Palestinian-British writer Samir El-Youssef discusses how the conflict and Hamas are reported on by Arabic-language news channels while Esther Solomon, editor-in-chief of Haaretz English, talks about trying to balance opposition to the politics of Benjamin Netanyahu with reporting on the on-going impacts and consequences of Hamas’s terrorism on the 7th October.
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The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Alan Rusbridger:
Do you work in media? Have you wrestled with temperamental CMS platforms before? If the thought of content management systems makes you shudder, there's a new publishing solution built just for you. Glide Publishing Platform is an AI-enhanced SaaS headless CMS. It makes publishing content intuitive and enjoyable again. Key features let you easily analyse performance, collaborate in real-time, and publish across the web. Major publishers are already using Glide Publishing Platform to produce content with ease. If you're ready to say goodbye to CMS frustrations, visit Glide at www.gpp.io. Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine's weekly dive beyond the clickbait to explore the fascinating and contested world of media. I'm Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I'm Lionel Barber. On this episode, with the deaths of more than 60 journalists so far, we go back to the war in Gaza and how it's been covered by Israeli and Palestinian reporters.
Rusbridger:
We'll hear about the human toll and the editorial decision-making from guests from both the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives.
Barber:
Listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. To make sure you never miss an episode, Media Confidential is on X/Twitter @mediaconfpod.
Rusbridger:
Lionel, you are yet again jetting around the world. You are in New York, and it's very early in the morning, but you are looking good. What are you monitoring from your side of the pond?
Barber:
Well, the big news over here is this extraordinary row, which has actually been going on since the October the seventh massacre in Israel, over free speech and antisemitism on campus, particularly at the elite universities like Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and UPenn. Already, one of the presidents, Liz McGill, has had to resign. Claudine Gay at Harvard has survived. They gave testimony to Congress last week when they were asked outright, “What are you doing about incitement of violence, antisemitic speech on campus?” And they said, “It all depends on context,” and of course, donors have been up in arms, the alumni up in arms, and one president's gone down and the other two are hanging on.
Rusbridger:
It's an extraordinary story well-reported, I thought, in the New York Times, but I think you've been following in the Wall Street Journal?
Barber:
I've been very impressed with the Wall Street Journal's coverage. They were early on this, particularly following the extremely wealthy alumni like Bill Ackman, the hedge funder, Mark Rowan, who is at one of the big private equity companies, and both of these two have been extremely voluble. They've been on Twitter, they've done open letters, they've been campaigning and I think the journal was excellent in picking up early the threat to the presidents, particularly Liz McGill at UPenn.
Rusbridger:
There's something that makes me feel uneasy about this. I've got a friend who runs a charity, absolutely nothing to do with politics in any way, who was told by one of their backers that unless they came out and made a statement unequivocally in favour of Israel, that there just wouldn't be any backing, there wouldn't be any donations. And certainly in the New York Times account, there felt to me like an element of bullying taking place. I don't know if that's how it was also reported in the Journal.
Barber:
Well, I'm going to slightly disagree here, Alan. I think that they were mealy-mouthed, all the presidents. They'd talked to their lawyers for hours and mealy-mouthed about outright very strong antisemitism, threats to students, Jewish students on campus, and also the language that they used in the aftermath of October the 7th was also fail to meet the occasion, rise to the occasion, and I think the big problem here, Alan, is that there's double standards going on when it comes to free speech, anything you say regard in the wake of Black Lives Matter and we've got to tread carefully here, but that one standard is applied to what you can say on race and another standard when it applies to antisemitism.
Rusbridger:
Now I get what you're saying about the language that was used during the hearing, but what emerged certainly from the Times reporting is a pattern of behaviour over many months, if not longer. If you've got tens, even possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to give, the notion that also you can use that influence in a quite coercive way with these institutions... I don't know, that made me feel a bit uneasy.
Barber:
I think that's what saved Claudine Gay's skin, frankly, that the faculty said, “Look, we're talking about academic independence. We can't be driven just by the donors and the alumni,” so I hear what you're saying.
