How the Israeli Army Practices Media Blackout

“I admit that military censorship asks me to write untruths to conceal certain matters for security reasons,” stated Doron Kadosh, a correspondent for the Israeli Army Radio, two days ago. This confession comes a month after the direct Israeli aggression on Lebanon began, highlighting the enemy’s attempt to obscure the realities of the battlefield in southern Lebanon and hide its losses from the world’s eyes. There are no abundant visuals, no precise images, nor logical reports on the number of casualties and injuries, even with the most severe strikes by the resistance, except for occasional footage shared on social media or leaked willingly or forcibly by the enemy.

Since its inception, “Israel” has strived, in every war it engaged in, to maintain a specific global perception of the war’s dynamics and its losses, freeing itself from public pressure while upholding the illusion of the “invincible army.” This effort grants it imaginary achievements. Simultaneously, it has always boasted of its “democratic” nature, distinct from its surroundings in the Middle East, subtly contrasting itself with the authoritarian and oppressive regimes in the Arab world. While the West accepted and adopted the enemy’s narratives for years, this entity is now plagued by a curse of continuous defeats. Thus, boasting about transparency and the right to information has become a luxury the entity can no longer claim to possess.

In the current version of the blood-stained entity, which has been experiencing an “end-of-life crisis” since October 7th last year, it has become blatantly clear that it adheres to three “no’s” in its media coverage: “No to publishing,” “No to transparency,” and “No to credibility.” Almost every new piece of information released by the Israeli media is accompanied by the phrase “permitted to publish,” indicating that the full truth and its implications will remain unknown. Often, a news headline begins with “a serious incident in the north,” only to shrink comically into a report of three injuries caused by a stampede. This media blackout employed by the enemy revolves around a doctrine of denial, which spares it internal accountability and objections, while also preventing its adversaries from realizing the magnitude of their achievements.

The term “media blackout” refers to total or near-total censorship on military activities during open conflicts to conceal information about ground operations and losses, ensuring the secrecy of military strategies. This practice emerges as part of the attempts to manage these wars and their related crises, and by extension, to control public reactions and stances toward the ongoing conflict. Media blackout intersects with misinformation when the enemy goes beyond mere concealment to issuing statements that contradict what actually happened on the battlefield, ensuring the effectiveness of deception.

At the onset of the ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon, there was a near consensus that the enemy has never implemented its media blackout strategy this strictly in any previous war. This is due to several factors, including the enemy’s intent to continue the war indefinitely, considering it an existential battle. This necessitates concealing certain information that could harm its image, aiming to mitigate internal reactions to the war’s developments to prevent the formation of a public opinion opposed to its continuation. Additionally, there is an assumed direct correlation between the intensity of the blackout and the unfavorable developments on the ground— the stricter the media blackout, the more severe the losses the enemy has suffered at the hands of the resistance. The enemy resorts to media blackout and misinformation alternately during its aggression on Lebanon to achieve goals related to psychological warfare, targeting both its audience and the resistance’s supporters. It adopts Goebbels’ infamous dictum: “Lie, lie, until people believe it,” and perhaps, over time, even convince themselves. Through media blackout, the enemy seeks to restore and cement the image of the “invincible army” in people’s minds by focusing on the losses inflicted on the resistance, such as targeting its leaders, attacking its supportive environment, and dismantling its military infrastructure. Conversely, it hides its own human and military losses and denies the achievements of the resistance by asserting in official statements that most rockets or drones launched have been intercepted, or by showing limited destruction in settlements hit by these rockets, claiming few or no casualties among soldiers or settlers.

However, during the bombing of Binyamina in Haifa, it was one of the rare occasions where viewers could see Israeli soldiers’ blood on the ground due to the unexpected strength of the attack, preventing censorship on the content that spread. Despite initial acknowledgment of the precision, severity, and sensitivity of the strike, and reports stating that over sixty soldiers were injured, with several helicopters deployed to transport them, the enemy initially blacked out the final toll, only later admitting that four soldiers had been killed among them.

The enemy’s media blackout also aims to calm the internal front and minimize panic, even as sirens blare almost continuously at times. Any news confirming a breach of the entity or a threat to its security would escalate fears and anxiety, potentially paving the way for an opposition front against the war, creating unwanted pressure on the Israeli government. Therefore, the enemy tries to demonstrate that it remains in control, no matter how precise or varied the attacks become.

Simultaneously, part of the objective of the media blackout is to affect the resistance’s environment. Any acknowledgment of the resistance’s achievements would boost its standing among its people. Thus, withholding this information is intended to lower the morale of the resistance’s supporters, making them doubt its success on the battlefield if necessary. Furthermore, hiding information prevents the resistance from gaining insight into its effective targets. Only recently, the Israeli censorship allowed the publication of information regarding the Caesarea operation, stating, “the drone sent by Hezbollah was directly aimed at Netanyahu and Sarah’s bedroom.”

Undoubtedly, a brutal enemy like Israel uses the blackout to conceal its crimes against civilians, followed by misleading justifications, claiming every attack targeted a military or resistance-affiliated human objective. The blackout extends beyond hiding the truth and denying on-ground losses in traditional media and social media; it even reaches the closure of media offices and silencing of journalistic voices that report the realities. Consequently, the killing of journalists—or at least attempts to do so—represents the harshest phase of the media blackout. Indeed, the enemy has killed three Lebanese journalists and over 175 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since October 7th of last year.