Only a short drive away, the extreme distance between the protesters\u2019 view and that of most Israelis is made clear.<\/p>\n
In the southern border city of Sderot, which was attacked on October 7, and is frequently the target of rocket fire, a group of Israelis gathered at an observation deck overlooking Gaza to revel in its ruin.<\/p>\n
Dubbed the \u201cSderot cinema\u201d by Israelis online, watching Israel\u2019s bombardment has become a popular pastime; people take turns looking through tower viewers. Some bring popcorn and snacks, and some snap selfies as the thud of airstrikes echo in the distance.<\/p>\n
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Smoke rising above Gaza as seen from the Sderot observation point in southern Israel. Several rounds of artillery shelling could be heard being fired. – Zeena Saifi\/CNN<\/p>\n
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Israelis look through a binocular viewer at northern Gaza, as it is being pounded by Israel’s military. – David Hawley\/CNN<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at Gaza from here and see buildings still standing, it makes me upset. \u2026 I want Israel to continue until it\u2019s all flattened,\u201d Rafael Hemo, an onlooker told CNN.<\/p>\n
Hemo said he doesn\u2019t want any Arabs living next to Israel any longer, and laments the world\u2019s sympathy for Gaza after what happened on October 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter what we\u2019ve gone through, they need to be gone. No more Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and took more than 250 people hostage. There are 48 remaining in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.<\/p>\n
Many Israelis have struggled or refused to move past this one moment in time, viewing it as Israel\u2019s 9\/11. And until there is a sense of closure – the return of the hostages and answers to how it happened \u2013 they see little reason to contemplate what\u2019s happening on the other side.<\/p>\n
The media\u2019s role<\/p>\n
Nowhere is that clearer than at demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Saturdays in Israel have turned into a weekly ritual. Thousands converge every week on the streets of Tel Aviv to express their anger at the government and call for an end to the war.<\/p>\n
But while polls show<\/a> a majority of Israelis consistently back a ceasefire, at the Saturday protests, the main aim is the return of the remaining hostages. The killing of more than 66,000 Palestinians by Israel are rarely, if ever, mentioned by the protesters or displayed on banners.<\/p>\n A poll conducted in August by the aChord Center at the Hebrew University<\/a> of Jerusalem indicates that a majority of the Israeli public (62%) agrees with the claim that \u201cthere are no innocent bystanders in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n Israelis who do not share that view blame the country\u2019s media for fueling that rhetoric.<\/p>\n Dr. Ayala Panievsky, an Israeli author and researcher at City St. George\u2019s, University of London, told CNN that since the October 7 attacks, mainstream media participated in a campaign of \u201cdehumanization\u201d of Palestinians; outright promoting the notion that there is no innocent life in Gaza.<\/p>\n Focusing on Israel\u2019s most influential and popular<\/a> channel, Channel 12, Panievsky said Palestinian voices were \u201cerased\u201d. When the channel aired footage from Gaza, it would mostly show Israeli soldiers in combat, and rarely the human suffering of Palestinians, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything that haunted the imagination and nightmares of audiences worldwide was really censored out, just cut out of the Israeli mainstream media. \u2026 It created a huge gap between what Israelis know about this war and what everyone else does,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Co-author of a soon-to-be-published report by the Molad think tank<\/a> titled \u201cEyes Wide Shut: When the War on the Media Met the War in Gaza,\u201d Panievsky found through sampling and forensic analysis that only 3% of Channel 12\u2019s reports on the war during its first six months showed human suffering in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people they trusted their entire lives to tell them what\u2019s happening are telling them, without words, that there is nothing you should be worried about there,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Haaretz, Israel\u2019s longest running newspaper, is one of the few news websites that has covered Palestinian suffering in Gaza extensively since the beginning of the war.<\/p>\n It carries a social cost for its journalists.<\/p>\n Nir Hasson, the paper\u2019s Jerusalem correspondent, says he receives death threats and hate mail whenever he reports stories from Gaza. The anger directed at him is greatest, however, when he publishes testimonies from Israeli soldiers admitting to atrocities in Gaza, because it\u2019s something people \u201ccan\u2019t ignore\u201d.<\/p>\n He called it a \u201ctotal failure\u201d on society for not seeing other people as human beings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trauma of October 7 is only half of the answer,\u201d Hasson adds. \u201cI think the other half is the dehumanization of the Palestinians in the Israeli discourse for many years. Decades of occupation and apartheid, and that\u2019s what you get in the end,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Panievsky has a similar view. Since before October 7, she said the Israeli government had been applying political pressure on the media, compelling journalists to omit certain words from their broadcasts, such as \u201coccupation\u201d and replacing them with government talking points.<\/p>\n As a result, media coverage of the occupied West Bank and Gaza was greatly reduced before the war.<\/p>\n The idea of an Israeli press facing unprecedented pressure found support in Reporters Without Borders 2025 World Press Freedom Index. \u201cPress freedom, media plurality and editorial independence have been increasingly restricted in Israel since the start of the war in Gaza,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Pushed to extremes<\/p>\n While footage and photographs of starving Palestinians in Gaza have horrified audiences abroad, inside Israel they have been dismissed by many as manipulated or untrue.<\/p>\n One popular term used by Israelis to deny images of suffering emerging from Gaza is \u201cPallywood,\u201d a portmanteau combining Palestinian and Hollywood, the home of acting. Online, Israelis often insist the images are staged; if not, they argue Hamas is to blame.<\/p>\n
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