Venomous verbiage and outright lies are today’s easiest access weapons of choice targeting the Jewish state.

By Grant Gochin

In an era where truth perishes first in the crucible of ideological warfare, Pallywood – the Palestinian staging of fake injuries, deaths, and atrocities to demonize Israel – alongside the UN, NGOs, and authoritative bodies unleashes a relentless torrent of lies against Israel. These calculated deceptions are intended to delegitimize Israel, ignite global hatred, and erode legitimate and civilized discourse.

Staged videos and genocide smears recycle discredited narratives without consequence; once exposed as frauds, the sources should lose all credibility forever, yet these liars pivot and spew venom anew, without shame. Their masks must be ripped away, and they must be held accountable for the bloodshed fueled by their mendacity.

This media assault constitutes the 8th front in the global war on Jews, battling for truth amid seven physical arenas: Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, West Bank, Syria, Iraq, and Iran – now joined by Türkiye’s severance of ties on August 29, 2025, as declared by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Betrayal extends to proxies like South Africa, whose actions expose deep integration with Iran’s anti-Israel agenda.

STAGING VICTIMHOOD

At the heart of Pallywood lies the staging of phony scenes portraying Israel as a monstrous entity, a deadly tactic designed to fabricate victimhood and spark anti-Jewish violence. Notable examples include Hamas falsely blaming Israel for the Al-Ahli Hospital blast – a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket – exploiting media lags to spread lies.

AP and CNN amplify these falsehoods by parroting Hamas, inflating casualty figures while ignoring terrorism, a bias rooted in antisemitism that has consistently endangered Jews. As a singular example, a recent Facebook video provides visual evidence of Pallywood staging, showing actors simulating child injuries with props, further exposing this manipulative tactic to a gullible global audience.

The world media eagerly consumed and inflated the lies of Green Beret Anthony Aguilar, a former US soldier who claimed to witness Israeli Defense Forces shooting at starving Palestinian crowds at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid hubs. His July 25, 2025, BBC interview alleging “brutality and indiscriminate force” against an “unarmed, starving population” was repeated ad nauseam by outlets like The Guardian and Al Jazeera, despite the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and IDF labeling his claims “categorically false” and citing his termination for misconduct. This fabricated narrative, amplified without scrutiny, morphed into de facto truth, amplifying the demonization of Israel and showcasing media’s willingness to prioritize sensationalism over fact-checking.

Photos of children with genetic disorders have been cynically repurposed by anti-Israel activists and media like Reuters and BBC to portray Israel as starving Gaza’s population. These images, stripped of medical context and circulated widely, exploit viewers’ emotions, turning a medical tragedy into a propaganda tool.

These fabrications thrive as global audiences crave anti-Israel sensationalism over factual reporting, weaponizing manipulation with devastating effect. The Palestinian “lie industry” persistently twists narratives, suppressing the truth. Discredited hoaxes demand permanent banishment, but the perpetrators resurface unaccountably. Today, almost the only reason to check mainstream news is to discern the precise ways people are being deceived.

LAUNDERING LIES

The UN has become a conduit for laundering anti-Israel disinformation, violating its neutrality by endorsing biased Palestinian claims of Gaza famine and genocide – tactics reminiscent of the “big lie” strategy that fuels antisemitism.

In Melanie Phillip’s piece “The Indestructible Myth of Famine in Gaza,” she condemns the blind acceptance of the UN’s genocidal portrayal, arguing it ignores reality. The call to “Dismantle the United Nations” insists that such distortions necessitate a complete overhaul or dissolution.

Western governments recycle these UN-Hamas narratives, vilifying Israelis. Retracted reports and biased sourcing have permanently discredited the UN, yet it persists unabated in its deceitful campaign.

The UN’s declaration of a “man-made famine” in Gaza belies a deeper struggle for narrative control and aid dominance. In May 2024, Israel and the US launched the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as an alternative to UNRWA, but the UN denounced it as “fake”, refusing cooperation and leaving food trucks stranded. The IPC, meanwhile, tweaked its famine criteria, adopting a MUAC shortcut and halving the child malnutrition threshold from 30% to 15%, a move that eases declarations amid restricted access and which critics attribute to political motives. Recent analysis by Israel’s Foreign Ministry exposes IPC falsifications, including 182 fabricated “virtual deaths”, misuse of prohibited MUAC data, cherry-picking from 7,519 of 15,749 surveyed children, and burying surveys showing no famine -proof of a deliberate agenda to demonize Israel. The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, falsely claimed 14,000 child deaths in days, retracting the statement after 2.5 million views, though the damage was irreversible. This is a constant strategy to place lies into the public domain and generate hate and outrage against Israel. Facts be damned!

