A June 1 Guardian cartoon by Ben Jennings, “Israeli strikes on Lebanon”, is a perfect illustration of the outlet’s coverage of the regional war which began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel and carried out the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.
We documented previously how, within days after Oct. 7, the Guardian disappeared Hamas from their coverage of the war – advancing of a narrative in which nothing the Iranian-backed terror group has done since their barbaric pogrom is of any consequence, and that Israel is the only party whose decisions matter.
We’ve demonstrated that, by Oct. 14, 2023, Guardian journalists and contributors began what we described as the abuse of Oct. 7th memory: actively downplaying the mass murder, systematic rape and sexual mutilation of Israelis by Gaza terrorists, while framing the story instead as one about Israel’s putatively disproportionate response, which, within weeks, they began claiming was “genocidal”.
Hamas’ cruel, destructive and fanatical decisions over the last thirty-two months, including their use of human shields, their decision not to surrender despite the horrible toll their unwinnable war has exacted on the civilian population, and the group’s current refusal to disarm, has been airbrushed by the outlet’s reporters and contributors.
This latest cartoon extends this pattern of terrorist erasure to another battlefield, Lebanon, where Israel has been at war with Hezbollah since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Iranian proxy opposed by the overwhelming majority of Lebanese citizens began an unprovoked campaign of rockets attacks on the country’s north, displacing tens of thousands.
The current round of fighting began when Hezbollah made the decision, at Tehran’s behest, to fire rockets at Israel on March 2 in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a day earlier.
The Guardian cartoon decontextualizes the conflict, creating an alternative universe in which neither Hamas nor Hezbollah – a group, like Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction – have played a role in the destruction in Lebanon and Gaza. In the outlet’s alternative reality, Israel bombs territories and countries for no comprehensible reason, save Jerusalem’s putative malevolence.
Indeed, the absence in Jennings’ cartoon of any symbol to suggest even the existence of armed groups in either Gaza or Lebanon renders it a form of terror-adjacent propaganda, rather than a graphic illustration expressing an informed opinion on events in the region.
The Guardian again reveals itself to be more akin to Al Jazeera than a mainstream outlet which abides by traditional journalistic standards in the Western tradition.