Rusbridger:
And I've just come hot footed from listening to select committee... I was going to say interrogating. It actually was quite fierce questioning of Samir Shah, who's the government's nomination to be the BBC chair. They tackled him over all kinds of things to do with funding, with local radio, Gary Lineker, and so forth. And finally, my story broke into the public with quite a fierce interrogation from Kevin Brennan and John Nicholson, the Labour and SNP members of the committee, about our old friend Robbie Gibb, who I think is also an old friend of Samir Shah.
And they tried actually a bit in the manner of the congressional hearings just to get him to say if it were true that a BBC director was trying to fix the chair of the regulator, that would be inappropriate, wouldn't it? You'd think he'd be able to say, “Well, yes, if it were true,” instead of which he used the well-trodden politician's side step of saying, “Well, I can't comment on hypotheticals,” but I think he has promised to go away and interrogate it, and I hope that in his next appearance before a select committee, he can be a bit more full-throated about what he thinks about that.
Barber:
GibbGate will not die. I'm sure he is got a few other things on his plate though, not least thinking about the future of the licence fee and of course the topic du jour, which is what do you do about Gary Lineker? I have to say, not just because Gary Lineker is a former stellar player from Tottenham Hotspur, I'm fairly sympathetic to Lineker. He's a sports commentator. He's been beaten up in public and on Twitter by politicians, and he's just exercising his right of response. He's not in the same basket as news presenters or reporters.
Rusbridger:
Yeah, I completely agree. The more this goes on, the more I think Gary Lineker is... anybody who thought that Gary Lineker was on television to opine about or should be neutral about international/national issues is really... I think is just mischief-making by people who don't like the BBC. I can't see why anybody should think that his views about Arsenal's title race or even... well actually, Tottenham so much, not so much in the title race.
Barber:
Careful.
Rusbridger:
Well, I'm being impartial, Lionel. They've lost three of their last four games, haven't they? These are facts, you can't deny them. But anyway, his views on Arsenal's much stronger position or Tottenham's much weaker position have nothing to do with his views on refugees or anything else, in my humble opinion.
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So now we're going to speak to Samir El-Youssef, a Palestinian-British writer, and he's going to take us back to the terrible conflict in the Middle East, which we touched on, what was it, Lionel? A couple of months ago. And so Samir was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Lebanon, lives in London now, and who I think has a fascinating perspective. Samir, thank you for coming in. How are you experiencing this war? Who do you actually find yourself believing to be balanced and truthful about it, and who do you have more struggles with?
Samir El-Youssef:
Well, that is the point. I mean, of course it's a question of who's less untrustworthy actually, because I can't... because from the beginning, it seemed that everybody was expected to be saying the same thing. From the beginning, everybody, practically all kind of media outlets been asking the same question. For example, the first day, do you condemn Hamas? I mean, you could hear this question being asked by everybody, so this kind of consensus about what should be asked and what should be the answer, how we should be thinking about it. There were of course other sources, other outlets which were biassed clearly and without being apologetic about it. For example, I listened to the Arabic Al Jazeera, and clearly they are sort of a Hamas propaganda channel, so that's what they're doing and they're not apologetic about it. Others, of course, just openly supporting Israel and how Israel is depicting what's been happening for the last two months or more since October, 7th of October.
Rusbridger:
Just so I understand what you're saying about Al Jazeera Arabic, you're saying it has overt support for Hamas?
El-Youssef:
Oh yes, yes, absolutely yes.
Rusbridger:
Which demonstrates in what kind of way?
El-Youssef:
The reporting, the people who are invited on the show to talk about it, everything is there. I mean, Al Jazeera basically spreads this kind of myth that Hamas is winning the war. Those who actually believe Al Jazeera now, they think that Hamas is actually is a victor here and the one who is actually winning here. And that's because what's the people in what Al Jazeera, the way they are reporting the news, the kind of people that they invite on their shows, people who are referred to as experts, for example. Sheer propaganda, you could say.
Rusbridger:
And how does that contrast with Al Jazeera English?
El-Youssef:
Al Jazeera in English is better than the Arabic one. It's more balanced in a sense, but at no point we were not going to have a discussion. We're not going to have a debate about it. We're not going to ask why it happened or how it happened. It was from the beginning, we just condemned what happened and give Israel and the Israeli government a green light to go ahead and do whatever they like to do. And the Israelis obviously appreciated this invitation, and they've been doing what they wanted to do.
