Robert Besser is a news editor who has worked in television and newspapers in theUnited States, Asia and the Middle East.
What role did the news media play in the May 22 deaths of Israeli embassy employees Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington DC?
A major one.
The media’s hateful reporting about Jews starving Gazans, and the media’s lies about genocide and apartheid, fueled the hate of the filthy American leftist who hunted down Jews and pulled the trigger on a Washington DC street.
Looking back since 1948, Israel’s policy of providing the international news media with freedom of access to everyone, everything and every place in Israel should today be seen as an utter failure that needs to be ended.
And by the way, I say that after spending my life as a journalist who constantly fought for access.
The founding fathers of Israel sought to demonstrate to the world that Israel would become a fellow democracy by, among other things, providing the foreign media with the same freedoms granted to Israel’s own media.
Israeli leaders of 1948 were sure that the international media would honestly report the many, many favorable stories about Israeli society.
So, how did that work out? Seventy-seven years later let’s look at the numbers.
After the British public spent decades watching the genetically embedded antisemitism of the British Broadcasting Corporation, a June 2024 poll found that 54 percent of British 18- to 24-year-old voters do not believe that Israel should exist.
Further, after being inundated by BBC propaganda since October 7, half of the British 18- to 24-year-olds believe that Israel started the Gaza war.
And what about the other European news media? In Germany, 42 percent of those ever-so educated Germans said they believe Israel is doing to the Palestinian Arabs what the Nazis did to the Jews.
In Spain, 50 percent of those polled demand that the government in Madrid "do more to restrain Israel". In Sweden, 56 percent see Israel in a negative light. And 60 percent of Italians stated that Israel was "unjustified" in its attack on Gaza.
As we fight for our lives, this is the thank you Israel has received from the western media for providing it with unfettered access to our country.
As we know, since October 7 honest news from Israel has not been reported. Instead, a non-stop narrative of blaming Israel has radically infected uneducated Europeans and Americans.
Here is a recent example: The Agencie France Press in Paris continues to smear the Jews with the libel that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital parking lot in Gaza on October 17, 2023, killing hundreds of Arabs, even though all western countries have agreed that an errant Moslem missile was to blame (and very few Arabs were hurt.)
Just weeks ago, on April 17, 2025 AFP reported:
“Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“Al-Ahli was heavily damaged by an explosion in its car park on October 17, 2023 that caused multiple fatalities.”
What AFP has intentionally done with this article is to carefully exclude the fact that Moslem terrorists operate from within Gaza hospitals. This is because that fact does not fit into the antisemitic French narrative about the war. They also throw in the line about the Al-Ahli Hospital missile strike, to yet again imply it was Israel’s fault.
Simply put, the Agencie France Press has lied.
At the time of that missile strike, the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the BBC and many others breathlessly raced to post online that 500 Gazans had been killed when Israel struck the hospital parking lot with a missile.
By posting this story these news organizations crossed all lines as they violated their own professional codes of news gathering. They did not go to the site of the missile strike. They did not count the number of dead. They did not seek confirmation from authorities about whose missile had struck the hospital parking lot.
Instead, they did what comes naturally, they blamed the Jews.
But enough already! These news organizations have made the choice to abdicate their roles as professional journalists. They chose to accept “facts” from the lying Hamas, knowing full well that Hamas never tells the truth. Only ten days since October 7 and the world’s press openly paraded their antisemitic narrative of the war.
For goodness sakes, after all these years what does Israel owe the New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Washington Post, the Associated Press or the Agencie France Press?
When does Israel at last hold these news organizations accountable for their lying anti-Israel news coverage?
Why does Israel have to suffer this endless media hate, which has caused the brainwashing of the international public? (Not that there are many brains to wash among young Europeans.)
Did you notice that the world does not criticize Cuba, North Korea or China? There are no street protests, no university encampments. There are no outraged plagiarizing professors.
And that is because these criminal countries do not allow the world’s press to freely operate within their borders.
So the totalitarians are rewarded for keeping out the press, while the Jews have to suffer yet another media pogrom because they permit the foreign press to have free rein in our country.
In truth, expelling the foreign press is about regaining Israel’s national sovereignty. Just as Israel protects its borders from invaders, so it must protect its citizens from the non-stop anti-Israel narrative that has replaced traditional news with a leftist fairy tale smearing Israel with words, such as colonialism, apartheid and genocide.
Have no doubt that we Israeli citizens, our children and grandchildren, are endangered by the foreign media’s lies. Again, in no uncertain terms, the news media is responsible for the deaths of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington DC.
Indeed, media coverage of all things Israel and Jewish is so out of control that Israel might instruct all foreign media to leave for one year, as new policies and procedures for the conduct of the international media can be thoughtfully put in place by the government in Jerusalem.
Just as the foreign media seeks to hold Israel accountable with its endless falsehoods and blood libels, so Israel must hold accountable the anti-Israel news media that no longer pretends to practice fact-based journalism.
The good news is that Israel has inched forward in the right direction by expelling the Arab propaganda Al Jazeera news outlet. Further, we sought to protect Israel by barring entry to British and French MPs, and US Congressmen, who, without permission, flew to Israel to further their political careers by standing before cameras and libeling the Jews.
Consider this. If Israel grants a medical license to a foreign doctor, only to later discover that he does not follow professional standards, our authorities would immediately take away his license.
Following that reasoning, how might we expel the great New York Times or BBC? Simply by asking whether they are practicing professionally responsible journalism in Israel? Does their coverage of Israel violate their own newsrooms’ written codes of conduct?
Here is an example from the Associated Press rules of conduct for its staff: “We will not knowingly introduce rumor or false information into material intended for publication or broadcast.”
If an Israeli review of the Associated Press’ reporting found that they purposely ignore facts, that they are propagandists, not journalists, then they should leave our country. Period.
But in Israel’s knee-jerk behaviors to be good Jews before the gentile world, to bow down to their failing western values such as the free press, we are suffering from terrible self-inflicted wounds.
Yet for the sake of protecting ourselves, our children and grandchildren, this must end.
And this is not rocket science. Let us hold accountable the international news media that do not follow their own written professional standards and let us agree for Israel to expel those foreign news organizations found to be rabid Israel-haters.
For, at long last, we must block entry to our country to those foreigners who make no secret that they want us dead.
And, at long last, we must finally shout out loud that we have suffered enough.
The still-developing Zionist revolution calls for regaining our national Jewish dignity, not that we in Israel must forever endure daily lying and blood libels by the world’s news media.
It is up to us in Israel to take control of our fate. For expelling those foreign media that seek the end of Israel is the least we can do to shield ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
After each of us in Israel has endured so much recent pain, expelling the antisemitic foreign media is the least we can do to proclaim to the world that, after the past 100 years of unbearable hardships, and regardless of the hatred of our enemies, we continue to stand together as proud Jews.