Media Storm - ‘I want prosecutions’: Who pays the price for media complicity in Gaza genocide?

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Survivors of genocide in Gaza have called on the global community to launch criminal prosecutions of Western media professionals who they say carry blame for the murders of their colleagues, families and other victims of Israeli conquest. Is criminal prosecution possible? Would it even be fair? We put these questions to Palestinian and Western journalists, legal experts and other witnesses, to take the conversation about media complicity – which has featured on the podcast repeatedly over the past two years – to its next step. Where there is complicity, shouldn’t there be accountability Guests include Palestinian journalists Ahmed Alnaouq and Abubaker Abed, US journalist Katie Halper, Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper, Norwegian frontline medic Dr Mads Gilbert, and professor of law Penny Green. This episode was recorded at the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul, a people’s trial collating evidence alleging crimes against humanity in Palestine. Subscribe to our ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Follow your hosts Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past two years, since the 7th of October, 2023, Media Storm has run multiple episodes talking about the Western media's denial of or making excuses for or complicity in what has been happening in Gaza. From Israel's massacre of 15 Palestinian paramedics in Raffa in March, where in the days it took the truth to come out, Sky and other news outlets printed headline after headline, directly quoting Israeli military lies, even as one after the other was falsified. To the illegal abduction of peaceful activists on the global Sumin Flotilla earlier this month,

which Western outlets whitewashed as simple interception, if they even covered it at all. To what we would have discussed last week if we were not off sick, when Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans were banned here in the UK, and it was immediately disparaged by media and government officials as an anti-Semitic decision by police, when it turned out intelligence actually flagged the Maccabee fans as the extremist risk and ban them to prevent anti-Arab genocidal slogans

being chanted on the streets of Birmingham. So yes, we have talked plenty about media complicity in the genocide in Gaza. And it's all very well talking about media complicity. But where do we go from there? Because if there is complicity, shouldn't there be accountability? Which takes us on to where you have just returned from, Matilda, the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul.

Tell us what is the Gaza Tribunal. The Gaza Tribunal was, in some ways, like a court trial about genocide in Gaza. Over several days, evidence was presented by eyewitnesses and experts alleging crimes against humanity by Israel and its supporters in Gaza. However, it was not a court trial. It was a trial organized by the people, for the people, with no actual judicial power at all beyond the power of the people. But it was legal in other respects. It was structured by some of the world's leading legal minds with the goal of collecting a comprehensive body of

evidence that can be used by normal people like us to rally action, by academics, to write history accurately, but also to be used in future legal proceedings to secure actual criminal prosecutions. The accounts that really mattered to me were those of the people giving evidence, survivors of this genocide. I wanted to know who they thought was guilty and what they thought justice should look like. I directly blame the ministry media for the murder of my family and for the continuation of the genocide for two years. One of those conversations was with Palestinian journalist Ahmed Al Nauk. I want to see prosecution of the media, media outlets, and media. and media personalities and figures

for aiding and abating the genocide, for creating a consent in the public for Israel to continue its genocide and for killing tens of thousands of Palestinian children and women and men and civilians. Wow. So here is someone who wants to see prosecutions of individuals working in Western news media

for the murder of his family and other victims of this genocide. I wonder whether that's possible, and if it is, whether the wider public would support it. I had the same questions, and so over the course of this four-day tribunal, I spoke with several experts and eyewitnesses about this idea, actual criminal prosecution. You'll hear them in this episode, Palestinian journalist Abu Bakr Abed Abed, Israeli academic Jeff Halper, Jewish-American journalist Katie Halper, Professor of Law Penny Green, and Norwegian Medic who was working in Gaza, Dr.

Mads Gilbert. This is an episode with which we, at Media Storm, hope to take the conversation about media complicity in Gaza one step further. So today we ask, what evidence is there? Not just for media complicity in genocide, but direct media criminality. Do individual Western journalists, editors or media moguls have Palestinian blood on their hands? And if so, what would justice look like? Israeli troops have killed six people in Gaza, describing them as suspects. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says a wave of Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday. The IDF said no evidence has been found to support the claims regarding handcuffs. Israel says they moved suspiciously towards its soldiers, lights off in the early morning darkness.

Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Marinson. This week's Media Storm. Who pays the price for media complicity in Gaza? Western journalists must pay a price for what they have allowed in the last two years. The community genocide is not just like what you would expect. It is about believing that the next time will be your last time, that the next report will be your last time. The pain is ours, the agony is a part of our life.

We're multitasking, so we're not just responsible for reporting. We are taking care of our families. We are sometimes losing our family members. And as someone is speaking, right now as a challenge, have lost over 50 members of my family. I am in relentless grief. The genocide has not ended. The grief has started now.

The pain has started now. This is the testimony of Abu Bakr Abed, Palestinian sports journalist turned war journalist. And as he spoke to members of the global community at the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul, his feeling of betrayal was palpable. The fact that 250 journalists have been hunted down and murdered in Gaza, most of whom are very young,

of course including me, just wanted to, they just wanted to be fathers, they just wanted to get married, they just wanted to continue their education. They didn't want to be forced into genocide documentation. Now, most of them as well have been hunted down by Israel after smear campaigns

that the international community and committees to protect journalists have failed to tackle or even have failed to protect these journalists from smear media campaigns. For Abu Bakr, Western media complicity in genocide began and may as well have ended with its treatment of Palestinian journalists.

On this particular date, two years ago, October 24th, 2023. This could have stopped if Western media outlets and Western journalists believed that we were their colleagues, if they believed that they should have amplified the voices, if they believe that their job is not just to get into Gaza and seek fame and money, but to share of grief and share of ragny and make sure that they were reporting the truth. But Western media has always been interested in lies in a cover-up for genocide and to make sure that everything they say will serve the Israelis.

The failings of our media are, of course, complicated, and we will get into the specifics. But Abu Bakr's anger is telling, truthful, and as a journalist present, I felt it was important to hear. It is important. It is absolutely significant. the most monumentary, fundamental steps to any tribunal that would concern Gaza is to hold everyone who has played a role in this genocide accountable. And on top of that, it must be Western media. Make sure the justice will come to the people who have deliberately dehumanized Palestinians over the course of the past two years. Now, let's zoom in and focus on specific document.

incidents, or in other words, evidence of what the media got disastrously wrong when it came to Gaza. So they fired me and they fired me and they also just like banned me as a contributor. Katie Helper is a broadcaster in the US where she used to co-host the Hills Morning Politics Show until she tried to make the case on air that Israel was subjecting Palestinians to apartheid. What was your takeaway in terms of the industry? you were working in. What was interesting was that this show, which claims to be a show where you can talk

about things that are taboo elsewhere, they had the same limits as other shows. It also is an example of why people will self-censor, right? Because if you see that happening, you're not even going to want to go there. We're here at the Gaza Tribunal where you are testifying for media complicity,

and the format of this tribunal is judicial, and the goal here is to meet a legal threshold of evidence. Did you manage to identify specific incidents whereby the news media deliberately manipulated or avoided facts in order to serve the narrative that has enabled this genocide? Well, the problem was that there were too many examples, and it's because it's so pervasive. The hardest part about preparing my testimony was whittling it down. But yes, I decided to use as a kind of case study the reporting.

on rape and sexual violence. And I showed major media malpractice when it came to putting forward this narrative that there was a mass rape campaign perpetuated by Hamas on October 7th. That was picked up uncritically without any credible evidence. And then when it was actually debunked,

nobody bothered updating their coverage. In 2024, a UN team found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence was committed by several militants on October the 7th, including rape and gang rape. But the exact scope of this violence, they said, could not be established. In the days that followed the Hamas-led attack, several shocking claims of sexual and other violence were widely circulated and later found to be unsubstantiated or entirely fabricated. These included claims that teenage girls bodies were found in a state of undress. Another account alleging a pregnant woman was found

