PARDON MS GREEN, YOUR SLIP IS SHOWING

No, not wardrobe malfunctions but naked bias in Daily Maverick reportage on Israel.

By Lawrence Nowosenetz

In an editorial on 27 August 2025 Daily Maverick (DM) editor Jillian Green pompously and self-righteously proclaims:

“We don’t, and won’t shy away from reporting on Gaza, famine and the pressing power of now.”

Oh really? 

It seems that the editorial and journalistic staff of DM are stung by allegations in social media and by the public of “perceptions of bias” about coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. No perception. The bias is real and in your face. A previous version of this article was sent by this writer to DM which was neither published nor acknowledged.  

This is what the article said under the title of:

REPORTING ABOUT GAZA

Factual reporting from war zones has always been problematic as the editor acknowledges. Douglas Murray, a veteran and respected war journalist however points out that reporters and correspondents used to issue disclaimers when reporting from war zones under repressive regimes as their reports were subject to regime restrictions. Gaza under the rule of Hamas is no democracy even during peace time with:

• No press freedom
• No rule of law and
• No right of protest.

Reporters and writers who were too independent or were critical of Hamas were suppressed and even violently punished.

The Daily Maverick, like all the Western media, rely on reports from local journalists and foreign Western journalists in Gaza who suffer from the same restrictions. They are not at liberty to present a balanced picture or one which reflects adversely on Hamas. Ask Palestinian journalist Omar Abd Rabou who is reaching out on X for help to leave Gaza. His ‘mistake’ was that he was critical of Hamas. Frightened for his life, on August 27, Rabou published an abject apology:

 “…not to publish anything against the movement or engage in matters related to the war on Gaza.” 

News from Gaza is distributed worldwide by reputable news agencies. Compromised and unverified reporting is uncritically accepted and then processed into solemn official reports of UN agencies and NGOs with the stamp of authenticity. And so, the mill of disinformation, half truths and outright falsehoods grind on.  DM does not advise of expected journalistic caveats such as:

 – no independent corroboration was available or

– the Gaza Ministry of Health data may be unreliable.

Little coverage of professional and reputable sources which are contrary to the genocide narrative appear in DM. This is so despite that COGAT data from the IDF unit tasked with humanitarian aid in Gaza is publicly and easily accessible as well scholarly and professional refutations of starvation, war crimes and mens rea (criminal intent) on the part of Israel.   

GENOCIDE

Nothing illustrates the fragility of DM’s sources more that its reporting of an alleged genocide in Gaza. It offers no informed analysis by Western military experts such as Andrew Fox, John Spencer and Richard Kemp, senior officers with combat experience in asymmetrical and urban warfare in the Middle East. No careful examination and critical analysis of the fatality statistics in Gaza mainly sourced from the Hamas Ministry of Health. There are published research papers questioning the flawed methodology and basic inaccuracies such as the blurring of combatant and civilian fatalities. DM should pause to question the paucity of images of overcrowded morgues or piles of dead bodies as in Holocaust photographs.   Recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) adopted a resolution accusing Israel of genocide.  DM should not have shied away from revealing in its reporting that the resolution was passed by ONLY 126 members of the organisations total 500 members – A vote of roughly 20%! This is hardly a resolution of resounding legitimacy further undermined by the dubious membership of this ‘scholarly’ association which has come to light.   DM should consider the three D’s as an editorial guideline about Gaza. Natan Sharansky differentiated genuine criticism of Israel from antisemitism by asking whether the coverage constitutes:

–  Demonization – typecasting Israel as intrinsically evil, lawless and criminal

– Delegitimisation – questioning Israel’s right to exist as sovereign Jewish state

–  Double standards – ignoring or overlooking worse conduct by its enemies or others and inconsistent application of international law. Here it should be noted Hamas is not a signatory to any international humanitarian conventions nor does it consider itself bound by customary international law of war and human rights. Indeed “resistance by the Palestinian people by all means available at their disposal against an illegal occupying power is a legitimate act” according to UN Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, who was recently in South Africa where she called for the “suspension of all ties with Israel.”

FAKE NEWS ABOUT GAZA

Fake news about Israel’s war conduct abounds. Every now and then a glimmer of truth emerges. We remember the al-Ahli Hospital air strike report wrongly blamed on Israel. A favourite and lurid narrative is famine and starvation in Gaza. A Bild photographer captured the staging of a fake image showing Gazans clamouring for food. Daily Maverick seems to have shied from reporting this. It certainly undermines the media narrative of starvation. DM shied away too from wide exposure of the fraudulent images of emaciated children presented as starving children. Evidence revealed showing that photographs widely showed in the international media of emaciated Gazan children as being fraudulent as they suffered from medical conditions unrelated to malnutrition. Days after Zakaria Ayoub al-Mutawaq emerged a poster child for Gaza starvation after a photo of his emaciated state appeared in The New York Times, the paper had to issue an apology when the child’s medical records were found and made public. It revealed that al-Mutawaq was suffering not from a lack of food but from a congenital disorder thus truthfully revealing his malnourished appearance. The original picture shows both the mother and the brother of the child looking well nourished and completely healthy. They were cropped out of the published photo. No thanks to the Daily Maverick for its failure to expose this fake news maliciously designed to demonise Israel.