WEAPONISING WORDS

European-funded NGOs amplify fabrications to fuel the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International propagate debunked claims deliberately overlooking rocket attacks and terrorism. Since October 7, they have inverted reality, accusing Israel of genocide to deflect from Hamas atrocities, while organizations like Defense for Children International spread known falsehoods online.

These NGOs weaponize rhetoric for International Criminal Court (ICC) lawfare, slapping apartheid labels via staged incidents and centralizing BDS with “collective punishment” lies, all funded by the EU and private foundations while omitting Israel’s right to self-defense. Phillips condemns this “unprecedented lie campaign demonizing Israel,” urging a robust counter-narrative.

LOADED LANGUAGE

Language is loaded as “genocide” and “starvation” are warped to target Israel. The UN labels Gaza warfare “consistent with genocide”, reinterpreting casualties and aid as extermination while ignoring Hamas’s role in shortages. Human Rights Watch claims “extermination/genocide” via starvation, disregarding deliveries, while Amnesty amends thresholds to fit the “starvation for genocide” narrative.

Despite exposure of the lies, the press persists regardless of the truth. Enough is enough – tear down the edifice of deceit, seize back the narrative, and let unassailable truth reign supreme. We stand at the epicenter of a global pogrom, a sinister transnational resurgence of antisemitism masquerading as righteous justice, twisting historical hatreds into a sanctimonious moral crusade. George Orwell’s most dystopian imagination pales before the orchestrated media war against Israel, a masterclass in manipulation where every lie is polished into propaganda, every distortion weaponized to vilify, and every shred of truth buried beneath a deluge of orchestrated falsehoods.

About the writer:

Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Gaza  has liberated people across the world to openly express their hate for Jews.

By David E. Kaplan

It sounds disgusting because it is disgusting.

The more pictures and video clips of suffering Gazans flood the media market, the more people across the world feel free – nay I say feel “liberated” – to once again publicly and proudly release their suspended or suppressed hatred of Jews. No longer the type of ‘civilized’, accepted or sanitized antipathy of the 1950s and 1960s that I recall from my native South Africa in the shape of refusing membership to Jews at golf clubs or being called “Hymie” at school.  No, Gaza has now presented a free pass to all across this planet that Jews anywhere are legitimate targets for abuse and very much worse.

The result is they turf you off planes even if you are a group of 50 French Jewish youth movement kids returning home as a Spanish airline saw fit to do; kick you out of restaurants and camp sites, refuse your booking at hotels, spit at you, punch and kick, set fire to you when you are in a synagogue and even shoot you dead as you leave a Jewish event. This is not the Germany of the 1930s but much of the world in 2025 and Gaza opened the floodgates of this ‘liberated’, unabashed hatred! While the verb ‘liberate’  would normally be understood to mean “to free”, here it is a return  to the automatic position of antipathy held over millennia now explosively unleased by Gaza.

The more the people of Gaza appear via the media to be suffering, the freer the people of the world  feel to safely return  to their default position of not only comfortably despising Jews but publicly expressing it – whether verbal or by violence. There is a calibrated correlation. When confronted over their dastardly acts against random Jews whether in Europe, UK, US, Canada or Australia, they respond in amplified verbiage containing the word “GAZA” – as if it’s an obvious satisfactory explanation or accepted legal defense. As he was dragged away after gunning down dead two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, 31-year-old Chicago-born Elias Rodrigues, shouted:

“…I did it for Gaza.”

This is reminiscent of the Middle Ages when killing Jews was not a universally illegal act and was often not punished, and sometimes even encouraged by authorities.  For much of the Middle Ages, the GAZA then was the Black Death, when pogroms against Jews were permitted or even instigated by government officials across Europe.  What has really changed when corruption of the truth back then and corrupting the truth today results in the same  mass hatred leading to persecution of Jews?

Google ‘current rise in antisemitism’  – as I did – and you will be instantly met with endless links  to articles like:

• Gaza conflict leads to rise in antisemitism

• Reflection & Resilience: A Year of Unprecedented Antisemitism

• U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Skyrocketed 360% in Aftermath of Attack in Israel

• Driven by Israel-Gaza War, Antisemitism in U.S. Reached an Unprecedented High in 2023

• Protracted war in Gaza partly to blame for ‘unprecedented’ wave of Australian antisemitic attacks, experts say

• SWC Alarmed by Unprecedented Surge in Anti-Semitic Incidents in Germany

• Huge rise in antisemitic abuse in UK since Hamas attack, says charity

What do all these articles – and can go on and on –  have in common? All record increasing violence against Jews unleashed by the media mania’s contrived coverage of Gaza portraying Israelis as Nazis on a murderous spree of innocent Palestinians.  Intentionally neglected in this narrative is that Israel:

– is engaged in an existential war with an enemy that perpetrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

– that this enemy had proudly pledged to repeat such massacres in the future and

– that they are holding hostages in horrendous conditions facing imminent death.