with a fetus cut out of her was also falsified, and reports of Palestinian militants beheading babies were later completely debunked, including by the Israeli news outlet Heretz. Now, there was a conspiracy, and you sound like a conspiracy theorist, but there was clearly a conspiracy. People clearly wanted to use this as atrocity propaganda. We've seen this before, for instance, to gin up support for war, overthrowing Gaddafi. There was this rumor that Gaddafi gave his troops by Agra so they could go out and rape and pillage. That wasn't true. We've seen atrocity propaganda with Saddam Hussein. There was the claim that Saddam Hussein was pulling babies out of incubators. So there's a coordinated

message being constructed here, but you think that the news media was involved? Oh, totally implicit. Yeah. Now, I don't know if they consciously were like, we're going to lie about this. But they definitely lowered their journalistic standards of evidence. In fact, Danabash is another example of CNN. She was taking it as a fact that Hamas had engaged in mass rape and she wanted Pramilla Jayapal to condemn it. Pramila Jayapal did condemn it. Here's the clip Katie is talking about. In it, CNN journalist Dana Bash asks U.S. representative Pramila Jayapal about, quote, widespread use of rape against Israeli women by Hamas. Bash appears to be reading this as a quote, but she doesn't cite a source.

It's kind of remarkable that this issue hasn't gotten enough attention, globally, widespread use of rape, brutal rape, sexual violence against Israeli women by Hamas. I've seen a lot of progressive women, generally speaking, they're quick to defend women's rights. and speak out against using rape as a weapon of war. But downright silent on what we saw on October 7th and what might be happening inside Gaza right now to these hostages. Why is that? I mean, I don't know that that's true.

I think we always talk about the impact of war on women in particular. In fact, I remember 20 years ago, I did a petition around the war in Iraq. You said, have you talked about it since October 7? Oh, absolutely. And I've condemned what Hamas has done. I've condemned all of the actions. Absolutely, the rape, of course. But I think we have to remember that Israel is a democracy. That is why they are a strong ally of ours.

And if they do not comply with international humanitarian law, they are bringing themselves to a place that makes it much more difficult strategically for them to be able to build the kinds of allies, to keep public opinion with them. And frankly, morally, I think we cannot say, that one war crime deserves another. That is not what international humanitarian law says.

Okay, with respect, I was just asking about the women, and you turned it back to Israel. I'm asking you about Hamas, in fact. I already answered your question, Dana. I said it's horrific, and I think that rape is horrific, sexual assault is horrific. I think that it happens in war situations. Terrorist organizations like Hamas, obviously, are using these as tools.

However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, three quarters of whom are women and children. And it's horrible, but you don't see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women. Well, Dana, I think we're not, we're not, I don't want this to be the hierarchy of oppressions. important context here is that multiple UN commissions have now documented systemic sexual abuse and sexual torture of Palestinians detained without trial in Israeli prisons. They have also found that sexual violence, this is a quote, is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel against Palestinians. Back to Katie. And Dan Abash goes, and that's horrible, but you don't see

Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women. It's a very clear line. Because does this thing happen, these rapes, therefore, it's not quite as horrible. It's basically what she's saying. It's implicit in her message. As a journalist, how do you feel about that interjection being made? I mean, it's unforgivable. It's one thing if they had thought this was true, they did this reporting on it, and then the evidence fell apart, and then they updated their audience, but they didn't.

That's one thing that makes it unforgivable. Another thing that makes it unforgivable is it would have been one thing if they had done that reporting, and then when there was documented evidence of rape by Israelis of Palestinians if they had reported on that, but they didn't. Because they so clearly don't care about rape or sexual violence, they care about justifying a genocide. This CNN clip is just one example of unverified and ultimately false accounts of October the 7th being widely circulated by US broadcasters in leading context.

