Shlomi Ziv was as far away as it gets from being a celebrity or a household name when he went to work as a security guard at the Supernova music festival.
When the Hamas attack began, he remained at the festival and helped partygoers as best he could until he was kidnapped into Gaza along with 43 of them. Hamas infiltrators murdered 378 people at the festival.
During his 246 days in captivity, until he was rescued by the IDF in the daring Operation Arnon on June 8, 2024, Ziv was held hostage and endured daily physical abuse, along with Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov.
Hostage of a journalist
Nowadays, Ziv is a commentator whose X/Twitter social media feed is an interesting read. When Sky News reported that Al Jazeera condemned the August 10 IDF assassination of its reporter, Hamas terrorist Anas Al-Sharif, he simply posted back, “I was held by a journalist... and his father was a doctor!!!!!!!!”
Ziv, Kozlov, and Meir Jan were held captive in frightening conditions by Palestine Chronicle correspondent Abdallah al Jamal, whose father, Ahmed, was a well-known Gaza physician, at their home in Nuseirat.
The post that went viral called out the hypocrisy of both Al Jazeera and Sky News in a war in which too many Gazans moonlighted as both journalists and active Hamas terror operatives.
But was Al Jamal the only journalist who held Israelis hostage?
Perhaps it could be argued that right now, the 20 live hostages – and the 30 captives whose bodies remain in captivity – are still in Gaza terror dungeons due to the irresponsible and unprofessional reporting of many foreign media journalists.
No press allowed
In making this argument, it is important to start with the ironic caveat that Israel has not let journalists into Gaza in this or any war since 2014.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the foreign media at an August 10 press conference that he would start letting journalists in, but the IDF has received no such order, and the conflict continues to be reported by Gazans with cellphones who know the consequences of deviating from Hamas’s narrative.
Nearly 500,000 Israelis protested against their own government on Sunday, calling for it to do more to bring about the release of the hostages. But others did not join the protests because they believe it is solely Hamas and its sponsors in Qatar who should be held accountable.
When Netanyahu went to Washington last month, President Donald Trump said he expected a hostage release deal to be completed by the end of the week. So why hasn’t it happened yet?
Here, too, there is plenty of blame to spread around for Hamas hardening its positions after an agreement appeared to be around the corner. French President Emmanuel Macron undoubtedly strengthened the terror organization by announcing his support for creating a Palestinian state at an especially sensitive time.
But so did the media do so exactly at that time, when it fell hook, line, and sinker for Hamas’s easily disprovable campaign alleging that Israel is purposely trying to starve Gazan children.
Lying media outlets
The Daily Express published the first picture of the emaciated body of 18-month-old Mohammed Al-Mutawaq on July 23 and The New York Times the following day as ceasefire talks broke down in Doha. As has been well documented since then, Mohammed suffers from cerebral palsy, a disorder that carries with it a heightened risk of malnutrition due to muscle and motor difficulties. The picture was taken by a photographer with an agenda from the Turkish news agency Anadolu.
It would not be significant if Al-Mutawaq had been the only Gazan child who appeared to be starving but actually had a preexisting condition unrelated to the war whose picture graced the world’s front pages. But the Free Press and the media watchdog HonestReporting compiled more than a dozen such cases this week.
Real starvation: Hamas's hostages
Israel is not deliberately starving Gazan children. Conversely, the list of the 20 Israelis being starved in Gaza is readily available to all media.
The photo of frighteningly emaciated Evyatar David digging his own grave came straight from Hamas, and perhaps had it received as much play as Al-Mutawaq’s, world leaders would have increased pressure on the brutal terrorist group and its sponsor Qatar to release the hostages, an act that could actually end the war immediately.
It’s not like top media outlets have not tried to find pictures of non-diseased Gazan children starved by Israel. Semafor media editor Max Tani revealed exclusively what went down behind the scenes in The New York Times' newsroom.
“The Times was preparing to run images of Youssef Matar, a young child in Gaza with cerebral palsy who was suffering from lack of nourishment, alongside its July 24 story that cited doctors in Gaza finding an increasing number of their patients are suffering and dying – from starvation,” Tani wrote.
Editorial caution
“But the Times’ topmost editors wanted to err on the side of caution. After viewing the gutting photo, according to communications viewed by Semafor, they worried that it might inadvertently call into question the paper’s reporting, which said that many of the children suffering from hunger did not have preexisting health issues.”
“Do we want to use a photo that will be the subject of debate when there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are?” managing editor Marc Lacey asked about the proposed photo, according to Slack messages obtained by Semafor.
Executive editor Joe Kahn agreed and said, “The story isn’t framed around people with special needs, and the lead art really should not do that, either.”
In a statement to Semafor, a New York Times spokesperson appeared to confirm the accuracy of the report without taking any more blame than the newspaper did in its half-hearted and hidden apology for running the misleading photo.
“As the exchange between our editors demonstrates, we are focused on accuracy and fairness and on making sure our reporting and photography reflect the human toll of this war fully and fairly,” the spokesperson said. “We will not be swayed by advocacy groups hoping to change our journalism to align with their perspectives.”
Getting the story right
But what if the “advocacy groups” are getting the story right and The New York Times is getting it wrong? The fact that the Times ended up using a photo of another child with the exact same condition – and The Guardian ran Matar’s photo without any clarifying information – teaches a very important lesson.
The media are blindly accepting and advancing Hamas’s narrative instead of doing due diligence, even when the evidence is in front of their eyes. Lacey thought there would be plenty of legitimate choices of Gazan children being starved by Israel without even considering that the narrative perpetrated by a terrorist organization may not be true.
Respected veteran NBC Middle East correspondent Martin Fletcher wrote on Facebook that there have been images from the same day showing Palestinians not getting food and also images of them getting food.
“Which to use?” he asked. “That depends on the story you want to tell. Both stories are real. On this day and in this place, Palestinians are hungry and want food. And on this day and in this place, Palestinians are hungry and get food. Everyone tells the former story and ignores the latter story. This is the essence of media manipulation.”
Blood libel shifts
When the campaign accusing Israel of deliberately starving Gazan children was deemed inaccurate, the blood libel shifted to Israel purposely targeting Gazan journalists. Almost all foreign media outlets mourned the death of Anas al-Sharif while doubting or altogether omitting hard evidence presented by the IDF proving that he was a commander of a terrorist cell in a Hamas guided rockets platoon.
Pulitzer team compromised
Reuters even boasted that the Al Jazeera reporter was part of its team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. HonestReporting revealed exclusively that the entire team has now been compromised, as the other three winners either infiltrated Israel on October 7, 2023, or received awards from Hamas.
Does this indirect assistance in advancing Hamas’s narrative make the editors of Reuters, The New York Times, and other top international media outlets just as complicit for the hostages still being held as Al-Jamal?
Let’s let Ziv answer that question.
“Everyone is a Hamas operative,” he posted on X. “There are no journalists there who aren’t Hamas because they would kill him for telling the truth.”
The writer is the executive director of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.