FUELING THE FRENZY

With the mass hysteria against Jews persisting unabated, it does beg the question that if the war in Gaza was suddenly brought to an end, would the incidents of antisemitism commensurately dissipate? Probably because there would be much less visual media coverage which is fueling the frenzy.  But then again, it would only be a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ that some other peg will appear for willing folk to happily hang their antisemitism on.

All this begs the question:

Have we crossed a bridge beyond what Israelis would commonly respond with “Kacha ze” (ככה זה) meaning “This is how it is” or has a threshold been breached where the lives of Jews globally are in mortal danger? Simply put:

Is there today no safe place for Jews anywhere on this planet without the provision of serious security?

A disturbing harbinger is the language of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who after accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza said:

“We have no atomic bombs to stop Israel”.

Accusing Israel of a false genocide, the leader of a country that has a notorious history of antisemitism, threatens the Jewish state with a real genocide. The Spanish PM laments, “If only I had an atom bomb.”

The Iberian prime minister’s careful word choice reveals his deep-rooted national inclination – what the Spanish Inquisition did not ultimately achieve – wiping out any trace of Jews!

With the way the world today looks upon Jews is an unsettling reminder why there is not only the need of an Israel but a strong defensible Israel that can safeguard a Jewish future to ensure in the words of Israel’s illustrious late foreign minister, Abba Eban:

“Israel’s future will be longer than its past”

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Misguided Western concepts for the Middle East and hope for Gaza

By Neville Berman

Despite the superb oratory ability of Winston Churchill to rally Britain during the Second World War, the Conservative Party and Churchill were defeated in the 1945 elections. Clement Atlee, the Labour Party leader became Prime Minister and Ernest Bevin was appointed as Foreign Secretary.  

Bevin was determined to see to it that the Balfour Declaration, with its promise of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine” would not be implemented. He placed restrictions on the number of Jews who could immigrate to Palestine, and implemented a naval blockade to prevent shipments of arms for the Jews in Palestine. In addition, Britain armed, trained, and sent a British general by the name of Glubb Pasha to lead the Jordanian army known as the Arab Legion.  

In February 1947, faced with continuing violent opposition by both Jews and Arabs in Palestine to British administration, Britain decided to terminate its Mandate and hand it back to the United Nations to decide what should be done with the territory.

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted on Resolution 181 known as the Partition Plan for Palestine. The plan called for two separate states, a Jewish State and an Arab State. The word Arab and not Palestinian was used as the term Palestinian referred to both Jews and Arabs living in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea at the time.

In 1947, there were 57 members of the United Nations. The Resolution was adopted by 33 votes in favour, with 13 objections,10 abstentions and 1 country, Thailand, not attending. All 10 Muslim countries that were members of the UN voted against the resolution. Cuba, Greece and India joined the ten Muslim countries in objecting. The vote was carried by a 72% majority. The area offered to the Jews was a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea and the desert area south of Beersheba stretching down to Eilat on the Red Sea. Almost none of the biblical land of Israel was offered to the Jews. Despite this, the Jews accepted the plan. The Arabs rejected it outright.

What is often overlooked is that the Partition Plan included an important third partition. The cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, would be placed under international administration. The intention of this clause was to ensure that the Jews would not control this area and that all the main Christian holy sites would be controlled by international administration. It seems reasonable to assume that the words “international administration” was used as a synonym for European Christian countries controlling these important religious sites.

This clause ensured that the Partition Plan received the approval that it got. Despite the fact that the Catholic Church had established its headquarters in Rome, and other Christian break away movements were also established in Europe, Jerusalem and Betlehem will always remain central to Christianity. With the exception of the Evangelical Christians in America, most Christian churches oppose Jewish sovereignty over the holy sites of Christendom and especially sovereignty over Judea (West Bank) which is part of the heartland of biblical Israel. This position is evident in the latest rush of western countries to support a Palestinian State that will encompass Judea.  

The United States of America, led by President Truman, was the first country to recognize the Jewish State. However, the American State Department under George Marshall, was opposed to this decision. He believed that supporting Israel would offend the Arabs and jeopardise Arab oil supplies to America. Marshall refused to supply Israel with a single bullet. This policy continued for the next 19 years. It was only after the Six Days War in 1967, that America began supplying Israel with military assistance. 