These accounts also made front pages across British papers, the Daily Mail, the Times, the Metro, and Daily Express, without later corrections. These headlines were then repeated by government officials in the U.S. and elsewhere. Kamala Harris mentioned it. She even mentioned it during the vice presidential debate, and she said something so telling, which was that she said on October 7th, women were horribly raped, and so I said it, it then, I'll say it again, Israel has the right to defend itself. So using rape specifically as a justification for Israel's self-defense. And were these policymakers referring to news media

accounts of these rates happening to justify these policies? I'm sure they were also counting on Netanyahu saying it, but I don't think they would have felt comfortable without having been able to cite the New York Times. Because then arguably there's a case that manipulative reporting or at least highly misleading reporting by the news media, was used as a basis to justify policies like the provision of arms to Israel. We might compare this to events in 2003, when false intelligence claiming that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction was published across Western news outlets, including all 175 papers owned by Rupert Murdoch.

These reports were then cited by government officials to successfully lobby for what is now widely seen to be their illegal invasion of Iraq. So yeah, I think that the Israeli government, the Israeli media, the Western government and Western leaders, everyone who cited that fake rape claim, they are all complicit in selling a support for genocide and ultimately in selling a genocide. To build a legal case, we need specific examples. And yet one witness testifying at the Gaza Tribunal argued, what is the point in convicting individual crimes without addressing the root ideologies behind them?

Failing this, more and more crimes will simply follow. Jeff Halper is an Israeli anthropologist and the head of ICAD, an Israeli-based anti-colonial organization. He also co-founded the Palestinian-led one democratic state campaign. He says the root problem here is colonialism. In this case, colonial Zionism. This concept, he said, is entirely incompatible with modern laws and values, and yet it prevails. Why? Because Western media legitimizes it on a daily news basis and frames it as something that it fundamentally is not.

I spoke to Jeff, and he pinned this problem down to a handful of words chosen by news editors to describe what is happening in Gaza every day. Okay, so basically, the thing I wanted to ask about is, I as a journalist, as I've learned from you, shouldn't be using even the term conflict or the term sides when it comes to what has been happening in Gaza with Israel over the past two years and much longer. You shouldn't use it because it's not a conflict. You know, a conflict happens when there's two sides or more that fight about something. How do you resolve a conflict with compromise? Colonialism is unilateral. The Zionists came to Palestine in order to Judaize it, to make it Jewish, to transform an Arab country into Israel.

In other words, they wanted to take the Arab country of Palestine, replace the indigenous population with your own population of settlers, so that Palestine becomes Israel. That's the idea. So that's interesting, because you use the term Judaized, to Judeize the territory, which isn't a term I've heard before. Which is a crucial trait. Right, but a term we do always here is a Jewish state.

Do the Jewish people have a right to a state? This is something that American would-be politicians are sort of asked as a practice at the stand. And I suppose that's the same thing, asking whether there should be a Jewish state in Palestine is the same as asking whether it's okay to Judeaize the territory. You know, most Jews don't see themselves as a national group. So this whole idea that Israel represents the Jewish people is simply not true.

Judaism is a political program. Zionism did not come out of the Holocaust. Zionism from the end of the 19th century, it was a colonist movement. They called it a colonial movement. That's where the colonial language is so important. Right, yes. So I can't use the term sides because the colonial context means this is not a conflict with two sides. It's not a negotiation with two sides.

That's right. Once you make the Zionists a side, once you take any colonists and you make them aside in a conflict, you're legitimizing them. Colonialism is illegal in international law. There's an international covenant against colonization. It's immoral, it's unjust, it's violent. The problem with the sides, first of all, it legitimizes an illegitimate project, which is colonialism, and it gives them the power because they're not equal sides. One is a state with an army, an international support of Britain, for example. And the other ones are non-state people, simply indigenous people with no army, no protection, no nothing.

And on the other side, the problem with the side idea, he said, here you've got the Palestinian people. A people, you know, living their daily lives, they have their cultures, they have their holidays, the other religions, they're living in their land, they're farming, they're doing this and that. All of a sudden, they're a side. What do you mean aside? Now I have to defend myself? Actually, you raise a good point, actually, because the mainstream news media, Western media, when they talk about this war, they talk about this as a two-sided war, they describe it as the Israel Hamas War.