Barber:
Samir, do you think that the Arab media is drawing a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinians?
El-Youssef:
No, they're not. No. For them, this attack also on Hamas is an attack on Palestinian people.
Barber:
And how do you see the issue? Because it seems to me that the Palestinian voice here is the one that's really, to use your word, it's been stifled.
El-Youssef:
There is a powerful... for ideological reasons, there is a difference, for example, between Al Jazeera in Arabic and Al Arabiya. Al Arabiya is of course sponsored by the Saudi Arabia, while Al Jazeera is sponsored by Qatar, and there are sort of two regimes which opposing each other. Al Arabiya is anti-Hamas, but even when they are being anti-Hamas for example, for their own reasons of course, they are not really making it clear like they are pro-Palestinian or they're worried about Palestinian civilians, anything like that. They're just sort of reporting opposite to what Al Jazeera is saying, more or less.
Barber:
Let me ask you about how Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya is reporting about what's going on in Israel. I mean, do they have any nuance there? I mean, remembering that hundreds of thousands of Israelis were actually out on the streets demanding that Prime Minister Netanyahu go before the October 7th attacks?
El-Youssef:
They are not really very interested in what's happening in Israel. They want to report what's happening in Gaza, in terms of war in Gaza and Hamas. That's what they're more interested in. They're not very, very, very keen on having sort of a precise understanding what's going on or even the general picture about what's happening inside Israel, politics in Israel.
Barber:
I mean, what about the individual reporters? Are they all have to be in lockstep at Al Jazeera, or do you see any instances of brave reporters actually being sort of somewhat out of line and challenging, frankly, this prevailing propaganda and narrative that's coming out of the Arab news sources?
El-Youssef:
No, I didn't see any sort of distinct voice there. I don't think that these kind of channels, given the kind of sponsors they have, they are allowed to express sort of independent views and to be free to expressing their views freely and to be critical of both sides, for example. No, I don't think that... I haven't had any of them writing or saying anything like that.
Rusbridger:
Samir, I don't know if you've also followed the output of BBC Arabic, because they received some criticism in some quarters, but whether they're doing a better job of going down the middle here?
El-Youssef:
Yes, the BBC by and large is... I mean if you want to be honest, if the BBC is practically the least biased, and actually as we all know, they have been criticised heavily because they refused to call Hamas a terrorist organisation, for example. But it is the one that you might listen to them and feel that, yes, you are getting the point of the two sides here. Somehow it's there. But from the beginning, my feeling about what's happening in the media is that you are not allowed to refer to anything that happens before the 7th of October.
In certain quarters, you are not even allowed to refer what's happened after, given what the Israelis are doing. The moment you mention the number of casualties, you'll be sort of, "Ah, you are siding with Hamas here." We know what happened to the United Nations General Secretary António-
Rusbridger:
Guterres, yeah.
El-Youssef:
Guterres, yeah, when he was just simply... he condemned unequivocally what Hamas did and when we went on to talk about the military occupation of 56 years of military occupation of Gaza, he was accused of siding with terrorists.
Rusbridger:
He said something like, "There's a context," it was as bland as that he was told-
El-Youssef:
Yeah, exactly. That's the whole point is you are not allowed to refer to our context. It's like the depiction of it, it's like everybody was having a nice party and suddenly this kind of group of aliens coming from another planet and spoiling the fun for everybody. Everybody has forgotten... they were meant actually to forgot that this is... we are talking here a situation of 56 years of oppressive military occupation with the regular Israeli attacks, massive destruction and killing of people. Everybody forget even the Palestine-Israeli struggle, conflict, which is now over a hundred years. Everybody seems to miss the point that the Netanyahu government, the Israeli government, is as extreme or at least some members as extreme as Hamas. All this, we were not allowed to refer to it, otherwise you'd be accused of siding with the terrorists.
Rusbridger:
So what you're saying is that it shouldn't be difficult, journalistically, to refer to the context without appearing to cross a line that suggests that that history justifies what happened on October the 7th?
