Palestinians inspect the damage of residential buildings after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Associated Press

There is a dangerous disconnect between the Israeli public and the rest of the world over the Gaza war. Most Israelis see and hear reports which cater to their views and sentiments rather than the ugly and cruel reality of their army’s offensive against Gaza and Gazans.

WNYCSTUDIOS recently broadcast podcast with Oren Persico, an investigative journalist with the Seventh Eye, the sole Israeli website assessing the country’s media. Persico said that “Israel is still on October 7th,” the raid into Israel by Hamas which killed 1,139 and abducted 240-250 Israelis and foreigners. Israeli television repeatedly broadcast material from the targeted location, showing burnt cars and ravaged homes, and interviewed families of Israeli victims and hostages. The focus was always on Israeli pain and fear.

Israeli broadcasts showed Gaza’s destroyed buildings and rubble-strewn streets rather than women and children killed by Israeli bombs. Israelis did not “question the legitimacy” of Israeli attacks on Gaza. Israelis concluded shirtless men in handcuffs detained by Israeli troops were “terrorists” and believed that the only Palestinians still in the north after Israel ordered most residents to go south were “terrorists.” Reuters quoted Persico as saying censorship has played a role: “You do not see the wounded, the women and children, you do not see the dead, you do not see the grief of Gazans,” he said, attributing this to editorial choices. “The rationale is that showing those pictures might hurt the Israeli war effort.” Mainstream outlets moved rightwards to suit public opinion. Journalists and politicians are more and more right wing. Some make comparisons between Israel’s actions in Gaza with Allied devastating carpet bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II and US using nuclear weapons to level the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when there was “no consideration of human life.” These people do not subscribe to the dictum: “two wrongs do not make a right.” Persico made the point that the liberal daily Haaretz — which has made an effort to carry coverage and criticisms of Israel’s conduct of the war - is read more outside the country than inside.

Writing in Haaretz, Yair Ben David blamed, “The Israeli media’s deliberate blindness regarding what is happening in the Gaza Strip, and the under-reporting of the collateral suffering that the war is inflicting on innocent civilians.” He said, they “deepen the ignorance and make it easier for viewers to wrap themselves in a cloak of self-righteousness and wallow in it. Ignorance of what is happening on the other side – a phenomenon that in the past made us feel strong and confident – is now also allowing us to continue feeling moral.” Ben David also argued, “Willful ignorance is also responsible for the response of many Israelis to investigative reports about the activity of the Israel Defence Forces in recent weeks, which alongside its achievements also revealed its blunders and flaws. Thus, after the reports about the IDF’s killing of three Israeli captives in Gaza, MK Tally Gotliv (Likud) wondered on X (formerly Twitter) in her inimitable style, ‘In the name of all names (that is, God), why, why is the IDF Spokesperson making at this time the sad and tragic announcement… What purpose does it serve? No purpose!’”

She is not alone, Ben David said. This attitude “deprives the public of essential knowledge about the (Israeli military’s) operational and moral performance.” While the Buddha called “Willful ignorance” a “sin,” modern law considers it a crime. Wikipedia defines “willful ignorance” as an effort by a person “to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated.” The website cited US cases where someone was in possession of or transporting packages of drugs claimed no knowledge of what was in the packages. “Willful ignorance” is static and dangerous. People do not blame themselves for state of affairs and believe that they can do nothing about it.

Israeli liberals who normally emphasize with Palestinians have — with right-wingers — practiced “willful ignorance” about the Gaza war. For them, it begins and ends with October 7th. Israelis and their allies were furious when, addressing the UN Security Council on October 24th, 2023, Secretary General Antonio Guterres roundly condemned the Hamas attack on Israel before stating, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.” He went on to say, however, that Palestinian “grievances cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas (which) cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

If US President Joe Biden and his Western allies had listened to his words and not succumbed to criminal “willful ignorance” the Gaza war could have been halted by the end of October or early November. Thousands of lives of Gaza’s women, children, and non-combatant men could have been saved and Israeli bombs and bulldozers might not have turned most of Gaza into latter day Dresden or Hiroshima. The bombings of both cities elicited controversy as they came toward the end of World War II. Both were targeted to undermine military and civilian morale and hasten the end of the war. It was initially reported that 150,000-200,000 died in Dresden but in 2004 the number was revised to 22,700 to 25,000, fewer than the more than 31,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israel.

US and allied politicians have practiced “willful ignorance” by claiming Israel has a “right to defend itself” without admitting that Israel’s air, land and sea offensive has eradicated Gaza, killed, maimed, and traumatized Gazans and shocked Arab and Muslim peoples who are not practicing “willful ignorance.” Instead, they are following the catastrophic news day-by-day and growing increasingly bitter, frustrated, and angry. Images from Gaza have been seared into their minds and are certain to determine their short — medium — and long-term attitudes toward the US. Britain, France, Germany, and other Western countries. This holds true also of the non-Arab, non-Muslim millions of people who have flowed into the streets of their cities to call for “Free Palestine” and an end to the war. Somehow, somewhere they are likely to hold their politicians to account for their “willful ignorance” and “willful blindness” to an Israeli revenge war which should never have been waged on that narrow coastal strip of land and its 2.3 million people.