So they're not painting a picture of a militarized state against innocent and unarmed people. They're painting the picture of a conflict between a militarized state and a militant organization that has been brandished by many governments, including my own in the UK, as a terrorist organization. Of course. Terrorism is a typical colonial word. Every, every colonized people that has resisted colonization has been called terrorists. You know, resistance of the indigenous people that's legal. International law recognizes the right of armed struggle against occupation, colonialism, apartheid. But even this side's picture of Israel versus Hamas isn't accurate when we look at what the war has involved,

which has been indiscriminate destruction of civilian infrastructure, civilian livelihood and life. Who are the Gossans? 70% of the people in Gaza are refugees from Israel. What is the impact when news media use words like sides or conflict? That's what creates that false logic. Both sides are to blame. And Israel has a right to defend itself. That's probably the most egregious.

distortion of all. I mean, it's an, Gaza is an occupied territory. It's not a country that belongs to Palestinians. It's not sovereign. It's not a place that attacked Israel. And what Israel's trying to say is October 7th started on October 7th. You're ignoring 18 years of siege before October 7th. You know, you're ignoring 58 years of occupation, you know, that whole idea of the state has a right to defend itself. Against what? Against a territory that it's occupying? I mean, talk about a weird distortion. What about the Gossans? They don't have a right to defend themselves? Yeah, I mean, it's true. I really, really do understand why it is problematic to use the term sides for what is happening in this genocidal war. A lot of journalists or

editors would say, well, what words should we use then? How do we describe what's happening in a way that will be understood by our readers or our listeners or our viewers. That's right. And if you present it as a colonial, a settler colonial enterprise, now that's not a term, it's a very academic term, that's one of the problems. We have to try to make it simplified. The colonial language, as you just point out,

the colonial language would be to describe one side as an occupying force, and another side is a resistance. Of course, that has been used when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. You will regularly see Russian army described as an occupying force and Ukrainian resistance coined in that phrase. And everybody supports the Ukrainian fight against occupation. The Russian occupation, people support that and they don't see that that also applies somehow to Palestinians.

And one of the reasons the media will not use the term resistance to describe the Palestinian reaction against Israel's army is because, well, that is primarily Hamas. And Hamas is a terrorist organization. You see, that's another thing. Who are terrorists in the world? Terrorists are non-state actors, always. You know, even Hitler, from all the things he... He was never called a terrorist.

Terrorism has only applied to non-state actors. But what about state terrorism? We never talk about that. The questions you're asking are great. All right, how should we reframe this? How much blame do you place on individual editors, individual journalists, individuals within Western media for propagating this colonial narrative?

And allowing these colonial... allowing these colonial crimes? You know, in a way, I don't blame anybody, because that's what you grow up with. You know, you learn that in school, you learn that in church. So I don't blame people for having accepted that. What we learn is more myth than anything else.

And the trouble is most people aren't academics. They're not going to read the books. They're not going to do the research. And that's where journalists really do play a role, because there has to be some critical thinking here. I mean, that's entirely the job of general. But if they're failing in that responsibility, if they're failing in that responsibility. They're failing.

Of course they're failing. What about accountability? That's right. What does that look like? Well, you know, I mean, to tell you the truth, I talk to a lot of journalists who get it, but their editors back home won't let them publish it. I know excellent journalists from British newspapers who are there and they know Palestinians and they know, they know all this stuff, they meet with people like me all the time.

But if they wrote the stories that they were really going to write about, they wouldn't be published. And then of course the editors work for corporations or work for whoever owns the newspapers and then you need a readership and then you need advertising. You know, that whole industry takes over truth-telling. Doesn't that point to an issue that's so perpetual when it comes to what's happening in Gaza, which is the extent of complicity? How do you enforce accountability? What does accountability even look like if the line never ends? You know, the baton has always been passed on and passed on and passed on until we're all kind of implicated in the mess. I think sometimes you have to think small and accountability

starts at the individual level. I can recognize as a journalist sometimes I've used words that probably do reinforce an inherently colonial worldview and justify illegal colonial actions. So to wrap up, let's think about some of the words we shouldn't use and what we could replace them with. If we're not saying conflict for Gaza, That's right. What should we say? A colonial war? Conquest would be, I mean, they're conquering the country.

We never use that term conquest. So for conflict, instead of conflict, we could use the term conquest. That's right. It's a whole new logic that you're unleashing when you move to a colonial kind of an analysis and language. If we think about colonization, it's an expectation that the colonization is going to end. And the only way to decolonize is to create one democratic state. So everybody has a right to be there. Everybody has a right to be a citizenship.

There has to be land redistribution of things like that. Justice as well. But it's a win-win for everybody. That has definitely given me a lot of food for thought. Thank you, Jeff. This one was really interesting to me because we talk a lot about the need to decolonize language, but it's almost like the problem with a lot of the coverage here is the opposite.

Journalists need to start using colonize language. using colonial language to reflect what is at root a colonial project. Only when we all understand and acknowledge that what's happening in Palestine is colonial by nature, can we talk about it with any justice or accuracy. But I have to be honest here because legal prosecution requires individual culpability. But failing to frame the West's conquest of Palestine in accurately colonial language, Well, that is a crime I myself have committed at times. After the break, Ahmed Al-Nuuk's survivor interview in full.

We're at the Gaza Tribunal, where you presented a case arguing for media complicity, in genocide in Gaza. For you, this is a personal issue. Yes, I blame Israel for killing my family, but I also blame the menacing media for the murder of my family and for the continuation of the genocide with the Palestinian people, because they have never given the Palestinian people the platform or the agency that they deserve, and they have been barretting the Israeli lives over and over and over. If it's okay, I'd like to just take a step back, and I'm really sorry to ask you to go over this again, but do you just describe what happened to your family?

All of them were sleeping in their home on the 22nd of October, 2023, when Israel dropped a bomb on my home, killing all of them. I lost 21 members of my family, my father, two brothers, three sisters, 14 nieces and nephews, and a cousin. All of my nieces and nephews were kids under the age of 13. None of my family members are militants. The area where we live in, there are no missiles or tunnels or even ground invasion on that area. So there is no reason whatsoever for the targeting of my home.

It was a warring crime and it can never be justified in any way possible. Was your home targeted intentionally? I have no idea. Because there is definitely a fear and some confirmed incidents where journalists and journalists' families and journalists' homes have been targeted by Israel. Do you think that there is a deliberate strategy in place to terrorize? journalists in Palestine? From day one of this genocide, Israel wanted to carry out a genocide in a media blackout.

They did not want the world to know what is really happening in Gaza. First, they banned international journalists from coming to Gaza, and then they started bombing and killing the Palestinian journalists, intimidating them, threatening them. They intended to silence the Palestinian journalists. And if Palestinian journalists are silenced, then the mantle passes to international journalists. international journalists outside of Palestine.

Who are biased with Israel, who do not understand. Some of them are biased, some of them are very racist, some of them are literally ignorant about what's really happening in Gaza. Is there a direct link between the media coverage and the crimes being committed? You said that you blame media for the death of your family. Yes. This is very, very strong language, I understand it. But essentially what you're doing is you're establishing a direct causative link between the media coverage and the crimes happening.

It's not just that the crimes happen and then the media covers it wrong, it's that the media covers it wrong and that allows more crimes to happen. Definitely. As I said before, Israel could not carry out a genocide. They could not carry out an illegal occupation for so many years without media blackout, without the public opinion in the world. And the menacing media, unfortunately, they manufactured a consent for Israel to carry out this genocide. So I blame the menacing media. I directly blame the menacee media for the murder of my family and for the continuation of the genocide for two years. What we're talking about here is criminal action. And so do you think that there should be criminal liability for media?