El-Youssef:
Absolutely. Because even if you refer what happened into the context, there is a situation where this particular situation of what was carried on, what was committed by Hamas, by Hamas fighters, it goes beyond the context itself, because it was just the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, for example. How would you justify that? What kind of political-historical context can justify that? The kidnapping of grannies and children? I mean, you take hostages. There is an old lady in a wheelchair, they took her as a hostage.
I mean, what are you going to do with her? I mean, these things cannot be justified in any form, in any kind of historical context. Whatever has happened, you can't justify this kind of thing, and notice now what the Israelis are doing the same, what you are doing cannot be justified because of what's happened in the 7th of October because you're just carrying on this massive murder of civilians. I believe about 6,000 children have been killed, and he just mentioned the humiliation of over a million people that's been displaced and living as homeless in Gaza. So this kind of action is... there is no context to justify it.
Barber:
Samir, just to jump in here, I think what you're saying is incredibly important about how to cover a conflict of this sensitivity and complexity with deep, deep historical roots. And I am going to give a shout-out here for the BBC on Broadcasting House these last few Sundays. Some editor, I don't know who it was, decided to ask Kevin Connolly, a veteran BBC foreign correspondent, to just do portraits of historical figures in the Middle East since 1948 when Israel became an independent state, from Golda Meir, and I was listening to an excellent portrait of Yasser Arafat, and by doing that, not just about the character but also the events, honestly, this is a much better way of complementing the other coverage, which is the killings, the bombs, and everything else.
El-Youssef:
Oh no, absolutely. I mean, even in that case, if you can give some kind of historical background to what's been happening through, introducing major characters of the conflict of what's been happening over there, but just to provide the background, to make people aware of what's going on here, that there has been a conflict of more than a hundred years since the end of the first World War in Palestine, and with Gaza has been even a bloody sort of conflict and the struggle there and violence, and that's why I think the protest movement, this kind of universal protest movement that has been taking place all over the world, that is sometimes is missing certain things that has to be acknowledged and they are missing them.
All right, fine. You are protesting against... you are demanding ceasefire. You are protesting against killing children in Gaza. That's very good, but you cannot ignore that in the 7th of October, a group of military fighters from Hamas crossed the border and murdered civilians. You can't just ignore that. You can't pretend that didn't happen. You can't ignore that Hamas took hostages of all people. These things, you have to say, "No, we condemn this," although we need this way of protesting against the violence in both sides and sympathising with the victims on both sides. That is what's required and somehow it's missing.
Rusbridger:
I mean, I look at this story through the lens of mainstream media. I look at it through Instagram and other sources, and there's a version of the war at the moment that is almost too painful to look at. Do you have views on how much it's legitimate to sanitise the war or how much media organisations owe it to their viewers, listeners, readers, to give the brutal truth about what's going on?
El-Youssef:
Well, I think people should be aware of what's going on here, but just the brutal facts of what's been happening is not enough. We do need a debate. We have to get out of this situation where we are not... where the idea of a debate is considered as something tasteless or shameful. And I can imagine myself as one of the audience of Al Jazeera in Arabic, the audience in the Arab world watching what's been happening and Al Jazeera telling them what's been happening, getting angry and frustrated, and God knows what ideas they have at the moment. You have to say, "Look..." I was trying to say to somebody, a group of people, "Look, this sentence was used from the beginning and somehow it made it essential to look at it in this way rather than the other." And the sentence I think that was used, the statement used, that this is the largest number of Jews being killed since the Holocaust.
Now for many people in the Arab world, they don't understand that. What does it mean? For me I understand because I lived in this country long enough to understand what the Holocaust means and what does it mean to have so many people, so many civilians, Jewish civilians being killed since the Holocaust. I mean, we are just bringing the whole dark past into the present here. So you have to understand, once you see it that way, you have to be careful how you are dealing with it. It's not a lip service to say what Hamas did is wrong and unacceptable and a war crime. No, this is not a lip service. This you have to say, this is morally what is expected from you to do. It's to say this is wrong to go into people's homes, houses and shoot them, indiscriminately shooting children and old people, that is simply wrong in whatever your grievances.
