A CNN article on the suicide of an Israeli soldier who served in Gaza laments the psychological toll of the horrors inflicted by the occupying army — but not from the victims’ perspective, only that of the perpetrators. It even goes so far as to pity the soldier’s inability to eat meat after bulldozing over hundreds of Palestinians, dead or alive, without a second thought for the atrocity itself.
Comment: “It was out of this same kind of ‘compassion’ for men mentally disturbed by mass shootings in the East that Himmler opted for gas chambers to spare his soldiers the direct sense of guilt. CNN should remember this, but unfortunately, it recalls World War II only through the lens of ‘Saving Private Ryan’.”
A recent CNN article centers on the suicide of an Israeli soldier traumatized after serving in Gaza, examining the psychological toll of these operations but focusing primarily on the impact on Israeli soldiers, pushing Palestinian civilian victims into the background. The story epitomizes a prevalent trend in Western media — mourning the alleged plight of the perpetrators while erasing the suffering of their direct victims, mentioned only to bolster the sympathetic portrayal of war criminals, if not criminals against humanity.
The article centers on Eliran Mizrahi, an Israeli reservist who committed suicide after serving four months in Gaza as a military bulldozer driver. Mizrahi developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his experiences. In an account that forms the title of the article, his mother states, “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him.” The journalists extensively explore the family’s despair, Eliran Mizrahi’s moral burden, and the psychological suffering of those in Israel who, like him, faced the violence of the war in Gaza. However, behind this individual tragedy, CNN overlooks a broader and essential analysis: the genocidal actions of the Israeli army in a conflict that has resulted in more than 42,000 deaths (or even over 200,000, according to The Lancet estimates), the vast majority of whom being women and children.
Wouldn’t it be far more appropriate to express empathy for Palestinian civilians, who have been living under blockade for decades and have endured relentless bombardment for over a year, with no escape from the massacres (a term reserved for Israeli victims of October 7), starvation, and terror inflicted upon them (with “terrorism” also being a term reserved for Palestinians)? While the article does briefly acknowledge Palestinian suffering, it is overshadowed by a deluge of sympathy for Mizrahi and his fellow soldiers.
“They saw things that were never seen in Israel,” says the Israeli soldier’s mother, seemingly to excuse the acts of violence committed by these soldiers, who are portrayed as mere witnesses to horrors rather than as perpetrators of atrocities. While many civilians are indeed “killed,” their murderers are never clearly identified in the article. This reflects the moral obscenity of the piece: it mourns a man who, according to one of his comrades, must “had to run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds” while operating his bulldozer. Instead of featuring this fact prominently in the headline or sub-headline and questioning how such a horror is possible — given that these massive and unjustifiable acts of cruelty could only be deliberate — CNN merely mentions it in passing, focusing instead on his subsequent inability to eat meat. “When you see a lot of meat outside, and blood… both ours and theirs (Hamas), then it really affects you when you eat”, says former soldier Guy Zaken.
Instead of focusing on the apocalyptic devastation of the Gaza enclave, the article goes to great lengths to portray the Israeli soldiers responsible for this devastation as victims. This reflects a biased conception of impartiality that does not merely involve giving both sides a voice and allowing listeners to make up their own minds — an already problematic approach — but rather dedicates more than 90% of the speaking time to the oppressor, accepting his version of events at face value and employing his language while casting doubt on the other side’s account. This approach is the antithesis of what Robert Fisk, a war reporter for The Times and later for The Independent after resigning due to censorship of an article condemning the United States’ responsibility in the tragedy of Iran Air flight 655, advocated: “I always say that reporters should be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer. If you were covering the 18th-century slave trade, you would not give equal space to the slave-ship captain. At the liberation of an extermination camp, you do not give equal time to the SS.” Yet today’s journalism often resembles interviewing Nazi camp guards who, after witnessing countless emaciated corpses, lament that they can no longer eat pork chops, or a slave ship captain who complains of losing weight during the crossing due to the “bad smells” and “incessant whining” from the hold, which ruined his appetite. This narrative may also include a photo of these executioners as innocent children (rather than “photos of the reservist bulldozing homes and buildings in Gaza and posing in front of vandalized structures”, mentioned but not shared by CNN), while shedding a few crocodile tears for their victims to maintain an appearance of composure. Such dehumanization of the victims, combined with a derisory and foul empathy for their tormentors, would typically elicit a torrent of legitimate outrage. Yet CNN and the entire Western political and media system seem to accept, sometimes tacitly (even unconsciously) and sometimes overtly, this moral inversion regarding Israel and Palestine.
