilizing behavior in the region and its habitual violations of international law.Footnote 23
As such, the media’s coverage of Israel illustrates a certain unity across the traditional distinctions of conservative and liberal media. Whether it is the liberal New York Times or the conservative Wall Street Journal, the pro-Israel slant is evident and ubiquitous throughout the mainstream media landscape. This helps explain, in part, the wide gap between American views and the facts on the ground.
One stark example of this gap was illustrated by a Pew Research Center poll from March of 2024, which showed that only about half of Americans could correctly answer whether more Palestinians had been killed or Israelis in the war.Footnote 24 At the time, experts had already concluded that Israel’s assault on Gaza was a “textbook case of genocide,” and over 30,000 Palestinians had been killed, which was an astronomically higher number than Israelis.Footnote 25 Such a significant discrepancy for an issue that had been part of the news cycle for months, ignited protests in the United States, and cost American taxpayers billions of dollars, has serious implications for how and what information the media presents to the public.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes circulating online that have been substantiated by reports from the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and others, public perception is still highly influenced by the media. The fact that many Western media outlets continue calling the bloodshed in Gaza a war rather than a genocide, and that many of the reports mentioned above received little media coverage, exemplifies the bias that tries to protect Israel from public scrutiny.Footnote 26
The average individual is not an expert in the history or contemporary politics of the Middle East or the Palestinian liberation movement. The impact of social media, though important, is still relatively new, while legacy media has spent decades shaping public opinion. There is also a generation gap in how social media is used. Many older Americans still get their news from more traditional sources like television and print, and on digital platforms, many Americans rely on news websites and apps.Footnote 27 Mainstream outlets are also active on social media, giving them influence across platforms.
I focused on mainstream headlines in the West because headlines are designed to frame the story. The word choice is often careful and deliberate, a decision made by editors instead of reporters. It is the first thing, and in many cases the only thing, that the passive observer sees when scrolling online. There are often stories about Gaza or Israel’s atrocities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem that are published in mainstream outlets but do not get posted by their social media accounts. Many articles are paywalled for people who do not have subscriptions, leaving them with a headline and little else to know what happened.
It is precisely the average, more passive observer that such headlines target and affect. If the mainstream media was flooded across platforms with headlines that used the language of genocide, named Israel, and called out their war crimes in active voice on a daily basis, one could reasonably guess that many more Americans would know Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
In looking at the shift in American attitudes towards Israel, global protests against the Gaza Genocide, and growing calls for accountability, I can see why so many people have responded positively to the headline corrections. The endless stream of carnage from Gaza, bodies of Palestinian children torn apart, targeting journalists, killing aid workers, deliberate starvation of civilians, attacking hospitals, has all been seen and experienced throughout the world as a collective trauma. These images—coupled with the openly genocidal language of Israeli officials—make the media coverage, public statements, and unapologetic complicity of Western leaders not only deplorable but increasingly detached from what people have already seen with their own eyes.Footnote 28
Author contribution
Writing - original draft: A.R.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Open access