That is important, and from this point of view that we are not just talking about another country. We're not just talking about... yes, Israel could be seen for the Arab audience, Palestinian audience and Arab audience, as just purely aggressive, belligerent state, military state, but there is history behind it. There's a dark history, there's a tragic history, which we have to be aware of it. And unfortunately, that no mention of that in the reporting, and that's why we do need some kind of enlightened background of what's been happening and why we reached this point of confrontation.
Rusbridger:
Samir, thank you so much for coming in to speak to us. I'm going to ask you one left field question, just listening to you talking about certain Arab states and their views of media. When you hear that a British newspaper might be effectively bought by an Arab state, does that make you anxious or not? I'm talking about the Daily Telegraph and the UAE.
El-Youssef:
Yes, it does make me anxious, I'm afraid. Yes. The last thing I want to see that, the United Arab Emirates owning anything, owning any kind of media because Al Arabiya, although I think the money is from Saudi Arabia, but I think they're based in Dubai, I believe, so they're going to have this kind of reporting which is unhelpful, does not really help the cause of peace in the Middle East.
Rusbridger:
You don't believe if they're putting the money up that they would understand that they would have no influence? You think they would want to exert influence on that?
El-Youssef:
Well, I mean I think Hamad bin Zayed is basically totally with whatever the American administration wants. I mean, he was a good servant of Trump now when he's willing to... the whole point about normalising with Israel and excluding the main partner of this situation, in excluding the Palestinian authority, keeping Palestinian authority out of it, it's just ridiculous. I mean, I don't know why Hamad Zayed, the Emir of Emirates, is doing this. For me, it sounds more of sort of a cynic than somebody who's biassed. He just doesn't care. He just going along with what's happening and what the Americans wants him to do.
Barber:
Well, Alan, I thought there was an incredible courage and also moral clarity about Samir and the way he spoke about the conflict, unequivocal. I mean, I drew the contrast between the mealy-mouthed elite presidents and the elite colleges over here in America when talking about October the 7th and what Samir said. I think the second point was really important about trying to find a way of providing context to this war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. And of course, there are the risks that there's colouring, but without context, it's meaningless. So a very thoughtful intervention.
Rusbridger:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I also second what you said about some of the work that the BBC has been doing, which has been extremely illuminating about the past 50/100 years, however you want to look at it, and it's easy to criticise the odd slip that has happened on the BBC, but if you really wanted to get a complete understanding of why this has happened and where on earth it might go next, actually, the BBC has been pretty good.
Barber:
You can actually write about or broadcast stories of the history without losing any of the drama which will capture readers' attention. But this is an essential function of informing, and dare I say, educating a broad audience and they've done a very good job on that through Kevin Connolly, of course, who's been all over the world in terms of his reporting.
This is Media Confidential, and coming up, we'll get a view on journalistic freedom in Israel and in Gaza from an important Israeli news organisation.
Rusbridger:
This week's Prospect Podcast is a conversation with Tom Lamont, who's been on a deep dive for Prospect Magazine into an investigative journalism success story. Tom met Elliot Higgins, the man behind Bellingcat, to discover the background to some of Bellingcat's massive scoops solving who brought down Flight MH17 over Ukraine, the Salisbury Poisoners, and more recently, the men who poisoned Alexei Navalny.
Tom Lamont:
They have had these three absolute bangers, and the third of the three was the Navalny scoop, which there was a contributor on the Salisbury case, absolutely crucial. They're sort of equivalent of the Star Reporter. The lead reporter was this man called Kristo Grozev, and it was his access and understanding of dense databases, flight manifests, Russian identity information that helped them crack the Salisbury case. And he was, by the time of the Navalny case two years later, was still very much involved in the Bellingcat project, was making his own investigations, and had become allied with Navalny.
And I don't know if you watched the fascinating documentary or Oscar-winning documentary about Navalny, the unforgettable scene in that for me is one in which Grozev and Navalny are sitting in a safe house somewhere, and they've managed to get hold of contact information for Russian spies, some of the people who targeted Navalny for assassination when he was poisoned with Novichok before he got on that plane and very nearly died. And with a kind of antic, almost childish spirit of fun as much as anything as far as I can tell, which seems to me sort of quite typically Bellingcat-ish to be almost as mischievous as anything, with that kind of spirit, they call up these numbers and Navalny who's got a good understanding of Russian tone and military tone, just pretends to be his superior.