Eliran Mizrahi pictured as a child in a photo collage framed in his family home, in the occupied West Bank (from the CNN article)
Moreover, the CNN article devotes significant space to defending the soldiers, who, without being challenged, justify their actions by labeling all Palestinians as “terrorists.” Zaken, who drove the bulldozer alongside Mizrahi, claims, “the vast majority of those he encountered were ‘terrorists’.” The extermination war, as articulated in the most explicit terms by virtually all Israeli officials, aiming at ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, is still framed by CNN journalists as a “war against Hamas.” This systematic dehumanization of Palestinians, depicted as indistinguishable from Hamas, implicitly legitimizes the violence inflicted upon them, including attacks on civilians. These civilians are identified not only “according to the country’s Ministry of Health,” Gaza being indeed controlled by Hamas (an ignoble clarification frequently used in our media to downplay and discredit the staggering mortality figures in Gaza) but also by international organizations and the Israeli authorities themselves.
The deliberate concealment of Palestinian suffering and the focus on the executioners reflect a deep-seated bias in how Western media approach this conflict. The article takes pride in addressing the so-called unspeakable pain of Israeli soldiers while drowning out the few references to Palestinian civilians in a narrative that centers on the families of war criminals. In this way, CNN exemplifies Western “values” in a particularly striking manner, where Palestinian lives appear utterly insignificant compared to those of their oppressors. This brings to mind the famous apocryphal phrase attributed to Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister: “We can forgive the Palestinians for killing our children; we will never forgive them for forcing us to kill theirs.” This outrageous statement represents the height of dehumanization and immorality, urging us to shed tears for the unfortunate Israelis who, despite their ethereal humanity, are portrayed as being compelled by intrinsically barbaric Palestinians to commit atrocious crimes against their will (“Jews can do no evil”, a statement reflecting the ultra-Zionist view as critiqued by Norman Finkelstein).
The myth of “human shields,” insidiously endorsed by this article (“So, there is no such thing as citizens,” he said, referring to the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians. “This is terrorism.”), is part of the same abject accusatory inversion, disregarding facts (these accusations are unfounded and have long been refuted, with Israel being the only party to use Palestinians as human shields for decades) and logic (using human shields would only make sense when faced with an adversary that values their lives, whereas Israel deliberately targets civilians). This narrative effectively grants Israel carte blanche to commit every conceivable crime, as US and even German officials openly do.
Ultimately, this media coverage represents a moral infamy and a betrayal of universal principles of justice. Is the pain of a soldier who can no longer eat meat after runnig over Palestinians, whether living or dead, truly the journalistic priority in a war marked by so many horrors? Would an article focusing on the psychological suffering of a Hamas fighter responsible for the alleged “massacres” of October 7 even be conceivable? Even if the quote about the Israeli soldier’s loss of appetite was mentioned in passing in a 1,000-page book dedicated to Palestinian suffering, it would be indecent unless its sole purpose was to highlight the dehumanization of Palestinians. The CNN article does precisely the opposite: the hundreds of Palestinians crushed dead or alive, by the hundreds, whose entrails are squirting out (“Everything squirts out,”), serve only to make this loss of appetite understandable. The work of these two journalists (one named “Nadeen Ebrahim”, another layer of shame), centered on the fate of the executioners, dishonors not only the Palestinian victims but also the ethics and human values that journalism and the West in general claim to uphold.
In his masterful work The Great War for Civilization, Robert Fisk offered a profound definition of journalism:
I suppose, in the end, we journalists try — or should try — to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: ‘we didn’t know — no one told us.’ Amira Hass, the brilliant Israeli journalist from Ha’aretz, whose articles on the occupied Palestinian territories eclipsed those written by non-Israeli journalists, discussed this point with me over two years ago. I insisted that our vocation was to write the first pages of history, but she interrupted me. “No, Robert, you’re wrong. Our job is to monitor the centers of power.” In the end, I believe that’s the best definition of journalism I’ve ever heard: to challenge authority — any authority — especially when governments and politicians are dragging us into war, deciding that they will kill and others will die.
Unfortunately, the sole vocation of today’s journalists appears to be acting as mouthpieces for criminals, who operate with the active complicity of our governments — which, by the way, subsidize the media handsomely. This CNN article, like so many others, deserves a place in a “Museum of Horrors” dedicated to the racist and colonial mentality that still pervades much of the West.