The Voices of War and Pain

How to cut through the noise and language barriers in the Israel-Hamas conflict

This newsletter is usually about language, identity, and the impact that the English language’s dominance has on what we call ‘International’ news.

But the past 10 days have been shocking, heartbreaking and overwhelming. The headlines etched in my mind are: “The biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust” and “1.1 million Palestinians told they have 24 hours to evacuate. UN says the order is impossible.” The savagery of Hamas’s murderous attack on Israeli civilians is haunting. The price being paid by Gazan civilians is terrifying. Tensions are reverberating across the world. It’s hard to find the right words, but dread and despair are what I feel in my heart.

This is the first conflict between Israel and Hamas since I stepped away from my last job as a TV News presenter. Journalists should never lose their humanity, but you do have to deal with the technicalities of getting programmes on air and being across every development in real-time. I haven’t had that pressure over the past 10 days, and I feel the ‘war of information’ in a different way.

There is so much noise. So many superfluous opinions to plough through to hear the spectrum of voices that need to be heard. The new Twitter/X regime isn’t helping. I don’t know about you, but my timeline is filled with hot takes from the USA rather than fact-based analysis from experts in the Middle East itself. I spent years curating a personal Twitter list of valuable Israeli/Palestinian voices who now all seem to have disappeared from my feed.

Then there’s the enormous pressure for people to state where they stand, who they support. Whose side are you on? I have several friends who have felt enormous pressure to publicly answer that question. But it’s a black-and-white premise for a conflict that is anything but black-and-white. Admitting its complexity doesn’t justify the bloodshed. That should be obvious. But complexity does not fare well on social media at the best of times, let alone now.

The irony is that there is a much wider spectrum of opinion within both the Israeli and Palestinian sides than the ‘with-us-or-against-us’ binary often seen in Western society. Some of the NGOs who most closely document abuses of Palestinians in the occupied territories are Israeli. And there is often considerable criticism within the Palestinian population towards their own leadership, be it Hamas or the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

In these hugely emotive times, it’s important to listen to those voices. And we’re lucky enough to be able to, if there’s the will. Several Israeli newspapers have an English-language section. Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post are diametrically opposed politically but they’ll give you an idea of how the Israeli people are dealing with the October 7th massacre by Hamas and their Government’s ongoing reaction to it.

Al Jazeera English will give you diverse views from Palestinians, the Middle East, Muslim communities around the world and the wider global south. There are also many Palestinian journalists who are reporting from Gaza on a story that they’re living themselves. It’s a hard but necessary watch.

This conflict has made me further appreciate the solid, fact-based journalism of the major TV networks and, within them, the specific correspondents who have been covering all sides of this conflict for decades. Yes, I know that there’s often much to criticise in mainstream media. Mistakes get made when under pressure. But these times call for rigorous, fact-checked reporting and I get most of it from legacy media. I trust their process. Which doesn’t mean I am not aware of the biases, conscious or subconscious, inherent in all of them. I just take them into consideration.

Remember that all channels have specific audiences, usually domestic, that they cater for. Beyond having particular sympathies, more than anything various audiences will have different levels of knowledge about the conflict. Journalists have to account for that.

My news diet is varied. Yours should be too. I would never check just one source. But the main broadcasters remain the backbone of how I choose to get my information.

And finally, here is a specific suggestion for those among you who are second language English speakers, and who are following this conflict in your native language (Arabic and Hebrew being notable exceptions here for obvious reasons): Be wary of the linguistic filter. Regular readers of this newsletter will know how often I complain about the dominance that English - as the global language - has on the international news narrative. But this is the one time that I would suggest to anyone who can - and anyone reading this email obviously can - to follow this story on English language media. Why? Because all sides will be able to have their say in English. As a viewer, you can hear directly from those involved. That’s not the same in secondary languages that most people in the region don’t speak. I’ve been watching some of the coverage on Italian TV and although there are several good correspondents, when it comes to Israeli and Palestinian voices, they are usually reduced to short, dubbed clips that do not in any way convey the enormity of what is happening.

This story is painful to follow. It will most likely get worse. Be conscious of how you get your news. Anyone who makes any of what is happening seem clear cut is most likely wrong.