I'm half remembering this, but I think his father was military and he sort of knew what words to use, what kind of attitudes to strike to get a subordinate to talk, and he persuades a confession out of one of these guys they call up. Extraordinary. I mean, it's a completely extraordinary scoop.
Rusbridger:
It's an incredible story, well worth your attention, and so follow and subscribe to the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Media Confidential with me, Alan Rusbridger, and Lionel Barber in New York, and having just heard that fascinating interview with Samir, we're now joined from Tel Aviv by Esther Solomon, who we last spoke to very early on in this conflict, and Esther is the editor of the English language version of Haaretz. And Esther, thank you so much for making the time to join us today.
Esther Solomon:
Thank you for having me.
Rusbridger:
The obvious first question is we're, I think, 68 days into this terrible conflict. How are you? How are you holding up and how is the organisation holding up under this? It must be a terrible strain.
Solomon:
Thank you for asking to begin with. How are we holding up? It's difficult to quite put your finger on what it's like to be involved in a conflict that is quite so sustained and intensive. Obviously, Israel and Israeli journalists and Haaretz have certainly been through other conflicts before, but this is a different kind of a conflict because just like the country, in some ways, we're all still partly stuck still in October the 7th when this all began, partly because of the personal effects on people who work here and the effects of reporting on it and the fact that bodies are still being identified, that there are still over a hundred hostages there.
This is something, an ongoing story, that started then and we're all stuck there to some extent. On the other hand, the war started on that day and it has grown and developed since then, including enormous Israeli bombardment of Gaza and civilian suffering there as well. On the other hand, if I had three hands, there is the political side. Haaretz has quite definitely been an opposition voice to Netanyahu's far-right government. The country is stuck in this position where the political leadership has very low popularity rankings. On the other hand, the war itself or the need to protect the country from anything like what happened ever happening again is very high. So we're stuck in this very strange contradictory period.
Rusbridger:
Can we just talk about how easy or difficult it is to cover what's going on in Gaza at the moment? I imagine you've been in one or two embeds, but just in terms of getting reliable information footage reportage out of Gaza, can you talk about the challenges of that for an Israeli newspaper?
Solomon:
Well, I think there's a tremendous challenge not just for us, but for all independent media around the world. I mentioned this right at the beginning, that it was going to be a big problem, that there is no genuinely independent reporting from inside Gaza. Now, in terms of an Israeli media outlet, yes, we can join IDF patrols on invitation to go in, and that is a certain point of view, and there is certain kinds of worthwhile information that can be ascertained from those kinds of visits, but it's certainly not the same as wandering around and deciding your own timetable and who you're going to interview and how.
On the other hand, we also have reporters who are in touch with people in Gaza and are bringing those conversations and phone calls and snatched WhatsApp messages and trying to bring more of a sense of what it's like for civilians, particularly on the ground, but it's not a comprehensive picture media outlets are really getting, and that's very, very frustrating and concerning as well.
Barber:
Esther, as you suggest, you're walking something of a tightrope being longstanding critics of the Netanyahu far-right government, but also recognising that an unparalleled atrocity happened over the 7th and Israel's security is at stake here. How have your readers reacted to your coverage? Have they been critical, supportive?
Solomon:
That's an excellent question. I would say that we've had plenty of flak from both sides. So either you can say that that means we've done something right or we're doing something wrong on both sides. So there are certainly people who say that we are not critical enough and not using the right kind of language about what's happening in Gaza. For instance, people who say, "Why are you shying away from using the term genocide?" which has obviously got a lot of currency in some quarters. There are others who say, "This is not the time. A nation at war is not a time that you should start trying to divide and be sceptical and be questioning those in power."
