"I just want to tell you that I saw a poll conducted yesterday, where 70% of the public supports the deal," said Yinon Magal, host of The Patriots on Channel 14, to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The chairman of far-right party Otzma-Yehudit appeared as a guest on the program that aired on Wednesday, January 15, in the final stretch of political struggles within the coalition surrounding the hostage release deal.

If you're not among Channel 14's viewers, Magal's statement probably sounds trivial to you. Israeli public support for the hostage release deal has remained consistent in all polls conducted since the start of the Gaza war. However, for anyone even slightly familiar with the channel's content, Magal's statement was not only new, it was downright scandalous. Like suddenly hearing a Hamas Al-Aqsa Channel host reciting "Hatikvah" (Israel's national anthem).

Channel 14 has become the second most popular news channel in Israel since the attempted judicial overhaul started in January 2023. The channel regularly broadcasts fake news, incitement to violence, and government propaganda. According to recent poles approximately 40% of the Israeli audience see it as their main source for news or a legitimate source of news. The channel shifted Israeli sentiment and views on political issues as it grew in popularity.

Since the war began on October 7 2023, Channel 14, and especially its flagship program The Patriots, expressed firm opposition to the hostage release deal. The channel attacked those who supported the deal, implemented selective coverage of the hostages' families' struggle, ignored protests and events they organized, and targeted the hostage families themselves. Even in the headlines of their newscasts, the channel chooses to ignore the hostage issue as much as possible. "The treatment of hostages on Channel 14 is filthy, increases hatred, and brainwashes," testified Sivan Cohen, who previously hosted protests by hostage families.

Tal Meir, host of Israel This Morning, summarized it simply in May 2024, at one of the key moments when Netanyahu torpedoed the deal: "Most media today talks about needing a 'deal now' except here, in Channel 14's studio." "Everyone knows that the security establishment is pushing for a hostage release deal, and we must keep asking them why? Why? Don't they want to win?" suggested pundit Yoni Shetbon in August 2024, and Yinon Magal explained: "They are servants of the elite, the elite shouts 'hostages' 'hostages', and they align themselves with this story."

The channel's stars also mobilize their popular social media accounts to oppose the deal. For example, Magal, who in January 2025 suddenly discovered there was an overwhelming majority in favor of the deal, posted on his Twitter (X) account in June 2024 that "a large majority of the Jewish public believes that only military pressure will bring about the release of hostages (INSS poll)."

The opposition to the hostage deal was so blatant that the channel didn't hesitate to compare its supporters to Hamas collaborators. For instance, in September 2024, when public pressure for a hostage deal reached its peak after Hamas murdered six hostages, Magal attacked then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "Most damaging to security: Defense Minister who wants to change cabinet decision because Hamas murdered hostages. What is Hamas supposed to understand from this?? The man who threatened Hamas with death or surrender at the start of the war surrenders to Hamas. Embarrassing, sad, and dangerous."

But then, almost instantly, everything changed.

Channel 14 and Its Opposite

On January 9, Yinon Magal took the stage at an event marking three years of Channel 14 (since changing its name from Channel 20). Instead of a "Total Victory" cap on his head, he wore the yellow pin of the hostage families on his suit lapel. For the first time since the war began.

Magal, aware that this was bordering on sacrilege, provided an explanation: "As an exception, I put on the hostages' pin following a request from captivity survivor Sapir Cohen, who was interviewed yesterday on The Patriots," he told the audience at Binyanei Ha'Uma in Jerusalem, "The dilemmas she described are Holocaust dilemmas. What they're going through with the Nazis [This is what the Palestinians are called on the channel] is terrible."

Did the recognition that the hostages are going through "something terrible" suddenly strike Channel 14's star host after a year and two months? Later, when Magal began wearing the pin during The Patriots broadcasts, it became clear this wasn't an exceptional gesture but a shift in direction. The change was visible not just in the accessories of channel employees, of course. It was also apparent in content and framing. The hostages began appearing in the channel's news headlines, and the "reporters" and "analysts" in various programs changed their tune. The channel's rigid and unequivocal position was turned on its head.

The examples are countless. in February 2024, Israel This Morning host Tal Meir definitively stated that a deal with Hamas for releasing hostages was a "reckless deal": "The fear is that if we go for another reckless deal, we won't be dealing with two hundred hostages but with a thousand hostages, who will be kidnapped from their beds."

In January 2025, Meir sounded different. Opposite. According to her, making a deal with Hamas isn't recklessness but an expression of total victory: "When we talk about total victory, in the end it means they're begging. They're begging to return our hostages to us. Just stop, just stop. That's total victory from our perspective."

