Israel’s media continues to repeat IDF claims without scrutiny, and after the October 7 massacre, that failure is dangerous.
On Saturday night, the IDF reported a ramming attack in the city of Hebron. According to the initial statement, a car driven by a Palestinian resident accelerated into an IDF checkpoint. The soldiers opened fire, killing the driver and another Palestinian in the vehicle. The first reports said the men had attempted a ramming attack. Headlines followed almost instantly, nearly all echoing the same language: “Two terrorists killed in Hebron ramming attack.”
But just a few hours later – too late for most of the print editions already sent to press – the IDF admitted that one of the Palestinians was not a terrorist at all and not even connected to the incident. He was a municipal garbage collector employed by the Hebron municipality, on his daily route, and he had been mistakenly shot by Israeli security forces.
I mention this story because it jumped out as a small but striking example of something that has quietly returned to Israeli journalism: the instinct to parrot what the military says without asking questions, challenging assumptions, or even pausing to consider alternative possibilities. The lack of investigative journalism in Israel has been known for years – that part is not new. But especially after October 7 and the traumatic two years that followed, the fact that so many reporters simply accept whatever they are told without pushing back, without probing deeper, is deeply troubling.
Let me explain why this matters. Like many journalists in Israel, I, too, was invited in the years preceding October 7 to closed-door briefings with senior military commanders and intelligence officials. No reporter is ever shown raw intelligence, but we all heard the same story: Hamas is deterred, Hamas does not want war, Hamas’s training videos are bravado, Hamas wants economic prosperity, more Qatari cash, and more work permits for Gazans. Whenever someone asked why, if Hamas was deterred, it continued to develop longer-range rockets, train openly along the border, hold military exercises, or orchestrate border protests, the answer was always the same: political messaging, bargaining tactics, pressure for more money. We accepted this explanation. No one pushed too far. No one questioned the logic too deeply. Very few challenged the military narrative that everything was under control.
To understand why, you need to understand the structural media reality in Israel. The military has near-total control over access and information. Israel does not have “Pentagon reporters” who are permanently accredited and granted independent access to the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. You cannot just walk in because you cover defense. You enter only if the IDF Spokesperson approves your visit for a specific meeting.
Everything is controlled and filtered, and, most importantly, every journalist knows it.
This system creates a dependency: Reporters rely entirely on the IDF spokesperson for access to officers, stories, embeds, and frontline visits. Now imagine you are a reporter who wants to publish something critical about the IDF chief of staff or another senior commander. You know exactly what will happen: The IDF Spokesperson will block your next requests. You will lose embeds, interviews, and firsthand access to the war. Those opportunities will go to competitors.
You will be punished, quietly and effectively.
This brings me to one of the great inside jokes of the Israeli media: When newspapers proudly publish what they brand as “exclusive” interviews with senior IDF officers or alleged “first-time” accounts from Gaza or Lebanon, these pieces were assigned to that reporter. The IDF chose that journalist as the platform for its message, usually because they “walked the line” properly – critical enough to appear serious, but not so critical as to be inconvenient.
Take, for example, video footage of IDF operations sometimes broadcast on TV shows like Uvda (Israel’s 60 Minutes). This type of material does not appear because of investigative digging or a Watergate-like secret source in a parking garage. It is simply a decision by the IDF Spokesperson to allow them to have it; that’s all. Contrast this behavior with what happened in the United States just two months ago. When the Pentagon attempted to introduce new restrictions limiting reporters’ ability to publish information that had not been approved by United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, dozens of the nation’s top defense reporters walked out, returned their press badges, and refused to comply. Their outlets backed them almost unanimously.
And look at the uproar surrounding Hegseth today over the US strike on an alleged narco boat in the Caribbean. According to reports, nine people were killed in the initial strike, and when two survivors clung to the burning wreckage, the vessel was struck again in what is a potential violation of international law. Congress, including Republican members, is demanding answers. Trump has commented, and every day brings another investigative piece. Scrutiny is relentless.
Has anything like that ever happened in Israel? Have we seen a major push across outlets for transparency, accountability, or the release of operational footage? Have military reporters refused to publish what they are told without verification? Unfortunately not. Instead, the media here largely plays along. It eats from the very hand it is supposed to monitor. It echoes, amplifies, and repeats claims of terrorists being killed, of military targets being bombed, and without a single question, probe, or challenge.
I genuinely understand why. The media industry is brutal, with everyone fighting for the same clicks, ratings, and subscribers. If one outlet “goes rogue” and challenges the IDF too aggressively, it can be punished; just ask the reporters who were recently kicked off Defense Minister Israel Katz’s spokesperson’s WhatsApp group. When your access is your livelihood, you tend to protect it, even subconsciously. You criticize – but only up to a point.
And perhaps this dynamic could have continued unnoticed had October 7, 2023, not happened.
Journalists were not responsible for the disaster of that day, but the media absolutely played a role in failing to challenge the assumptions that allowed it to unfold. Reporters had not asked hard enough questions. They had not pushed back on the narrative that Hamas was deterred. They had not probed the contradiction between what Hamas was showing and what the military was claiming.
This is what bothers me most today. I would have expected a major shift after October 7 and the emergence of a media that is tougher, sharper, and more willing to hold the country’s political and military leaders accountable. I understand it is not easy, especially in wartime, and that many journalists are reservists or have children serving in Gaza or Lebanon. I also understand the emotional weight after a massacre of such scale. But journalism is not just another job. It carries civic responsibility.
Its purpose is not to serve the IDF or the political leadership but to serve the public – by imposing scrutiny, by demanding honesty, and by refusing to accept narratives simply because they come stamped with an official logo.Regurgitating IDF statements is failing that responsibility. Publishing headlines without verification is negligent. The car-ramming incident in Hebron last week is only one example, but it illustrates the larger point: The Israeli media has not yet learned its lesson.
And this brings us to the real question: What happens if it still refuses to learn?
Israel’s challenges are not going away. We are still at war. We are still surrounded by threats. We are still navigating a new Middle East. In such a moment, a media that echoes instead of interrogates becomes part of the problem. If October 7 taught us anything, it is that the cost of unasked questions is unbearable. That is when the “conceptzia” (“concept” or governing assumption) and conventional wisdom are not challenged, the system becomes complacent.
The Israeli media does not need to wage war on the IDF, but it does need to stop serving as its mouthpiece. It needs to remember its purpose and rediscover its backbone. Because if the press will not hold Israel’s leaders accountable, no one else will.