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Since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, there has been a 4- to 5-fold jump in the number of publications subject to Israeli military censorship. The military censor has supervised hundreds of thousands of publications related to the war, according to Channel 12.

While the military censor defends his increasing role during wartime in balancing freedom of opinion on the one hand and Israel’s security on the other, others believe that his role - which has become limited to directing the media towards the narrative that it wants to promote - is no longer justified in light of the presence of social media platforms.

In a report for Al Jazeera, Elias Karam shed light on the Military Censor Foundation, its role, the method it follows in withholding information from the Israelis, and how it was forced, due to resistance videos, to lift the ban on a number of battle casualties in Gaza.

In parallel with its war in Gaza, Israel is waging a fierce media war, with military spokesman Daniel Hagari acting as the maestro directing its rhythm, as he built the war narrative on three foundations: emphasizing that Israel is a victim, promoting victories, most of which are imaginary, and covering up any information that would harm morale.

Scissors Sergeant

To achieve this, the military censor of the Israeli occupation is ready to set a number of limits and prohibitions on the media, and his list includes strict limits that include both military and political matters.

Since the beginning of the ground operation, the occupation army has blacked out the numbers of its wounded soldiers, but the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published a report revealing that the number of the army’s wounded reached 5,000, but hours later this number was replaced with the number 2,000, which is the number of disabled soldiers out of the total number of wounded at that time.

The military sergeant has accompanied Israel since its founding. He is the keeper of its military secrets, the guardian of its information security, and the cover-up of its crimes extending from the Nakba massacres onwards. He is affiliated with the Military Intelligence Division and his scissors have reached all aspects of life.

The role of the military censor declined at the beginning of the 1990s with the development of media and the emergence of the Internet, but it maintained its influence, especially in times of war and crises, and the Israeli press mobilized to serve the Zionist narrative, especially during the first years of the establishment of the state.

But this blackout that the military censor tried to impose was not possible in light of the video clips published by the resistance and social media platforms that forced the Israeli occupation army to admit what it preferred to cover up, including admitting the killing of prisoner Saher Baruch in a failed operation to free him.

The Israeli media also withheld from its viewers the other half of the story and did not show anything about the conditions of the Palestinians, and its performance appeared to be populist, limited to satisfying the motive of revenge in Israeli society after the events of last October 7. Perhaps the pursuit of an image of victory is what explains part of the behavior of the Israeli media.

Source: Al Jazeera