PART ONE: CREATING A NARRATIVE, ABSOLVING HAMAS
This is the first of a three-part series examining Rolling Stone’s coverage of the war in Gaza that Hamas started on October 7, 2023.
In October of 2023, coverage of the barbaric October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response dominated headlines in the mainstream press as well as broadcast news around the world. Despite its nominal mission as a music magazine, in that first month of the war, Rolling Stone obsessively covered those events as well, in about twenty articles over the first three weeks, with mixed results.
Some of the coverage was well done. On the day of Hamas’s horrific attack, the magazine reported, “President Biden Condemns ‘Appalling Hamas Terrorist Attacks’ Against Israel,” and on October 11 the magazine quoted Gigi Hadid saying, “while I have hopes and dreams for Palestinians, none of them include the harm of a Jewish person. The terrorizing of innocent people is not in alignment with and does not do any good for the ‘Free Palestine’ movement.” On October 24, the magazine covered the release of hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, reporting that she was “beaten in the ribs by her captors, and held in a ‘spiderweb’ of underground tunnels.” On October 15, a Rolling Stone article provided one of the earliest, and to-date one of the most comprehensive, accounts of the gruesome and sickening events at the Nova music festival.
Other articles also gave readers insight into the terrifying details of the October 7 attack. But for the most part, even articles that purported to document the attack from the Israeli perspective, placed the blame for the attack onto the Israeli Prime Minister. A commentary piece by Israeli writer Yaakov Katz on October 7, “This Is a Pearl Harbor Moment for Israel,” described “an attack directed against civilians – children, women, men, old and young hiding in their homes, in bomb shelters and in open fields. When armed terrorists go door-to-door in a Kibbutz there is nothing military about that. It is about murdering civilians for one reason – that they are Jewish and are living in the land of Israel.” Katz, however, also blamed the attack on Netanyahu’s refusal to accede to the demands of anti-judicial reform protesters.
On October 9, “Israelis Scramble to Find Rave Survivors and Scream: ‘How Could We Be So Weak?’” by Jesse Rosenfeld, gave it away in the subheading: “Victims’ families hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for not preventing the carnage.” On October 26, in “The Horror, the Pain, and the Guilt of Watching the War From Tel Aviv,” Noa Yedlin writes,
I wonder how [Netanyahu] sleeps at night. We all do. He deserves to never sleep another night, and that still won’t begin to compensate for the loss of a single child. This is the man who has entrusted our lives in the hands of incompetent, messianic opportunists, all for the sake of his political survival. This is the man who was willing to sacrifice Israel’s democracy on the altar of his upcoming trial, while ignoring all professional warnings that his judicial coup was weakening Israel’s army, economy and civil society by the day.
“Bibi’s War: How Incompetence, Opportunism, and Rejection Led to a Catastrophe for Israel and Palestine” by Jay Michaelson (October 29), as the title suggests, is an entire article dedicated to blaming Netanyahu for the war. “While Hamas bears moral responsibility,” Michaelson writes, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu created the conditions that led to the Oct. 7 massacres, the Israeli reprisals, and now the ground invasion.”
Certainly within Israeli media and society, the question of the Prime Minister’s responsibility for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust are important discussions to have, and likely after the war concludes, there will be an investigation that will include this question. Anger at the country’s leadership was justified. But why would an American music magazine publish four articles within less than a month after the attack, blaming the government of the country that was attacked? Is this really what they think their readers are interested in?
At the same time, it’s reasonable and newsworthy to also provide the perspective of Gaza civilians caught in the war, which Rolling Stone did in articles dated October 11, October 14, October 21 and October 27. But if you thought that those pieces, like the ones that held Prime Minister Netanyahu responsible, would give the perspective of Gazans who held their own Hamas government responsible for the war that resulted from the attack on Israel, you’d be quite mistaken.
Instead, on October 11, Jesse Rosenfeld justified the attack, writing:
Many Gazans were elated – not by the atrocities, with which they can grimly identify. They celebrated an inconceivable breaking of the siege. For Gazans, it was the bursting of the bubble that allowed Israelis to live cost-free while Israel denied them the most basic rights.
Of course, this spin ignores the fact that Israel gave Gaza autonomy in 2005, withdrawing every civilian and soldier, leaving behind a greenhouse agricultural business and a beautiful coastline for tourism. There was no siege or blockade at that time. The people of Gaza elected Hamas in 2006.
In the same article, Rosenfeld interviewed Shawan Jaberin, a man with ties to the airline-hijacking group PFLP, saying Jaberin “notes that pulling off an attack on this scale has shown Palestinians that while the international community won’t use any leverage to protect their rights, they can shape their own fate.” Also included in Rosenfeld’s interview subjects is Mohammed Abdalla, a former employee of the “Hamas-run government press office,” though Rosenfeld ridiculously claims that Abdalla said he “he didn’t fit in” there. Nor does Rosenfeld question that Hamas spokesperson Basem Naim, calls for “stopping provocative Jewish religious visits to the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” i.e., the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, as a condition of ending the war.