It's not only me who thinks that this is a criminal act. There are many human rights organizations, many UN experts in the media. international law who said that many see media who misinformed the public about the genocide they could be liable previously people who aided and abetted the genocide and the media they stood a trial for DC crimes this has certainly happened in the case of the Rwandan genocide so is that what we're talking about is that what you would like to see would you like to see prosecutions I want to see prosecution of the media media outlets and media personalities and figures for aiding and abetting the genocide, for creating a consent in the

public for Israel to continue its genocide and for killing tens of thousands of Palestinian children and women and men and civilians. Ahmed Anouk, thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Genocide survivors are not the only witnesses from Gaza, but with international journalists banned by Israel, it has fallen on medics and aid workers to play the role. of reporters as well. Another witness who spoke at the Gaza Tribunal

was Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert. He built his case on medical research from the field. Through the first 12 months after 7th of October, life expectancy in Gaza has dropped by 35 years. It's cut in half. It has never, ever been documented in medical science, this dramatic effect on life expectancy. And that means, my friend,

that the kids in Gaza can expect to live 44 years shorter than a Jewish child in Israel. Can you have a more dramatic mathematical expression of the injustice and the apartheid than this number? Media coverage is at odds with medical research on Gaza. For one, the official death toll that we see published in our daily news is likely to be not just an underestimate, but a significant underestimate, it, according to research shared by Dr. Gilbert. Note that Western news outlets, including the BBC, always caveat this official death toll as a number given by the Hamas-led health ministry.

I'm sure you've seen this. The implication is that this devastating figure, which, as I record, is now over 68,530 people, that this figure can't be trusted, not because of how many bodies remain unrecoverable under rubble, or because the hospital's recording casualties have been pretty much decimated. But because this number, we're told, is terrorist propaganda, so it's probably an overestimate, right? But scientific research says the opposite. I asked Dr. Mads Gilbert what this said about the media.

Do you think that the media carries responsibility for systematically under-reporting casualties in Gaza? Massively. Massively. because the scientific evidence is present. If they want to do their homework and their research, the numbers are the paper I showed you from January this year in the Lancet. The Lancet paper documenting 41% under reporting. Right, because what that term Hamas-led Health Ministry does

implies the figures are probably an exaggeration. Whereas as you've pointed out, the data shows they are actually an underestimated. And this is important because the war of the narrative is the overruling war. And that's a war that the Zionist propaganda machinery, the Hirshbara, has been extremely good at fighting. So media carries an enormous responsibility for the silence, for their complicity, and for their lying. Bear in mind, I respect journalists, and I know that the majority of journalists are pretty independent,

and they want to tell the true story. But their owners are, in many cases, controls. But still, the journalists must work harder to find out and to dissect and to catch the lies. Because the most dangerous factor to mobilize people against Zionism and U.S. colonialism, it is the truth. And I urge everyone listening to me now, you can make a difference. You are a beacon of change. You are a lighthouse of change. You have a talent, you have a voice, use it now, because the world needs you.

There are voices calling for criminal prosecutions of media professionals over the genocide in Gaza. As to whether it's legally possible or whether the legal structures in place can be relied on for justice at all, well, on this, the experts are divided. One of the most cynical ones I spoke to was Professor Penny Green. but she allocated hope elsewhere. As a legal expert and a committee member of the Gaza Tribunal, do you think that there is a case for or a possibility of legal accountability for news outlets or for editors, individuals within the media?

I mean, it's a nice idea. I don't think it will happen. And if it does happen, if there are newspaper, editors or television owners who are taken to the Hague eventually. It will be very few in number and I really can't see it happening. I think the where the power lies who is coming back to civil society. I always remember after the Hillsborough disaster, a football stadium disaster where over 90 people were killed as a result of a stampede in Liverpool.

The way in which the newspaper The Sun depicted the fans was so. so appalling. It depicted them as animals. And really, the very, very best form of accountability was that the people of Liverpool stopped buying the sun. And their sales dropped dramatically. And I don't know that the sun has ever recovered. So when you say that the real power of accountability here is with civil society, are you talking about the people listening to this podcast? I hope so, yes. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month.

The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow. Follow the show at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson.

The music is by Samphire.