Mass opposition to Israel grows despite media’s distortions

By Betsey Piette
June 12, 2025

Even before the historic October 7, 2023, uprising in Gaza, the imperialist media, whether in the U.S. or Europe, gave scant coverage to Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation. The corporate media’s clear bias branded Palestinian fighters as “terrorists” and few articles addressed the historic theft of an Indigenous people’s land in West Asia by European and U.S. colonialists, starting even before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

In the aftermath of October 7, there were no limits to the untruths put out by corporate media, which quickly became the loudspeakers for Israeli and U.S. politicians, who endlessly fabricated lies about the attack. From BBC to NPR to MSNBC, while refusing to denounce the U.S.-Israeli genocide against Palestinians and the concurrent Israeli destruction of the Gaza Strip, these media instead called it a “war between Israel and Hamas.”

The corporate media’s ability to get away with their distortion campaign stems in part from Israel’s deadly attacks for decades on journalists in Palestine who actually reported on what was happening.

In the 22 years before October 2023, Israeli soldiers murdered 18 Palestinian and two European journalists. It was typical that when Palestinian-U.S. reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp on May 11, 2022, not one Israeli soldier was ever held accountable.

Targeting journalists is a war crime

Since October 2023, the targeting of journalists has become a massacre. The Costs of War Project estimates that as of March 26, 2025, Israel Occupation Forces have killed 232 journalists and media workers in Gaza, with the overwhelming majority of them Palestinian.

In addition, Israel bombed journalists’ homes in Gaza, killing their family members. Early in June, three more journalists were killed in an Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.

The U.S.-Israeli genocidal war in Gaza is considered the deadliest for journalists in the 21st century and perhaps the 20th as well. To put this in perspective, the Freedom Forum’s “Journalists Memorial” database accounts for 67 journalists killed in World War II in the six years between 1939 and 1945. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) determined that 63 journalists were killed in the 20-year period of the war in Vietnam that ended in 1975.

The intentional targeting of journalists is considered a war crime.

Also, since October 2023 Israel has blocked foreign journalists from independently accessing Gaza. Media and press freedom groups call this step unprecedented. (France24.com, May 6) Yet few corporate media have challenged Israel’s pretexts for this restriction — which have included security concerns and the inability to guarantee journalists’ safety.

In a recent letter coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, 140 global leaders of news and press freedom organizations demanded that journalists from outside Gaza be given immediate, independent access to the territory. The BBC is among media outlets demanding access.

Eager to protect Israel from rulings by international courts charging them with genocide, on June 5 the Trump administration imposed sanctions on four International Criminal Court (ICC) judges for investigating war crimes by U.S. and Israeli forces in Gaza. The sanctions freeze any assets held and ban the judges from carrying out any transactions in U.S. banks and companies. (The Cradle, June 6)

Earlier in another vote aligning itself with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the U.S. was the sole member of the 15-seat United Nations Security Council to veto a resolution on June 4 demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Growing negative view of Israel in U.S.

Since taking office in January, Trump has escalated his predecessor Joe Biden’s effort to silence opposition to the U.S.-financed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Increasingly, students and others who participated in protests have been targeted for deportation, with several currently held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. Trump has threatened to withhold federal funds from universities, including Harvard, for not further censoring student protesters.

Yet these measures have not been able to stop what appears to be a global trend of opposition to Israel. Even in the U.S., more than half the people now view Israel negatively, according to a new global survey from the U.S.-based Pew Research Center released on June 3.

Pew’s survey reported: “In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel” compared to their last survey in 2013. The shift in the U.S. — the single largest financier and arms supplier to Israel — may be the most dramatic, with an 11-point surge since 2022.

While Pew found Israel is “overwhelmingly unpopular with majorities of Democrats, younger Americans and people of color,” there is an entirely new phenomenon for a majority of the U.S. population to overall view Israel negatively, despite heavy-handed censorship in the U.S. media and unconstitutional crackdowns on free speech critical of Israel on college campuses.

The survey found a “sharp rise in the number of Republican voters who view Israel unfavorably — from 27% to 37%,” showing that Israel is losing support across the political spectrum. (Pew Research, June 3)

As long as the intentional genocidal starvation of millions of people in Gaza continues unabated, the tanking public approval for U.S. support for Israel is a sign that while protests are effective, even more needs to be done. Not just politicians but corporate media outlets need to be constantly called into question for their support for U.S. aid to Israel and their censorship of student protesters.

And support for media outlets that do provide space for the voices of resistance against U.S./Israeli genocide needs to be prioritized.