Over 16 months have passed since the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
Hamas and its supporters, at least until recently, have continued to torture live hostages and hold the bodies of those they killed in captivity. Despite the 5,000 miles between Connecticut and Israel, the atrocities of October 7 have never been far away. Over the past year we’ve increasingly seen hateful acts against Jews on our side of the world as well. Declared “intifadas”, keffiyeh-clad militants denying safe passage through public spaces, and threats against Jews have mimicked and echoed that infamous day on each day that followed.
In Connecticut, antisemitism reached a new high in 2023. The Connecticut ADL reported a record 184 anti-Jewish harassment and vandalism instances in more than 80 communities. There’s no doubt that October 7 and its aftermath were the catalyst for this surge, but one of the offenders fostering anti-Israel, anti-Jewish bias is the very source reporting it: the news media.
“Mislabeling the Battlefield, “ a recent study by 50 Global Research, examined top English language news sources and found they have consistently failed to provide critical neutrality, data, and context on the war.
This isn’t just an international news problem. It’s happening daily here in Connecticut. Recently, during a segment about the war, a Hartford region TV reporter repeated false Hamas talking points: “45,000 are reported dead in the war in Gaza.” Since this reporter wasn’t on the ground reporting from Gaza, we can only infer that the reporter was pulling this information from a larger news service that doesn’t have independent reporters in the Middle East. One such news service uses similar inaccurate boilerplate language in almost every article about the war:
“The war in Gaza has killed xx,xxx, half of whom are women and children, health authorities say. Israel claims yy,yyy of the dead are fighters without providing evidence.”
Look familiar? This theme appeared in nearly every major newspaper in the state multiple times each week for the last year.
Let’s set the record straight. The “health authorities” mentioned by the news service are run by Hamas; the figures are not verified (or even still verifiable); and there are well-documented significant errors. Researcher Andrew Fox, a three-tour Afghanistan combat veteran and Royal Military Academy senior lecturer, did a deeper dive and found a multitude of problems with the “health authority” data, including patterns of male deaths being recorded as female, adults being recorded as children, and the inclusion of all deaths -–by disease, war, or natural causes–- being attributed to the war. In cases where an age is unknown, the records reflect “0,” leading to overreporting deaths of minors.
The bottom line: The numbers aren’t reliable, and the media should admit that rather than accepting and peddling them.
Since shortly after the Hamas invasion, news organizations have printed Hamas propaganda as accepted fact without qualification or independent verification. In contrast, when Israel provides information to reporters, if it appears at all, it goes with a caveat that it is provided “without evidence.” Major news organizations report inflammatory and inaccurate information and created false narratives, the most ludicrous of which is that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians -–this is demonstrably false.
No one is shocked that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are waging a deadly propaganda war. Reporters in Gaza face overt threats from Hamas that, predictably, color their writing, or what they do not write. They may have access to a battlefield, but make no mistake, there are consequences to them, their outlets and fellow reporters if they report or photograph the wrong news. Let us all remember that, according to Reuters, June 8, 2021, Hamas and a major U.S. news organization shared an office tower in Gaza in 2021. “Israel says Gaza tower that housed AP doubled as Hamas electronic warfare site.”
Where news services are running articles that fail to meet journalistic standards, our local media should look to other sources for validated and accurate information. There are many such sources. Experts from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East appear on podcasts, You Tube, and in major news magazines; humanitarian aid data is published daily; and journalists embedded with the IDF bring out first-hand information from the war zone. In a democracy like Israel, these reporters are encouraged to shine a light on what they see, even if it’s something Israel got wrong. Perhaps especially then.
Late 2024 brought antisemitic slurs on buildings at Southern Connecticut State University; 2025 started with a plastic skull bearing an anti-Jewish message in New Haven. I applaud the Connecticut news media locally for reporting these instances to the public. Hate does not belong here.
With bias against Jews and Israel at record highs, we all should help, including monitoring the national media and their local media customers.
Mark Fishman of Fairfield is President of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting)