Afrasianet - The Guardian newspaper published an article by Berlin-based journalist Hanno Hauenstein, who worked as a senior editor in the cultural section of the Berliner Zeitung, in which he said that the German media had blocked the way for Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza.
In Germany, a country that prides itself on learning lessons from its genocide history, some of the most powerful media organizations have played a role in enabling and assisting Israel in its crimes.
Last October, I spoke with journalist Hossam Shabat. Shabat described families packing up what was left of them in northern Gaza, while Israel began implementing the "Generals' Plan." Six months later, Shabbat was killed, and Israel killed him after accusing him of being a Hamas agent."
"Israel is not trying to hide these killings. They often discredit their victims in advance, and portray journalists as "terrorists," accusations that are rarely proven to be true. These descriptions serve a clear purpose: to dehumanize journalists and to make their killing appear morally acceptable. "Journalists are not legitimate targets and killing them is a war crime."
The latest shock to the world was the killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in their tent in Gaza City, including Anas al-Sharif, whose face has become known to those who follow Gaza closely. The United Nations and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have warned that his life is in danger, and weeks later he is dead.
Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus that Gaza is the scene of a genocide that is broadcast live, live, and on air.
Yet in Germany, a country that prides itself on learning lessons from its genocide history, some of the most powerful media organizations have played a role in enabling and assisting Israel to commit its actions, and some German journalists have even justified the killing of their Palestinian colleagues.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is Axel Springer, the largest publisher in Europe and the owner of the largest German newspaper Bild.
Hours after Sharif's death was announced, Bild published a photo of him under the headline: "Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza" (the title was later changed to "Journalist Killed and Allegedly Terrorist").
About a week ago, Bild published another article: "This photographer from Gaza promotes Hamas propaganda." The article targeted Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fatihah, accusing him of falsifying photos of starving Palestinians as part of a Hamas campaign, despite evidence that the people whose photos appeared were indeed starving, waiting for food. In the article, Fatiha appeared as a journalist between quotation marks, suggesting that he was not a real journalist, and that the images of the famine were fabricated and exaggerated.
The Bild story, along with a similar article in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung, quickly swelled on the Israeli Foreign Ministry's X website, which cited them as evidence that Hamas was manipulating world public opinion.
The Guardian: Hours after Anas Sharif's death was announced, Bild published a photo of him under the headline "A terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza."
He described Fatiha as a "hater of Israel and Jews" and a "Hamas hater." The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation soon joined the campaign, and right-wing influencers joined it.
The German media thus became a direct conduit for Israel's discourses, which were quickly recycled in the international arena and represented as "evidence."
Fatiha commented on the accusations by saying, "I do not create suffering, but I document it." He described the accusation that his work was "Hamas propaganda" as "a crime against the press itself."
The justification for the killing of Palestinian journalists is not limited to Bild and Süddeutsche Zeitung, but also to the German Journalists' Syndicate (DJV), one of Germany's largest journalists' unions, which issued a statement warning against "manipulation" of press photos. Specifically, she questioned photographs showing emaciated children from Gaza, claiming that their condition "does not appear to be attributable to the famine in Gaza." The union did not provide any evidence for this claim, mainly because there was no such evidence that there was no famine.
Fearing backlash online, the journalists' union cited an article published in July in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which the author speculated whether images of emaciated children were actually caused by hunger, or rather by pre-existing conditions, such as cystic fibrosis. The article noted that the publication of the photos was by negligence or manipulated without providing further details. The author overlooked the fact that hunger cannot be clearly separated from previous illnesses, and that no previous illness alone can cause such severe wasting.
Hauenstein says the bias is not new to the German media landscape. At Axel Springer, support for the existence of the State of Israel is second on the company's list of guidelines, or so-called fundamentals.
In September of last year, Bild helped thwart the ceasefire negotiations by publishing an "exclusive" report that it said contained excerpts from Hamas's strategy and was leaked to Bild by Benjamin Netanyahu's aides.
In this report, the newspaper claimed that Hamas "does not seek to end the war quickly," completely absolving Netanyahu of any responsibility for the collapse of the talks at the time. (In response to inquiries about this report, a Bild spokesperson told +972 magazine that the newspaper does not provide comments on its sources.)
As it turned out, Bild had distorted the Hamas document significantly. The timing of its publication was in Netanyahu's favor, as it was published at a time when mass protests put pressure on the Israeli prime minister. Shortly after the Bild report was published, Netanyahu cited it at a cabinet meeting to portray the protesters as pawns in the hands of Hamas. The Bild article is still published online without correction.
The problem goes beyond Bild and publisher Axel Springer, but also extends to the long-standing German media, where the failure to provide balanced, fact-based coverage of Israel and Palestine was very apparent, and became apparent after the October 7 attacks. Fabricated allegations, such as that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, along with many other deliberate misinformation, on newspaper websites remain uncorrected.
Media outlets across the political spectrum in Germany have been omitting historical context, framing Palestinian deaths in negative and depoliticized terms, and demonstrating near-blind confidence in Israeli military "verification," ignoring a well-documented record of disinformation from Israeli government sources.
The Bild newspaper helped thwart the ceasefire negotiations by publishing a report that it said contained excerpts from Hamas' strategy, which were leaked by Netanyahu's aides.
In January, the left-wing newspaper Die Tageszeitung published an article titled "Can Journalists Be Terrorists?" The article cited the Israeli army four times and did not quote any journalist in Gaza.
In the German media landscape, these narratives discredit Palestinian journalists and, at worst, provide Israel with ready-made justifications for targeting them.
Germany's pledge "will never happen" should carry a lot of weight, given its history of genocide. Yet this pledge seems hollow when the country's dominant media outlets whitewash, or provide propaganda, to legitimize the mass killings in Gaza.
This is not journalism in the service of truth, but journalism in the service of violence. Breaking this cycle requires serious accountability for the editorial cultures and political loyalties that have enabled the German press to become militarized in this way.
He said that the killing of journalists in Gaza reveals one thing that is clear: Israel wants to leave no trace, and when the history of this genocide is written, there will be chapters on the role of the media, and Germany's section will be uncomfortably large. No one should claim that they did not see that happen.