Three days later this was followed up by another long and similar piece by Rosenfeld. The headline lamented, “Gaza Palestinians Flee for Their Lives, But There’s Nowhere To Run.” (October 14.) The subheading reads, “Israeli officials ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza. Many of them have no means of escape, and no place to go even if they did,” yet the word “Egypt” does not appear once in this article. (The earlier, October 11 article mentioned and immediately rejected “Israeli calls for [Gazan civilians] to flee their homes to Egypt.”) Instead, the article relies on former PLO leader Hanan Ashrawi to equate fleeing a war zone, as so many fled from Ukraine and Syria, with expulsion. Only one week after the barbaric Hamas assault on Israel, and the atrocities that Rolling Stone itself covered, the publication uncritically published Ashrawi’s bizarre claim that “the world is giving Israel a free pass.”
These were followed up on October 21 with “Under Attack From Settlers and Clashing With the IDF, Palestinians Fear the ‘Take Over of the West Bank,’” and on October 27 with “Gaza Internet and Cell Service Cut Off as Israeli Airstrikes Build.” An October 28 article was titled “Shock, Awe and Absolute Terror as Gaza Goes Dark,” with a subheading, “besieged Palestinian strip loses phone and internet connection amidst Israeli military’s unprecedented bombardment campaign.” None of these squarely blamed Hamas for the dire situation of the Palestinians. The article on the 28th, again by Jesse Rosenfeld, did, however, blame attacks on Jews in Judea and Samaria on Israeli actions in Gaza: “In reaction to the images of a dark Gaza lit up by red clouds of fire, armed Palestinian groups mostly from the working class refugee camps launched armed attacks on settlers and soldiers.”
To Rolling Stone, when Palestinians attack Jews, they were provoked. But when Jews respond to an attack, the response is not provoked, but rather, like the attack itself, the responsibility of Israeli leadership. While the magazine did a good job initially of reporting on the pain felt by both sides, the pieces that tell of the Israeli pain blame Netanyahu but those that tell of Gaza pain do not blame Hamas. Either way, according to the narrative Rolling Stone laid out in October 2023, it was mostly Israel’s fault.
It’s also worth noting that, like many media outlets, Rolling Stone botched coverage of the blast at Al Ahli hospital on October 17, when a rocket fired from the Palestinian side landed in the hospital’s parking lot, killing about 50 people. But even in a crowded field, Rolling Stone’s coverage stood out as particularly bad, because in a separate article about misinformation about the hospital blast, they promoted even more misinformation.
The article about the blast itself originally quoted the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which wrote on X, “Israeli warplanes bombed Al-Ahli Arab hospital, a Baptist hospital, in the center of Gaza City, resulting in the martyrdom of 500 Palestinians, including children and women.” Rolling Stone eventually deleted that and substituted, “the U.S. has also said intelligence indicates that Hamas group Palestinian Islamic Jihad – not Israel – is responsible for the blast.” The revised article also deleted a long quote from Doctors without Borders:
“We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing of Ahli Arab Hospital in #Gaza City, which was treating patients and hosting displaced Gazans,” Doctors Without Borders wrote on X. “Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. This is a massacre. It is absolutely unacceptable.”
“Nothing justifies this shocking attack on a hospital and its many patients and health workers, as well as the people who sought shelter there,” the organization added. “Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”
But in the article about “misinformation” with respect to the hospital story, Rolling Stone wrote:
The official X account for the Israeli government edited one of their tweets, which accused the PIJ of being responsible for the devastation in Al-Ahli Hospital. In its edit, the government removed a video purporting to show the rocket launches from their tweet after social media users pointed out that the time stamp on the clip was inconsistent with the reported time of the hospital strike.
(“Misinformation Runs Rampant in Aftermath of Gaza Hospital Attack,” October 17, Nikki McCann Ramirez.) Although the Israeli tweet did delete the video, the account still made the claim that the rocket that hit the hospital came from the Gaza side, a claim which, according to Rolling Stone’s own reporting, was corroborated by the Biden administration. Yet, Rolling Stone used the deleted video to try to call in to question the claim that the rocket that hit the hospital was a Palestinian-launched rocket, even though the U.S. (and eventually the Associated Press) verified that was indeed the case. And the article about misinformation never mentioned the misinformation that came from the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs account or Doctors without Borders, that Rolling Stone itself first published and then deleted.
While the above articles showed clear bias in blaming Israel for actions of Hamas or PIJ, an October 21, 2023 article titled, “Pro-Palestine Influencers Shocked to Be Asked to #StandWithIsrael,” demonstrated a lack of a moral compass. The article details efforts by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to raise awareness of their missing loved ones. The article, dated only two weeks after the Hamas attack in which those hostages were taken, notes that “most members can’t even be sure whether an abducted child, parent or partner is still alive.” At that time, there were still many children in Hamas captivity. But instead of focusing on the organization’s search to find a common humanity with those on the other side of the issue – as many of the hostages themselves had done prior to the attack – the focus of the article is on social media users who actually mocked the hostage families for the mistake of thinking they would get any empathy.
All of this, as noted above, was in the first three weeks of the war. By the end of October, Rolling Stone’s narrative was set: Blame Israel, absolve Hamas, and belittle those who ask for sympathy on the Israeli side.
So what happened after that? See parts two and three in our series.