Yaki Adamker, a regular pundit on The Patriots, was also unequivocal regarding the hostage release deal. In August 2024, he stated that "this isn't a deal to return hostages, it's a deal to abandon other hostages." In January 2025, he changed his opinion by 180 degrees: "In the end, this deal is bad, but it's right." And what about those other hostages, who would be abandoned? They'll manage. "I don't think everyone needs to have an opinion whether they're for or against," Adamker ruled.

A particularly ugly chapter in Channel 14's campaign against the hostage return deal was the brutal attacks on hostage family members and those who aided their struggle for their loved ones' lives. Here too, the same level of cynicism and hypocrisy was recorded.

In January 2025, host Tal Meir was deeply moved by responses from anonymous Twitter users who dismissively referred to a statement by Merav Berger, mother of hostage Agam Berger. "People are truly despicable, there's no other way to describe them," Meir was shocked, "they wrote unthinkable things, how does one say such a thing to a hostage's mother?? How do people dare to write this on their keyboards?? How do they dare show their faces in Israeli society with such statements about a mother of a hostage who hasn't slept for 477 days??"

Similar shock wasn't recorded on Channel 14 regarding countless attacks that channel personnel - not anonymous tweeters - said in their own voice, openly, on social networks and on screen. For example, just for instance, exactly one year before Meir's shocked expression, in January 2024, Tamir Morag, a Channel 14 broadcaster, determined that among protesters for hostages deal there are those who "want to see Bibi go home now, even more than they want to see the hostages come home now," pundit Eldad Yaniv called them "the movement of depressives," and Shai Goldstein, that hosted a show on the channel, wrote about Gil Dickman, cousin of hostage Carmel Gat (before it was known she was murdered): "Shoot me if you want but I'm simply tired of him. Yes, he's a hostage's cousin but still I'm tired of him. It's my right."

The cynical flip-flop continued on and on. Just on January 7, Channel 14 warned that signing a hostage deal means the war casualties were in vain. In the channel's main newscast headlines, Noam Amir, defined as the channel's "military analyst," said there are difficulties in negotiations for a deal due to criticism from field officers about Israel's intention to be flexible with Hamas on the issue of Gaza civilians returning to the northern Strip. Amir presented supposed Anonymous quotes from IDF commanders in Gaza complaining and saying: "We didn't fight for nothing," meaning for a reckless deal that would zero out military achievements, and called to "listen to the commanders in the field."

A few days later, on January 15, it turned out the channel believes the opposite is true. Itamar Fleishman, pundit and part time host of The Patriots, determined that even after signing a deal: "No one died there in vain, people who went there went for the biggest mission you can take upon yourself and that's to defend the people of Israel, the State of Israel and the existence of the Jewish people. And it doesn't matter if the deal is signed whether it's good or not good, they are heroes of Israel who died for the highest purpose and that's how they'll be remembered forever."

Or for instance, in November 2024, Amir explained on Israel This Morning that an agreement to release hostages is actually a surrender to terrorism. "Security system heads returned yesterday to the political echelon with another surrender agreement to release hostages instead of presenting operational plans and intelligence on how to release hostages," the channel employee scolded the security establishment leadership.

In contrast, in January 2025, surrender to terrorism became a necessary reality, a first-rate act of leadership. This is actually "the kind of decisions that are Ben-Gurionistic decisions," explained Amir Avivi, chairman of the extreme right movement The Securityists and regular pundit on channel programs.

In Channel 14 there is only one Ben-Gurion, of course: Netanyahu. "Decisions in a very complex reality where you need to look at the complete campaign, there is only one person who sees the complete picture in the State of Israel, talks with the US President, sees the implications with Iran, regional peace agreements, sovereignty, everything that needs to be done along the way and this will probably happen in the next year or two," The pundit concluded.

When Netanyahu Changes His Mind

Magal, Channel 14's star, claimed that his interview with captivity survivor Sapir Cohen affected him so much that he decided to start wearing the hostages' pin. But why did he decide to invite her to the program in the first place? What else happened in those consciousness-changing days? Donald Trump, after being elected US President, began putting heavy pressure on PM Netanyahu, Channel 14's real star, to sign the deal he had managed to torpedo for over a year.

"All hell will break loose if these hostages aren't back by the time I take office, all hell will break loose in the Middle East," Trump threatened on January 7. "That wasn't a warning to Hamas. That was a warning to Bibi," explained Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist.

