It took just one mention of the more than 11,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza - a number that has since risen to 14,000 - for senior Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev to revert to the line that these are "Hamas numbers". In a recent interview with Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC, Regev refused to acknowledge that Israel had killed children in its relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, suggesting that the hours of heart-wrenching footage aired daily could not be independently verified.
It is true that over the past six weeks of war in Gaza, the process of gathering and verifying information and footage has become extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible. But the primary reason for this is Israel’s ongoing push to control the narrative.
Israel has totally sealed off the territory, refusing to grant permission for foreign journalists to enter the war zone. At the same time, at least 53 media workers have been killed in the war since 7 October, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters since the Committee to Protect Journalists began collecting data in 1992.