Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

“On June 29, 2024, Truthout followed Yassar Arain, a neonatal doctor who had recently returned from Gaza, as he recounted his experience to students at Washington University in St. Louis. By the end of his talk, many students were openly weeping.

At that time, the World Health Organization reported that Israel had attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured another 933, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances since October 7. According to Reuters, among the doctors killed, 55 were specialists. In May, a month before Arain spoke at WashU, Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of bodies, many thought to be patients, had been found in multiple mass graves at three hospitals after extended periods under Israeli bombardment. By late June Tareq Hajjaj observed that many of Gaza’s hospitals were already left in ruins. The number of healthcare workers killed by September 2024, reached over 1000, and by November 2024, 1000 doctors and nurses had been killed, leading Gaza’s media office to charge Israel with deliberately targeting hospitals and their personnel.

How did Israel get away with this kind of unprecedented, and arguably deliberate, destruction of hospitals and the murder of those attempting to care for civilians suffering relentless Israeli bombardment? After all, protections for caregivers who come to the aid of civilians wounded in war are at the core of international humanitarian law and were one of the first legal protections that sought to limit the deadly effects of armed conflict. Many rules of war were specifically designed to protect people not taking part in hostilities, including civilians, health workers, aid workers and journalists, but civilians and humanitarians have been killed in unprecedented numbers in Gaza. Answering the question of Israel’s continuing violence and lack of accountability begins with media coverage which has played an outsized role in the IDF’s ability to justify its actions. To yank infants off life support, bomb hospitals and march stripped-down doctors into the cold before taking them to notorious prison sites for torture, require an unhinged military, but also powerful propaganda messages and a media environment willing to repeat them.

Israeli messaging strategies made use of sophisticated animation. Computer graphics played to media’s fascination with spectacular visualizations, outside of journalism’s mandate for explanation and documentation. As already mentioned, Israeli fabrications invented a huge Hamas command center under a hospital complex which accommodated the needs of corporate media sensationalism and effectively flooded news cycles. Equally important was the full backing of the highest echelons of the US intelligence-military complex in the Biden administration and many unnamed government sources who spoke “off the record.”

One of the first indications that Israeli would target the health care system and make good on its promise to turn Gaza into “hell,” was a strike in front of Al Shifa Hospital on an ambulance convoy loaded with wounded civilians. Not even a month into its assault on Gaza, on November 2 Israel hit the convoy getting ready to leave Al Shifa on its way to the Rafah border. Common Dreams wrote, “A Palestinian Health Ministry spokesperson called the attack "a massacre against more victims, civilians, and wounded people.” It described “graphic and horrific footage of dead and wounded Palestinians” circulating online as Israeli forces “took credit for what critics are condemning as yet another war crime.” But reporting by network news used the familiar language of both-sidesing, presenting a false balance, such as this composition by NBC News, “Israel Says it Hit an Ambulance Used by Hamas. Gaza Officials Say it was Carrying the Wounded.” And the familiar passive voice announced “scene of chaos,” and continued with, it “left several people killed and dozens wounded.”

By contrast, straight-forward reporting by Al Jazeera identified Israel as the perpetrator saying, “An Israeli air strike on an ambulance convoy” has killed 15 people and wounded 60 others. It continued “Officials say vehicles were transporting critically wounded patients from al-Shifa Hospital...”

Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

“On June 29, 2024, Truthout followed Yassar Arain, a neonatal doctor who had recently returned from Gaza, as he recounted his experience to students at Washington University in St. Louis. By the end of his talk, many students were openly weeping.

At that time, the World Health Organization reported that Israel had attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured another 933, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances since October 7. According to Reuters, among the doctors killed, 55 were specialists. In May, a month before Arain spoke at WashU, Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of bodies, many thought to be patients, had been found in multiple mass graves at three hospitals after extended periods under Israeli bombardment. By late June Tareq Hajjaj observed that many of Gaza’s hospitals were already left in ruins. The number of healthcare workers killed by September 2024, reached over 1000, and by November 2024, 1000 doctors and nurses had been killed, leading Gaza’s media office to charge Israel with deliberately targeting hospitals and their personnel.

How did Israel get away with this kind of unprecedented, and arguably deliberate, destruction of hospitals and the murder of those attempting to care for civilians suffering relentless Israeli bombardment? After all, protections for caregivers who come to the aid of civilians wounded in war are at the core of international humanitarian law and were one of the first legal protections that sought to limit the deadly effects of armed conflict. Many rules of war were specifically designed to protect people not taking part in hostilities, including civilians, health workers, aid workers and journalists, but civilians and humanitarians have been killed in unprecedented numbers in Gaza. Answering the question of Israel’s continuing violence and lack of accountability begins with media coverage which has played an outsized role in the IDF’s ability to justify its actions. To yank infants off life support, bomb hospitals and march stripped-down doctors into the cold before taking them to notorious prison sites for torture, require an unhinged military, but also powerful propaganda messages and a media environment willing to repeat them.

Israeli messaging strategies made use of sophisticated animation. Computer graphics played to media’s fascination with spectacular visualizations, outside of journalism’s mandate for explanation and documentation. As already mentioned, Israeli fabrications invented a huge Hamas command center under a hospital complex which accommodated the needs of corporate media sensationalism and effectively flooded news cycles. Equally important was the full backing of the highest echelons of the US intelligence-military complex in the Biden administration and many unnamed government sources who spoke “off the record.”

One of the first indications that Israeli would target the health care system and make good on its promise to turn Gaza into “hell,” was a strike in front of Al Shifa Hospital on an ambulance convoy loaded with wounded civilians. Not even a month into its assault on Gaza, on November 2 Israel hit the convoy getting ready to leave Al Shifa on its way to the Rafah border. Common Dreams wrote, “A Palestinian Health Ministry spokesperson called the attack "a massacre against more victims, civilians, and wounded people.” It described “graphic and horrific footage of dead and wounded Palestinians” circulating online as Israeli forces “took credit for what critics are condemning as yet another war crime.” But reporting by network news used the familiar language of both-sidesing, presenting a false balance, such as this composition by NBC News, “Israel Says it Hit an Ambulance Used by Hamas. Gaza Officials Say it was Carrying the Wounded.” And the familiar passive voice announced “scene of chaos,” and continued with, it “left several people killed and dozens wounded.”

By contrast, straight-forward reporting by Al Jazeera identified Israel as the perpetrator saying, “An Israeli air strike on an ambulance convoy” has killed 15 people and wounded 60 others. It continued “Officials say vehicles were transporting critically wounded patients from al-Shifa Hospital...”