Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War in 2023, there have been complaints that not only are our political and military leaders not providing us with sufficient and credible information about what is happening on the various fronts that we are engaged in, but that most of the media are also stingy with information. One cannot help wondering whether there might be a concerted voluntary censorship of sorts regarding certain issues.
It is certainly legitimate and justifiable for leaders in democratic states to withhold information or provide false information in certain situations – especially in wartime, when they want to conceal their real intentions and plans from the enemy. However, this should not be exaggerated.
Today, while the government might occasionally decide to keep information under wraps for military operational reasons, one starts getting a little nervous thinking about how little information is actually shared. In this prolonged on-and-off war, which has been dragging on now for over two-and-a-half years, one gets the impression that the government is not necessarily trying to withhold information from its enemies but rather from its own citizens.
Lack of information in the war against Hamas
From the very start of the war against Hamas, an overwhelming majority of the Israeli population strongly supported a relentless attack on Hamas as an organization: destroying its weapons systems, the workshops in which some were manufactured, and the underground city it had excavated under much of the Gaza Strip. The general public supported the liquidation of the organization’s leadership as well, and not to forget the Nukhba terrorists, who had personally participated in the massacre of October 7.
However, at the point at which the number of civilian casualties reached tens of thousands, many of them children, some Israelis started to feel that the war had somehow gotten out of control but that very little information was available to portray and explain what was going on.
Whole populations were being moved back and forth around the Gaza Strip, allegedly for tactical reasons, which turned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into homeless nomads, living in makeshift tents and shacks. There was chaos in the delivery of foreign aid into the Gaza Strip, for which Hamas was also responsible. Malnutrition spread, as well as both physical and mental illness.
Moreover, the fact that Israeli contractors were spread throughout the Gaza Strip with heavy equipment to tear down buildings randomly and en masse had gradually started being taken for granted, and with very few official explanations.
It must be admitted that not all Israelis are disturbed by this reality, and there are many who maintain that “since there are no innocent Palestinians, no pity should be wasted on them.” As to the fact that at least part of what has been described above might be considered to fall under the definition of war crimes, this does not seem to concern them since they are contemptuous of all international law, which they believe to be selectively applied against Israel.
It should be added, however, that because Israel is accused by many states and organizations of being responsible for the commitment of war crimes in the Gaza Strip, Israel is not oblivious to the issue. The legal experts of various government institutions are constantly engaged with it. It is possible that the reason very little official information is available on all these issues is the concern that it will be used by those who are “out to get Israel.”
Confusion about the ceasefire agreement
Another stage of the war that has been laden with a serious absence of information, also connected to the Gaza Strip, concerns the second stage of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. It was signed in October 2025. The first stage included the release of all the Israeli hostages, the release of numerous Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and an Israeli withdrawal from almost half of the Gaza Strip.
The second stage of the agreement, which Israel had serious reservations about because both Qatar and Turkey are to be directly involved in its execution, was to have created an international mechanism for administrating the Gaza Strip. This includes the disarming of Hamas and rebuilding the ruins left behind by Israel’s policy of mass destruction.
All of this appears to have stalled because of the preoccupation of the Americans and Israelis with their joint war against Iran. While Israel still occupies over half of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is believed to have regained control and rebuilt part of its military capabilities in the territories not held by the IDF.
As to whether there are any developments in the direction of the implementation of the second stage of the agreement, there is no published information on the subject, though one may guess that Israel, for which the plans for the second stage are anathema, is happy about the standstill. However, it is doubtful whether Israel is engaged in planning an alternative plan for the Gaza Strip that is more to its liking. Supposedly this issue will have to wait until after Israel’s next general election.
Information on the war against Iran
What about the current stage of the war against Iran? The only subject on which there is partial published information concerns the extent of the Israeli and American aerial attacks on Iran, up to the current two-week ceasefire.
However, while the US is concentrating on how to get Iran to give up the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium it holds underground and how to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed down to most international shipping and causing a major petroleum issue, Israel is still concerned with how to remove Iran’s nuclear and missile threats, how to bring down the current Iranian regime, and how to put a permanent end to Iran’s system of proxies – especially Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Although the first round of direct talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad last Saturday to extend the ceasefire and start working on a permanent settlement ended with no results, the discussion will be continued.
Tomorrow, Israel is set to start direct talks with Lebanon with the ambassadors of the two states in Washington, regarding the normalization of relations between them and the disarmament of Hezbollah. Both Israel and the US have insisted that the talks about Hezbollah and Lebanon should not have any connection to the US-Iran negotiations.
Again, unlike the case of the Gaza Strip, here the absence of concrete information both in Israel and the US is not the result of deliberate attempts by Jerusalem and Washington to keep the public in the dark. Instead, it results from US President Donald Trump’s frequent contradictory and unbridled statements, which tend to portray an unstable and surrealistic reality.
It is also due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rigid approach and reactions, which assume sudden bursts of flexibility when Trump requests him to obey orders. The only contribution the media can offer at this stage are endless speculative debates about possible developments while the general public is invited to make sense of the endless verbiage.
The reason that many Israelis find the situation regarding the media reporting of the current war to be worrying is because while all the events described above have been playing out, the Israeli government is continuing its efforts to pass legislation that threatens Israel’s liberal democracy. One element of this legislation concerns limiting the freedom of the press and electronic media, especially those that are openly critical of the government.
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.