‘STARVED’ OF THE TRUTH

According to the latest figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, (subject to serious reservations about accuracy) as of early August 2025 the figure of deaths by starvation is 188, including 94 children.  

Contrast this with South Africa during peace time that according to DM an average of 30 children die daily from starvation. Nearly 11,000 deaths a year according to South African human rights and social justice activist, Mark Heywood.      

UNICEF says chronic undernourishment is responsible for over half the deaths of South African children under five. One in three children in the country is physically stunted from lack of food. Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, an interdisciplinary and child-centred applied research unit, reveals that 4 million South African children are growth stunted, and 10 million go hungry every single day. South Africa’s claim regarding child malnutrition and death through starvation in Gaza is so deeply flawed and morally compromised that one would expect DM to not evade or deviously dodge from pointing this out.

GAZA IS NOT ONE OF THE GRAVEST HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES

The war in Palestine, according to the editor, has escalated into one of the gravest human rights issues of our time. This is biased and risible. It has become an article of faith, a rallying point screamed by the protest mobs worldwide so that questioning voices are drowned out. Many would take exception and wish to challenge this benighted and bigoted view in a calm, rational, factual and objective manner. Ms Green cites as a reason for not allowing publication of contrary DM’spublication of disparaging and misleading coverage about Israel is itself a form of warfare going by the name of propaganda. It is an assault on fairness, objectivity, rationality and factual rigour.

Indeed, Ms Green is utterly and culpably wrong in failing to discern that in our lifetime there have been and still are far graver human rights catastrophes, war crimes and genocides.  According to the IPC, Gaza is facing a “confirmed famine” with half a million people facing phase 5 classification (catastrophic).  Indeed? This is factually contested and does not take into account Hamas culpability in exacerbating food scarcity, a topic which deserves careful and balanced coverage.  Starvation and gross well-documented human rights abuses abound in the world.  All on a far greater scale by any metric than Gaza.  Here are some really gross catastrophes:      

SUDAN

The three-year conflict in Sudan has become one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century, leaving millions of women, children and displaced families suffering from violence, food insecurity and the collapse of essential services.  More than 150,000 people have died.  According to the UN, 30 million people are in need of humanitarian aid.  Famine is affecting children in displacement camps. The displaced population, people forced from their homes in Sudan is 11.3 million. Briefing ambassadors in the Security Council, the UN’s top relief official Tom Fletcher said “women and girls are being raped, people being mutilated and killed – with utter impunity.”

After overrunning the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) in the last major stronghold in Darfur, RSF fighters moved house to house, with “credible reports,” says Fletcher, “of widespread executions” as civilians attempted to escape. In the Saudi Maternity Hospital alone – one of numerous health facilities targeted in the fighting – nearly 500 patients and their companions were reportedly killed. With tens of thousands of terrified, starving civilians fleeing for their lives, “Those able to flee,” says Fletcher, “the vast majority being women, children, and the elderly – face extortion, rape and violence on the perilous journey.”

SYRIA

Upwards of 200 000 civilians had been killed in Syria between March 2011 and March 2025. This number does not include an estimated 26,000 civilians killed in government prisons. The Syrian civil war has produced the largest number of refugees in the world. As of February 2015, the UNHCR designated the conflict as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” It is estimated that 16.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

YEMEN

Although Yemen is mostly in the news when it fires missiles at Israel in support of Hamas, less covered is its self-inflicted human misery brough on by its  civil war that began in 2015. According to UNHCR:

 “After ten years of war, Yemen remains one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. An estimated 4.5 million people – 14 percent of the population – are currently displaced, most of whom have been displaced multiple times over a number of years. More than 18.2 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance and protection services. The risk of a large-scale famine in the country has never been more acute. Tens of thousands are already living in famine-like conditions and a staggering five million more are acutely food insecure.” Malnutrition rates among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world, with 1.4 million pregnant or breastfeeding women requiring treatment for acute malnutrition. Meanwhile, Yemeni children continue to be killed and injured because of the conflict and are dying at increasingly high rates due to preventable diseases and malnutrition. According to UNICEF, one in two children under the age of five are malnourished in Yemen.

Any honest, unbiased observer of Gaza would plead no contest.    