Obviously, we reject those kinds of contentions completely, because in peace and in war, you have to bring the people in power to account even the more so because as time goes on, the Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to co-opt this entire theme in order to grant himself more immunity and more capacity to try and rehabilitate his public image, which is on the floor. So only in the last few days, he has tried particularly hard to say that the criticism that he gets effectively from the opposition are helping the enemy in some ways, or are in some ways trying to put back the clock to a time when there was a peace process, which there isn't.
Barber:
Yeah, that's harder of course when hostage families are criticising him.
Solomon:
Oh, but that doesn't stop... you would've thought that that might be the case, but it's really not the case. For instance, there is an expression in Israeli political life that Netanyahu and the right-wing camp have something called a poison machine, which is part of how they try and establish a narrative in the media, which is a way to defang any kind of criticism by trying to find some way to undermine any kind of criticism, and they have indeed directed that poison machine at hostage families themselves.
Rusbridger:
Esther, you're too young to remember the IRA campaign of bombing in the UK-
Solomon:
Unfortunately, I'm certainly not too young.
Rusbridger:
But you'll be familiar with the difficulty of British outlets to really explain the context of why the IRA was behaving the way that it did, because it felt unpatriotic. It felt too difficult, really, to do that. I mean, you're working in a newsroom now with... I imagine all your colleagues are in some ways affected with relatives or friends involved in this conflict in some ways. Can you talk a bit about that sort of conflict between the personal, the political, and the necessity of just reporting this straight from all points of view?
Solomon:
Well, that's certainly a truism in terms of Israel because it is a small place and very interconnected. So apart from having plenty of personal connections with people who lost their lives or were taken hostage on October the 7th, ever since there's been this massive mobilisation of the reserves, and that also of course affects people, whether they themselves have been called up to serve or their family members, close family members as well.
Depending on what generation you are, it could be your partner or your children. So there is an inbuilt tension about the sensitivity with which you have to consider about covering, especially for instance, when there are specific battles in Gaza and that there are Israeli casualties. But I would say that in terms of the information that we have and the way that we approach reporting about it, there isn't any particular kind of way that we are censoring ourselves at all.
Barber:
All editors, as they go through these huge stories, and this one, as you say, it's very, very big and very, very difficult, but all editors look around and in the back of their mind, they have an idea of what they thought was really good, one or two stories that they're proud of. Would you like to just single out some of the coverage? I know it might seem a bit self-serving, but I think people will be interested what you rate.
Solomon:
There's been so much. Some of the pieces definitely from the first week, 10 days. That included some reporters who went down south, and they were shot at while they were on their way down. So I think that there's really no way to get a more authentic first-hand testimony reporting point of view than that. We were the first to report that archaeologists had been brought in to try and identify some of the bodies from kibbutz houses that had been burnt to ashes, and this was something that I had never imagined, that there was a pile of ashes and they were basically sifting through it as if you would sift through dust 2,000 years old.
They were being taken from archaeological sites from the biblical era, and now were being repurposed for that. Also, I have to say, as an opinion editor for a decade, I have to say, I do have a soft spot for opinion pieces as well, and one of the areas that we try and engage with and reflect is the conversation that is happening amongst Jewish communities around the world, especially in North America. There have been quite a number of opinion pieces about the decision process about whether to join many of the protests, the pro-Palestinian protests, or not, and what holds people back or what fuels their engagement with them. Very, very difficult questions of identity, political allyship, quite fundamental questions that are being raised by some of these events.
Rusbridger:
Just taking that on Esther, I met an Israeli last week who was talking about the profound sense of shock and a debate... I don't know if you recognise this picture, really about almost taking Israel back to its foundational principles and restarting the conversation again about what kind of country Israel can or should be. Is that premature, in newspaper terms, to be having that debate, or is that already surfacing in your pages?
Solomon:
I think for both Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank, and for Israelis, because this is such an apocalyptic period that we're going through, there is some kind of sense that, apart from utter darkness, where could this possibly lead to? On the one side, there are people who'd say, "It's absolutely delusional to be having thoughts about this, and in fact, it's this kind of kumbaya, delusional ideas that led to Israel putting down its guard and Hamas being able to attack."
