September 4, 2026 – As kites and balloons originating in the Gaza Strip are once again landing on communities and troops in southern Israel, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) reiterates the urgent warning from Israeli residents living near Gaza: the incidents should not be treated as isolated or innocuous.
News outlets covering the current incidents have a professional obligation to report the violent context: Prior to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, terrorists launched hundreds of explosive kites and arson balloons, endangering residents and sparking more than 1,300 fires which destroyed more than 8,700 acres of agricultural land and nature reserves and caused more than $4 million in damage as of June 2019.
“This is how it started before Oct. 7,” residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz said in a statement. “At first, seemingly innocent kites with Arabic writing were sent. Later, when Hamas realized the kites were landing in our fields, they attached incendiary materials to them, and thousands of dunams of wheat fields were burned.”
“This was followed by explosive balloons intended to harm residents of the communities,” the statement added.
Noting that the Western press has an abysmal track record in reporting the terror organizations’ 2018–2019 arson attacks, the leading international media watchdog calls for careful and complete coverage of the reemerging phenomenon.
At the time, CAMERA compelled both The Los Angeles Times and Associated Press to issue corrections after falsely reducing dozens of daily attacks to dozens total over a period of months. CAMERA also prompted Reuters to correct captions that failed to explain that Palestinian arson attacks were responsible for the devastated landscape. After CAMERA’s intervention, NBC likewise added essential information about the arson kites to a caption that completely ignored the violent meaning of the kite in a Students for Justice for Palestine poster. .
“Reporters and editors should draw the correct lessons not only from the violent history of terror organizations using kites and balloons as arson weapons, but also from their own journalistic failures in which they egregiously downplayed these threats,” Tamar Sternthal, CAMERA’s director of research and media analysis cautioned.
The Board of Peace, responsible for overseeing the Gaza Strip, has slammed the recent incidents, including 12 kites and four balloons Israeli authorities had recovered in Israeli communities close to the Gaza border in recent weeks and another intercepted kite, as ceasefire violations. “All militant activity in Gaza must stop, including the flying of kites. We have conveyed this message directly through the established mechanism,” a Board of Peace official told Reuters.
While Hamas denies responsibility for the incidents and other kites directed at troops securing the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accused the terror organization of testing Israel’s response by orchestrating the recent launches, none of which contained explosives. Some of the kites that reached Israel had strings as long as nearly three miles, leading Israeli security officials to suspect that Hamas is readying to copy Hezbollah’s successful use of fiber optic drones, Bloomberg reported.
In an Aug. 28 “Morning Edition” broadcast, National Public Radio reported as fact Hamas’ disputed assertion that the terror organization had nothing to do with those incidents, stating: “this weekend, a few stray kites blew across the border into southern Israel.”
Hamas, for its part, disingenuously slammed the Board of Peace for “framing innocent children’s activities as armed operations,” and falsely casts Israel as manufacturing “false pretexts to continue the war in Gaza.” The United Nations adopted Hamas’ narrative, with Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani calling Israel’s threat to evacuate areas from which kites, drones, and balloons are launched as an “outrageous” response to “children’s kite flying.”
An Aug. 24 Sky News video likewise adopted this fallacious framing, dismissing the historical lessons and stating that “there was nothing dangerous about [these kites], no flaming tails, no explosives. They were just toys.”
“The 2018 terror campaign started with ‘just toys’ and quickly escalated to mass arson. Besides the vast destruction of crops and natural areas (what some critics of Israel might now term ‘ecocide’), the explosive-laden balloons and kites endangered civilians,” CAMERA’s Sternthal points out. “In one day that year, incendiary devices attached to balloons landed in the yards of both an elementary school and a kindergarten, forcing pre-school children to rush to safety. It shouldn’t be a difficult lesson for journalists to grasp: the reappearing kites are not child’s play,” she concludes.
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Founded in 1982, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis is a media monitoring, research, and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media. Because public opinion ultimately shapes public policy, distorted news coverage that misleads the public can be detrimental to sound policymaking. A non-partisan organization, CAMERA takes no position with regard to British, American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
For further information on our work, please visit camera.org.