On May 14, 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine ended. The last act by the British before leaving, was to hand the British built fort at Latrun to the Arabs. The fort controlled the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The British were determined to see to it that the Jewish State would not get Jerusalem.   

The same day that Britain withdrew, Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the sovereign State of Israel. Five Arab countries immediately launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state. Both Britain and America were of the opinion that Israel would not survive more than a month. After that, there would be a huge outcry of crocodile tears proclaiming how sorry the world was for the latest annihilation of the Jews. What they had overlooked was that the Jews in Israel were not alone. Millions of Jews in the diaspora supported Israel. American Jews donated the money needed to buy arms and fighter aircraft from Czechoslovakia. Thousands of Jewish volunteers from all over the world came to help Israel.

In 1948, six hundred thousand Jews were living in Israel.  They miraculously managed to repulse the attacks of 5 Arab armies. The Arab Legion took East Jerusalem and Judea, the area now known as the West Bank. Not a single country accused Jordan of occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Jordan immediately expelled all the Jews living in East Jerusalem and destroyed all the synagogues in the area under their control. Israel paid a heavy price for its independence, losing 1% of its Jewish population. After the war, Ben Gurion paid tribute to those Jews in the diaspora that supported Israel. He stated:

 “You came to Israel in our greatest hour of need. Without you we could not have succeeded.”

In the years following the war, over 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries. All their property and belongings were confiscated. Over 650,000 arrived penniless in Israel. They had lived in the Middle East for thousands of years and spoke fluent Arabic and used Hebrew for prayers. They were immediately granted Israeli citizenship. The beginning of the ingathering and return of the Jews to the land of Israel as predicted by the Jewish Prophets was clearly evident. 

After the Israeli victory in the War of Independence, not a single Arab country wanted to accept Palestinian refugees as immigrants. They were placed in refugee camps to be cynically used to threaten Israel. The UN established a special body called UNRWA that has a mandate not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but to perpetuate it. Palestinian refugee rights have been extended to all descendants of the original refugees. There are over 100 million refugees in the world. None of them have the rights of Palestinian refugees.

In 1948, Israel did not gain control of all of Jerusalem or Judea. The Christian world could live with that. In1967, President Nasser, the charismatic leader of Egypt promoted Pan Arabism and threatened Israel with annihilation. On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israel in a pre-emptive air force attack, destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force on the ground.  In six days, Israel gained control of all of Jerusalem, the Golan heights, all of Judea, (West Bank) Gaza and the Sinai. 

This created a huge problem for the Church, especially the Catholic Church, that had been preaching for over 2,000 years that Christianity had replaced Judaism, and that the Jews were a wandering people without a homeland, and had been forsaken by God. The events that took place between 1948 and 1967 clearly demonstrated that none of this was true. In 1988, Jordan renounced its claim to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The rush to recognize a Palestinian State by Western countries in the next UN General assembly, will increase the tsunami of hatred and antisemitism that is presently spreading across the world. It will not solve anything. No amount of appeasement will satisfy militant Islamists. They are not interested in co-existence. Their aim is a world dominated by Sharia law. Democracy, the rule of law, human rights and women’s rights are the very opposite of the teachings of the holy Quaran. Militant Islam threatens the very foundational pillars of Western civilization from within. It’s time to face reality. The worst possible decision is appeasement.

There are 22 Arab countries in the Middle East. Creating a non- viable 23rd Arab country called Palestine is not a solution. It will not solve the Palestinian refugee problem. It will provide another base for Iran, Turkey and Russia to spread chaos across the middle east. The situation in the middle east will become even more complicated and explosive. The UN now has 195 member countries. It is obsessed with demonizing the only Jewish State in the world. It has lost all its moral authority. The Palestinians have refused 5 offers of a state living side by side with Israel. The best that the Palestinians can now be offered is autonomy in Area A and part of Area B of the Oslo Accords and autonomy in Gaza.  

Surprisingly, Gaza can actually become a success story. There is a high probability of huge deposits of gas off the coast of Gaza. Drilling will cost hundreds of millions and will never take place if Hamas is in control of Gaza. The funding for rebuilding Gaza should start with the confiscation of the billions of dollars that the Hamas leaders living in exile have stolen from the people of Gaza. If gas is discovered, loans and grants to fully rebuild a peaceful and prosperous Gaza will be forthcoming. The return of all the hostages and the removal of Hamas is the prerequisite for solving the problems in Gaza. Without getting rid of Hamas, there will never be progress. Now is the time for the people in Gaza to seize the opportunity that has arisen. They need to realize that a better future is in their hands. They need to help kick Hamas out of Gaza.