The Wall Street Journal revealed that Steve Witkoff, Trump's appointed envoy, made it clear to Netanyahu that "things need to be done" ("The President was a great friend of Israel, and now it's time to be a friend back"), and the New York Times published the date of the meeting where Netanyahu was forced to send Israeli representatives to sign the deal. Netanyahu denied it, but Trump himself hurried to boast about it on his own social network.

And so, almost overnight, the mouthpieces had to change their tune and defend the hostage deal. "Now, understand. We always talk about the rational axis and the emotional axis. In the end, it's somewhere in the middle," explained Moshe Cohen Eliyah on The Patriots, "and I think this deal's balance point is exactly the right middle. There's nothing to do, you can't be only rational and you can't be only emotional, you must balance between the two."

However, the deal Israel signed was the same deal, more or less, that the Biden administration had formulated back in February 2024. The "balance point" was the same point in time that Netanyahu used various excuses, from conquering Rafah to presence on the Philadelphi Route, in order to thwart the deal.

Yaki Adamker, another pundit on the program, admits it's the same deal: "In May, when this deal or a similar deal was on the table, they said: Netanyahu, advance the deal, approve it at any cost, now, no matter what. This choice in this case, and this is leadership, is a choice between two very bad options. And apparently, when we talk here in recent days about Netanyahu's leadership, apparently when he knows the complete picture, and he knows the guarantees the Americans gave us." What changed? Netanyahu is the embodiment of "leadership" and therefore his decision to advance the deal he had rejected until now is the right decision.

A third Patriots pundit, Yaara Zered, who also hosts a program on the channel, said it even more simply: what changed is one thing only - Netanyahu's position. A position that channel personnel automatically align with. Or in her own words: "I trust Prime Minister Netanyahu. If [Opposition Leader] Lapid was sitting there and bringing the same deal, I wouldn't trust him."

Propaganda Channel

On January 15, the day Trump announced signing the deal, Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was invited to The Patriots studio. Four days later, Minister Bezalel Smotrich was also invited. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, heads of two coalition factions, were the two main opponents of the deal since the war began. While Netanyahu provided changing explanations for why he avoided advancing negotiations whenever Hamas showed flexibility, everyone knew the real reason was one: coalition stability. Two days before appearing on The Patriots, Ben-Gvir admitted this openly: "With our political power, we managed to prevent the deal until now."

On the surface, one might think inviting opponents of the hostage deal to The Patriots studio was meant to give voice to opposition to the deal, a voice they promoted on the channel throughout the past year. In practice, it was an ambush. Deal opponents were invited to the studio so Magal and panel members could prove them wrong, appeal to their hearts and later - shame them in front of program viewers - in order to help Netanyahu in closing ranks.

"Being a leader goes both ways," Magal scolded Ben-Gvir, "he also needs to know how to come and say we need to return the hostages, and we need to do everything to bring these women home, who are going through a Holocaust in those basements." Now, when Trump leaves no choice and when the coalition gained four fingers of the New-Hope right-wing faction, room opened in the hearts of channel personnel for the Holocaust these women are going through, there, in those basements.

And if it wasn't clear enough to Ben-Gvir, Yinon Magal posted on his Twitter account: "I support the Prime Minister's decision and his judgment. Netanyahu proved during the war that his heart and head are in the right place, that he understands well the reality, what the war's goals are and how to achieve them! Deal opponents are also expected not to break the rules of the game and weaken the camp. We still face difficult hours and significant tests ahead. A leader (even of a small party) needs to see the big picture, know how to make difficult decisions and not suffer from a fixation on election slogans."

In fact, months before Ben-Gvir said out loud what until then was said quietly, Yinon Magal put it in characteristic bluntness: "There won't be a deal, because if there's a deal there won't be a government." Magal said these things in a conversation with Eli and Shira Albag, parents of hostage Liri Albag. When they told journalists about it, Magal threatened to sue and claimed it was a lie, but he himself let slip confirmation of the words in his radio program.

In the series of public reports published in The Seventh Eye, hundreds of examples were brought of different characteristics proving why Channel 14 is not a regular media outlet, and certainly not a journalistic news channel. One of them is the consistent adherence to spreading propaganda and sticking to Netanyahu and Likud's message sheet - regardless of any ideology.

The "ideology" abandoned by channel editors, who changed the declared line of broadcasts; the heart-wrenching collection of examples of channel personnel's completely opposite determinations against the hostage deal and for it (when convenient for Netanyahu); the shameless rhetorical acrobatics of panelists and hosts to justify the reversal; and the admission by others that this is, simply, automatic alignment with Netanyahu - all these are further proof of Channel 14 being a propaganda channel. Even when it comes at the expense of a Holocaust that women are going through in basements.