Channel 13 News journalist Raviv Drucker revealed this week (January 21) that after the outbreak of the Gaza war, he asked Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy to stop participating as a panelist on his program on Channel 13. This request was due to the positions Levy expressed on air regarding the war and the emphasis he placed on the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Drucker, one of Israel's most senior and respected journalists, made these remarks at the Haaretz and Association for Civil Rights conference held in Tel Aviv. According to him, he approached Levy with this request following complaints he received from both panel members on the program, reporters at Channel 13 News, and people working behind the scenes at the news company.

"The issue of the suffering in Gaza is undoubtedly massively underreported," Drucker said in a conversation with Haaretz editor Aluf Benn. "This isn't because of a phone call from [IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Daniel] Hagari, or a call from [Communications Minister Shlomo] Karhi, or from Bibi. It's... internal feelings—you simply can't bring this up, either because others won’t accept it, viewers won’t accept it, or the people sitting next to you won’t accept it. And some people just can’t bear to see it, especially in the days immediately following October 7.

"I'm not defending this decision," Drucker added. "Even on my own show, where I make the decisions and have no one else to blame, there was underreporting. There was a panelist, Gideon Levy, and at some point, I told him, 'Listen, give us a bit of a break.'"

In response to Benn's question, Drucker explained the motivation behind his request to Levy. He said that despite his deep respect and admiration for Levy and his journalistic legacy, "When he said some of the things he did after October 7, people came to me [...] very mainstream, anti-government people, simply couldn’t bear to hear him. They didn’t threaten or say, 'I won’t appear on your panel anymore,' but panelists, people behind the scenes, reporters—it was very, very difficult. People were deeply wounded."

Drucker admitted that he feels "apologetic" as he recounts the event and added that perhaps this feeling is justified. However, he noted that he tried to recall how the American media covered civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq to compare it with Israeli coverage of the losses in Gaza. He explained that, having been in the U.S. at the time, he remembers the criticism mainstream media there received from left-wing circles for barely covering the victims in Iraq.

"I remember reading Seymour Hersh's memoirs about his exposure of the My Lai massacre in 1968," Drucker added. "Vietnam, which didn’t exactly threaten the American home front, didn’t conquer any settlements, and didn’t kidnap people... no one there really served a sentence. There was one person who served a sentence, and it was house arrest. And the media tried to suppress it, deny it, and fight it. So, it’s not an excuse, and it’s not a good enough reason. What I’m trying to say is that nations, in certain situations — especially us after October 7 — people simply couldn’t handle it."

Similar sentiments were expressed by Uvda journalist Chen Liberman during a panel moderated by Chaim Levinson. "During this war, the maximum level of left-leaning sentiment I allowed myself in panels was to support the hostages, as if that’s even a leftist stance," she said. "But it was hard for me to come and talk about what’s happening in Gaza. It was difficult because I felt there was absolutely no attention or space for it."

There’s no one to answer the phone

Alongside what Drucker referred to as the "emotional difficulty" of discussing Gaza's suffering, he also mentioned an objective challenge. The ban on journalists' entry into the Gaza Strip made the Israeli media dependent on the information provided by the IDF spokesperson and reports from Palestinian media in Gaza.

According to Drucker, the explosion that occurred near the beginning of the war at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was a "quite pivotal event" that influenced the way the war was covered afterward. This was primarily because, with no international journalists in the Strip, it was Hamas's version that captured the most attention. "Two versions emerged," Drucker recalled. "Now, I’ll tell you as someone who lived through the Second Intifada and wrote a book about it, when the IDF spokesperson gives a version, I’m very, very, very skeptical. But there were two versions, and the IDF told the truth. It turned out it was a Palestinian rocket, with ninety-something percent certainty."

Drucker's attempts to establish direct contact with Gazans in order to hear firsthand from them, rather than relying on Gaza's media, were also unsuccessful.

"I tried many times to talk to Wael Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera reporter who became the symbol of this war," Drucker said. "He was a star of Al Jazeera, who lost almost his entire family and, in the end, even his child. His child was registered as a journalist, but the IDF claimed he was registered as a Hamas operative, and the car he was in with others was said to be on its way to deliver weapons.

"You have no ability to verify this, he doesn't want to talk to you, and almost no one else wants to talk to you. The almost only ones we managed to bring up from Gaza were the spokesperson for UNRWA— every time we bring him up, they don't like it, but I don't mind that they don't like it — his perspective is simply limited; and a poor resident from Rafah, Sami Obaid, whom we initially called a journalist because he once wrote something, but he's not a journalist, he's a resident. He's a resident of Rafah, and he tells you what happened because he agrees to answer an Israeli phone call and join on Zoom. So, our objective ability to provide anything, to say explicitly 'today something terrible happened'... that's also very difficult."

"It did not interest anyone"

In response to Benn's question, Drucker stated that, in his opinion, the current situation of indifference to Palestinian suffering is not expected to change anytime soon. "Let's be honest," Drucker said, "even before October 7, no one wanted to hear anything about Palestinian suffering."

Drucker testified that on the Makor program he has hosted for the past 15 years, there were two investigative reports on the suffering of Palestinians. "Each of them received no attention, no impact, it did not interest anyone," he said. "I wish people were already preaching against us, inciting against us, even that didn’t happen. There was nothing. And certainly after October 7, there’s no attention to this matter, and I don’t think it will change, and I don’t see any way it will change in the near future.

"The only prism through which this issue is viewed is always Israeli Hasbara and how we look. That’s the maximum. In other words, the problem is not the children who died, but that we don't look good."