It’s been a long time since we’ve seen news coverage as shallow as the Israeli media’s coverage of the pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the United States in recent days.

In a segment that aired on April 24, for example, Channel 12’s Yuna Leibzon showed footage of the protests outside Columbia University’s campus: viewers saw a handful of people chanting that Tel Aviv should be burned to the ground, and a lone masked protester holding a sign bearing an antisemitic statement. The implication was clear: these individuals are representative of all the protesters, and the entire pro-Palestine movement is illegitimate.

Neria Kraus, Channel 13’s correspondent in New York, also reported from Columbia’s campus. In her coverage, she used three terms interchangeably: “pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” “anti-Israel demonstrations,” and “antisemitic demonstrations.” The message, again, was clear: to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel is to be antisemitic.

smearing the student demonstrations on U.S. campuses as one big frenzy of antisemitism is unserious journalism. 

Serious journalism would provide the context, which the Israeli media has failed to do since October 7 — and, it must be said, a long time before that.

Source: Israeli media’s inevitable hysteria over U.S. campus protests