Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been said, by both sides and independent observers, to be biased. This coverage includes news, academic discussion, film, and social media. These perceptions of bias, possibly exacerbated by the hostile media effect, have generated more complaints of partisan reporting than any other news topic and have led to a proliferation of media watchdog groups.
Types of bias The language of conflict Several studies have concluded that "terminology bias" has been a recurrent feature of coverage of the conflict,Frank Luntz, 'The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary,' The Israel Project 2009Loubna Qutami and Omar Zahzah, 'The War of Words: Language as an Instrument of Palestinian National Struggle,' Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1-2 (Winter/Spring 2020), pp. 66-90. and scholars and commentators such as Yasir Suleiman argue that language manipulation plays an important role in endeavours to win over the international public, with some concluding that Israel has proven more adept in this battle. Diction, or word choice, affects the interpretation of the same set of entities or events. There is an emotional and semantic difference between the verbs died and killed, and similarly between kill and murder; murder evokes stronger negative emotions and connotes intent. In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, various terminological issues arise. The terms "disputed territories" versus "occupied territories" reflect different positions on the legal status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The terms "security fence" and "apartheid wall," "neighbourhood" and "settlement," and "militant," "freedom fighter" and "terrorist," while used to describe the same entities, present them in a different light and suggest a different narrative. Similarly, describing an attack or bombing as a "response" or "retaliation" again places the events in a different light.
In the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War Israeli usage initially adopted the standard terminology of referring to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied territories" (ha-šeṭaḥim ha-kevušim). This was soon replaced by "administered territories" (ha-šeṭaḥim ha-muḥzaqim). Finally, the West Bank area, excluding East Jerusalem, was renamed "Judea and Samaria" (Yehudah we-Šomron), a term chosen to affirm the Biblical basis for the Jewish people's connection to that territory. Rashid Khalidi describes how, in the wake of the Six Day War, Israeli policy-makers have designated East Jerusalem not as "occupied" or a cultural and spiritual centre for Muslims and Arabs for 14 centuries, but as "the eternal, indivisible capital of Israel" and "reunited". While the default term in international law is belligerent occupation, over subsequent decades, U.S. media coverage, which initially described Israel's presence in either of the Palestinian territories as an "occupation", gradually dropped the word and by 2001 it had become "almost taboo" in, and "ethereal in its absence" from, American reportage. A poll of British newsreaders that same year found that only 9% were aware that Israel was the occupying power of Palestinian territories. Israeli academic surveys at the time of Operation Defensive Shield (2002) also found that the Israeli public thought the West Bank revolt was evidence that Palestinians were trying, murderously, to wrest control of territories within Israel itself.
In 2002, Greg Myre wrote of the rise of a "verbal arms race" where "(m)uch of the Mideast conflict is about winning international support", one which escalated with the onset of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Brian Whitaker, reviewing 1,659 articles covering events in the Guardian and Evening Standard for this period (2000–2001), observed the same effects, adding that omission of important adjectives was notable: 66% failed to mention that the incidents took place in an occupied territory. Hebron was described as a divided city, though 99% of its inhabitants are Palestinian, whereas Israel describes Jerusalem as "undivided" though a third of its inhabitants are Palestinian. Likewise, Jews live in "communities", Palestinians in "areas". In his view Israel had won the verbal war. In reporting the 2006 capture of Gilad Shalit on Israeli soil and his removal to the Gaza Strip, and Israel's response of detaining 60 Hamas members, half Palestinian West Bank parliamentarians, the former was said to have been kidnapped while the latter, seized from their beds in night raids and removed to Israeli prisons, were arrested.
According to 2008 analysis, Israeli newspaper reportage of violence, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirms, or says, while the Palestinians claim. The word "violence" itself connotes, according to Gershon Shafir, different events in Israeli and non-Israeli discourse: In the former, it is essentially dissociated from the 50-year-long practice of occupying Palestinian lands and used to refer only to an intermittent recourse to military methods to contain episodic upsurges of hostile Palestinian resistance, a means employed when the security of an otherwise peaceful state is said to be at stake. Thus, Israeli violence is restricted to responses to specific events like putting down the First and Second Intifadas, Israel's wars in Gaza and the Palestinian knifing attacks in 2015–2016, which were mainly the work of lone wolves. Shafir argues to the contrary that the occupation "is best understood as ongoing, day-in and day-out coercion, and its injuries include material, psychological, social, and bodily harm". And, he further claims, it is the coercive techniques of the institutions of occupation deployed to enforce submission that produce the occasional eruptions of "military operations" and wars. Violence is omnipresent reality for Palestinians, on the other hand, and found in all facets of the occupation. Consequently, he concludes, the most intense suppression of uprisings and wars cannot be considered in isolation from the occupation regime as an everyday experience.
Such omissions and alterations in the terms used are cited as an example of the pervasive use of euphemisms or loaded terminology in reportage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a problem which the International Press Institute thought sufficiently important by 2013 to issue a handbook to guide journalists through the semantic minefield. What Palestinians call "assassinations" – the shooting of people suspected of terrorism – Israel first called "pre-emptive strikes", then "pinpoint preventive operations", and also "extrajudicial punishments" or "long-range hot pursuit" until "focused prevention" was finally settled on. Offers to return "occupied territory" are "(painful) concessions" rather than a compliance with international law. For decades, Israeli announcements, speaking of arrests of children, never used the word "child". Even a 10-year-old shot by the IDF could be referred to as "a young man of ten." The use of the term "colonialism" by New Historians to describe Zionist settlement, a term likening the process to the French colonization of Algeria and the Dutch settlement of South Africa, has likewise been challenged, with some asserting that this is a demonizing term used in Palestinian textbooks. Robert Fisk argues that the descriptive language used by major political players and the press to describe the occupation is one of "desemanticization": occupied lands become "disputed territories"; colonies are described as "settlements", "neighbourhoods" "suburbs", "population centres"; dispossession and exile are referred to as "dislocation"/"displacement"; Israelis are shot by "terrorists" but when Palestinians are shot dead they die in "clashes"; the Wall becomes a "fence" or "security barrier". Suicide bombers for Palestinians are "martyrs" (shahid); Israel prefers "homicide bombers". Israel calls one of its uses of Palestinians as human shields a "neighbour procedure". If children are killed by Israeli fire, these events are often contextualized by the "shop-worn euphemism" (Fisk) of their being "caught in the crossfire". Deporting West Bankers to Gaza, which Myre describes as collective punishment for families who have siblings that participated in terror incidents, is described by Israel as an "order limiting the place of residency". Israeli military actions are customarily referred to as "responses" or "retaliations" to a Palestinian attack, even if it is Israel that strikes first.
The Intercept reported that in October 2024, on the outbreak of the Gaza war, an internal memo written by Philip Pan and other senior New York Times editors instructed the paper's journalists to restrict, or avoid or refrain generally from using the terms genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupied territory, Palestine, and refugee camps.Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, "Leaked NYT Gaza memo tells journalists to avoid words "Genocide," "Ethnic cleansing," and "Occupied Territory", The Intercept 15 April 2024:'The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel's war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo written by Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars...The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”'In an analysis of over 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, a gross imbalance was found with 'Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” . . . reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around. . . . The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. “Horrific” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.' Adam Johnson, Othman Ali, "Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and other major newspapers heavily favored Israel, analysis shows," The Intercept 9 January 2024
Media and academic coverage