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

When the media turn into stenographers for Hamas rather than trusted sources for information.

By Rolene Marks

A wise person once said that there “are none so blind who will not see”.  If ever there was evidence of this, it has been the press coverage during Israel’s war with Hamas. We are inundated with headlines that routinely place blame on Israel and abdicate Hamas of any responsibility for their role in this war. Media outlets quote the Hamas-controlled casualty figures as fact and the latest slander is the accusation of a policy of mass starvation, despite the transparent sharing of information by the IDF’s COGAT unit, responsible for humanitarian aid. The heartbreaking images of Palestinian children who are emaciated has been proven to be of patients suffering from congenital diseases.

Facts be damned!

Many are wondering if the media have become stenographers for Hamas rather than trusted sources for information. We believe that we can fight Hamas’s carefully crafted propaganda campaign with facts; and in an ideal world, that is how it should be – but in the last two years, we have seen a frightening new phenomenon with the legacy media. The failure to report factually.

Is it lazy journalism – or something a lot more insidious?

It starts in the field.

We believe that if we take the foreign press to see the killing fields of the south, or the thousands of pallets of uncollected aid inside Gaza, that they will somehow see our side and what we are fighting.

Sadly, many have already written their stories before they see the evidence. I know this because in the last 9 months I have experienced it a few times when I have joined colleagues to cover events. Two specific incidents remain burned into my mind.

I recall a visit to Nir Oz on day 360 of the war with a group of foreign press and the few of us Israeli journalists. Nearly a year later, the stench of death assailed us as we walked through the ravaged Kibbutz. Standing outside the decimated home of Oded and Yocheved Lipschitz, we all stood listening to their daughter-in-law Rita share how the family hoped that whoever held him captive, recognized that he was one of several volunteers who would drive Palestinian children needing cancer treatment to Israeli hospitals. One of the foreign journalists, big grin on his face turned to another and said, “a little bit of destruction in this neighbourhood.” The journalist he directed this comment to, grinned in response.  It is impossible for me to express the anger and hurt witnessing that exchange. In February 2025, the Lipschitz family would lay Oded to rest. He was murdered in captivity and his remains were released alongside those of Shiri Bibas and her two flame-haired children, Kfir and Ariel in a grotesque ceremony during the ceasefire and hostage release agreement earlier this year.

The more recent example involves Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC. It is no secret that tensions between Jerusalem and Canberra have become increasingly tense since 7 October. Few can forget Foreign Minister Wong’s refusal to visit the decimated communities affected by the massacre, or the public trading of criticisms between government representatives of both countries in the wake of Australia’s stated intention to recognize a Palestinian state at next month’s UNGA.

Three weeks ago, I was part of a small press contingent taken into the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing to document the thousands of pallets of humanitarian aid that the UN and various aid agencies have been very slow to collect, while routinely accusing Israel of initiating a policy of mass starvation. Aid trucks with their drivers in them waiting for the greenlight from the UN, idled nearby and a UN vehicle was stationed close.

My report:

Journalists were given free rein to walk around and document what we were seeing. While we were under the watchful eye of the IDF there to protect us and answer any questions we may have had, none of the soldiers inhibited us in any way or told us that we HAD to share any specific information. What we witnessed spoke for itself. It spoke to everyone it seemed, except for the two correspondents from ABC.

Standing amongst the towers of aid marked UN, UNICEF and World Food Programme, with a solemn face, the ABC journalist said:

 “This is the face that Israel wants you to see how it is prosecuting the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

The reporter continued with his scathing report, trying to cast doubt on Israel’s claims. Several takes were needed to make it sufficiently withering in its delivery. The insinuation was that it was an orchestrated attempt by Israel to brush off accusations of deliberate starvation. Those of us who witnessed it were astounded. We could not believe what we were seeing.

Had they not seen exactly what we had? Mountains of food, hygiene kits, baby food and so much more rotting in the blazing heat waiting for collection by the very entities accusing Israel of starvation? It was no coincidence that once safely deposited back inside Israel; the two Australian ABC correspondents  beat a rather hasty retreat.

These two incidents demonstrate the alarming trend in agenda-based reporting. We must hold our media accountable to share facts and not editorial or personal agendas. Misrepresentation of facts and deliberate misinformation is creating a terrifying global climate of antisemitism and misguided foreign policy decisions. We cannot dismiss this trend – our safety is a stake. We need to hold our media accountable.

As media consumers, we are not powerless; we have agency and need to demand better from our press.

Lives depend on it – both Israelis and Palestinians.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).