But on the other hand, as a newspaper and as people who support the two-state solution, even in its absolute darkest hours, we believe that there must be a political solution. So whether or not the audience is really interested in hearing long sermons about that now, or it's just something that is part of the DNA of how we approach it, I do think that's significant. I have to say, I was speaking the other day to a very prominent and longtime peace campaigner here who told me that she couldn't see any kind of horizon, and all the work that she had thought about and worked towards, she couldn't actually see how you get from here to anywhere else. That's a very dark place to be in.
Barber:
I suppose in my own mind, I see this, and I don't want to sound too technical here, but there is a problem about sequencing. I mean, to talk about the two-state solution when obviously there is a military campaign underway of unbridled ferocity, the war aims clearly not being met of eradicating the Hamas leadership, the Palestinian authority just doesn't have the leadership there, and then you're missing an international context where the Americans, say, and maybe the Chinese at some point, are organising international discussions. So far from it for me to give you any advice, Esther, but you need to have some of the ideas, but also be realistic about how to build that bridge to a better place.
Solomon:
Yeah, the bridge part is extraordinarily difficult to imagine now, but the issue of what is going to happen afterwards was a major issue even from the first day of the war, because when the Biden administration... and to be honest, many Israelis were asking the government and the military, "What exactly are the aims of the war and how are you going to get there?" Okay, so the aims of the war was stated as the utter degradation of Hamas so it could not be a governing force in Gaza anymore, and a fighting force, and the return of the hostages. But from that very first day, how are you going to do it and what will that picture of victory or success, even partial success, what will it mean? It was never that clear. Now we're stuck in a position where it seems that the hostage situation may go on for extraordinary amount of time.
It may require some kind of price that this Israeli government certainly would not pay. What does it mean to get rid of Hamas is a kind of intangible question in terms of uprooting an entire kind of ideological Islamist movement. It's not something particularly that you could put your finger on when it's actually happened, but right from the start, the question was, so Israel does X, Y, and Z, and then what? Netanyahu said quite clearly that he doesn't believe that the Palestinian authority who governs parts of the West Bank should have anything to do with it. The Biden administration is clearly set on a confrontation course about that with him. Netanyahu has these ideas that the Arab world will swoop in and fund and then work as some kind of buffer force. It sounds odd that you are shooting and talking at the same time, but that's really... it was built in right from the start.
Rusbridger:
Esther, thank you so much for breaking off to talk to us. I mean, being a news organization at the heart of the situation you're in is, I think, the hardest possible imaginable situation.
Solomon:
Well, just as long as the government doesn't shut us down, then we're doing fine.
Rusbridger:
That's not going to happen.
Solomon:
Well, they have already threatened us, actually.
Rusbridger:
Have they? Seriously?
Solomon:
Not in terms of shutting down, but there is definitely an interest in creating a more intimidating atmosphere for independent journalism. There's no doubt about it, but that's also the case for right-wing populists around the world.
Barber:
Well, Alan, it's breathtaking. What they're doing and what they're holding to as they try and cover each aspect of this war. There's so many moving and memorable moments, but I mean, the story that they broke of archaeologists actually going to the site in Gaza to try to identify bodies that had been reduced to ashes was... I mean, what can you say? That really did bring it home for me.
Rusbridger:
I think Haaretz is an extraordinary paper. I've long thought that. I heard Jeremy Bowen on the BBC today saying that in the BBC office in... I don't know if they're in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but those sort of wall-to-wall broadcasters, which give no sense really the point of view of Palestinians and Haaretz has always stood out as a paper that engages with the Arab and Palestinian communities in that area. And I've got a subscription to Haaretz in English, and I have to say, I think it's doing an incredible job in reporting in depth and commentating in depth in ways that must be incredibly uncomfortable in a small country in the heat of war. So I think we should get Esther on again in a few week’s time to get an update.
Barber:
I'll second that.
Rusbridger:
If you have any questions for us about the media, email them to mediaconfidential, all one word, @prospectmagazine, again, all one word, .co.uk, and we'll answer a few of them in a future episode.
Barber:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Danny Garlick.
Rusbridger:
And remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Barber:
And we're on Twitter/X, too, @mediaconfpod.
Rusbridger:
See you next Thursday for our last episode before Christmas.