THE REAL HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITIES IN GAZA

Gaza is indeed unique and unparalleled as a grave human rights atrocity but in a totally different sense from the DM narrative.  The war is characterised by the corrupt misallocation of aid money into costly preparation for war by the building of extensive underground combat tunnels by Hamas – not for the protection of civilians as shelters against aerial bombardment -but as military attack and weapons centres exclusively for use by Hamas militants. What is more, all these tunnels are positioned under civilian homes including mosques, schools and hospitals, facts mostly ignored in the international media. It renders civilian structures vulnerable as legitimate military targets of attack and bombardment. The failure of Hamas operatives to wear uniforms makes then indistinguishable from civilians and constitutes perfidy, a crime under the international law of war. It places civilians at risk. Unique too is the refusal to permit refugees from war zones to leave Gaza through Egypt, a fellow Muslim Arab country. In no other conflict in recent history has a population been denied this right.

These injustices and violations of humanitarian law however pale into insignificance when viewed in the light of the barbaric attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 on Israeli civilians including the abduction and capture of Israeli hostages. All filmed and beyond dispute. Not a single day event either but a continuing international crime and an affront to humanity.

Also overlooked is the indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, not only from Gaza but by Hezbollah and the Houthis in Lebanon and Yemen respectively, territories that were not in any armed conflict with Israel.  Par excellence Iran too, where Iranian missiles caused serious damage to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheba and the Weitzmann Institute in Rehovot. These are major and egregious violations of the laws of armed conflict and humanitarian law begging the question why DM skirts from focussing on the legal and moral accountability of these belligerent armed forces in perpetrating these war crimes?    

The pages of DM are strangely bereft of outrage or empathy for the unprecedented ongoing starvation and torture of hostages in almost three years of captivity. Although Hamas had released a grim photo of emaciated and skeletal former hostage Evyatar David digging his grave in a tunnel, Daily Maverick failed to interview hostage survivors – some with South African backgrounds – when visiting South Africa. It appears like shying away from a compelling injustice and a humanitarian tragedy of South African interest.  It is also a failure of journalism!

Posturing as the conscience of humanity admonishing readers from burying their heads in the sand, DM publishes a piece entitled:

 “Vicious circle of bloody war crimes makes me feel sick to the core; we can’t bury our heads in the sand,” (Daily Maverick 13 October 2023).

This article by Heather Robinson is a master class in obfuscation and dissimulation. The date of publication tells all.  It was first day Israel had begun its war offensive, but DM had already demonised Israel. “Vicious” yes, “circle” no. There were no Israeli civilians in Gaza since the disengagement in 2005.  IsraeI has never and will never commit crimes like mutilating babies and women, raping women in front of their families, decapitating and murdering civilians in cold blood and all with glee and joy. This is what Hamas does…and films! These rulers of Gaza stand alone in its unprecedented, unprovoked, carefully planned genocidal terror. It takes a special type of twisted historical and moral logic to conflate so called “Israeli oppression” and Hamas so-called “resistance”.  This article was unchallenged despite a refutation submitted by the writer which DM ignored.

BIAS CONFIRMATION  

The simple stratagem that DM uses to manipulate news coverage on Gaza and steer the narrative is simply. It mostly declines to publish any material presenting factual refutation or contrary opinions to DM’s editorial policy about Gaza. It has blocked many refutations and contrary opinions submitted by credible, legitimate leaders and writers in the Jewish community and beyond. Instead, DM is replete with unchallenged demonization of Israel and unbalanced coverage of Palestinian suffering. There is a legal maxim:

‘No one can take advantage of their own wrong’

Hamas is culpable of not taking any steps to prevent civilians from harm. Indeed, it has prevented the evacuation of civilians from war zones and actively promoted suffering. Any unbiased observer would agree, yet Israel unfairly bears the burden of moral opprobrium.   

The veteran British Jewish journalist, Melanie Phillips has exposed this same journalistic self-righteous bigotry in The Guardian. For her service in the quest for truth, she was “othered” i.e. ostracised when she started questioning the hypocrisy of her colleagues about condemning Israel and overlooking the evils of terrorism in the Palestinian conflict.  DM similarly pursues a genocide narrative, reckless whether the facts fit. Eventually the narrative becomes the facts. If this is allowed to happen, we are heading for real danger. Hello Pravda, George Orwell and the world of doublespeak.  

Why doesn’t the DM’s morally blighted editor Green simply abandon the pretence of objectivity and admit that its editorial stance is based on the narrative that Israel is guilty of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, oppression and colonial domination?

This way it could spare its readers the insult of pretending to pursue truth and promote open reasoned diverse opinion.

About the writer:

Now retired, Pretoria-born human rights and labour lawyer, Lawrence Nowosenetz practiced at the Pretoria and Johannesburg Bar. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Nowosenetz completed an internship in the USA and served as a part-time Senior Commissioner at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) as well as a panellist at Tokiso Dispute Settlement – the largest private dispute resolution provider in South Africa. He has also served as an Acting Judge of the Hight Court, South Africa.  

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).