Israeli Hostages Were Brutally Executed; The Media Told the World That They ‘Died’

There’s not much worse than waking up to the news that six Israeli hostages had been murdered by their Hamas captors just days before their bodies were found by the IDF.

And yet, some media outlets tried to paint their vicious murders as “deaths.” Deaths — as if they passively died of natural causes.

On Sunday, senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq blamed the six hostages’ “deaths” on Israel’s inability to agree to a ceasefire, and the United States’ continued support of “the war of genocide,” based on its “bias” for Israel. He then proceeded to claim they were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

An official autopsy revealed; however, that all six were murdered with several gunshot wounds to the head and other parts of the body just 48 hours prior.

Sure enough, a Hamas announcement on Monday officially declared that hostage guards were instructed on “how to handle” their captives if the IDF comes close to finding or rescuing them. The instructions were put in place after the June 8 rescue mission which brought back four hostages alive from captivity in Nuseirat.

This psychological warfare tactic should make the very real threat obvious.

But of course, just as mainstream media outlets were quick to latch onto their own diminishing buzz words on Sunday, they are still in use even after Hamas’ new “policy” announcement.

Here are some of the disastrous headlines that HonestReporting and others have picked up since the tragic news broke Sunday morning.

This latest headline from the BBC was published overnight Tuesday.

Further, the first sentence of the article says this:

Benjamin Netanyahu has asked for “forgiveness” from Israelis for failing to return six hostages found dead in Gaza on Saturday, as Hamas warned more could be “returned to their families in shrouds” if a ceasefire isn’t reached.

The word deaths or dead changes everything about how this reads. There have been tens of hostages returned dead, and the outcry has not been quite this loud. Hundreds of thousands of protestors filled Israel’s streets, and the country’s largest labor union called for a complete economic strike. It is not just because more bodies were found.

The context missing in these very crucial first words as well as the headline, is that they were murdered by Hamas just before potential rescue. They were alive, some first on the list slated for release in a potential hostage deal. That is the reason for anguish and anger.

This isn’t a political statement, it is just a specificity in order to help readers understand why this is different, what actually happened to them… and where the outrage stems from.

But coverage of the six hostages’ tragic circumstances began with this:

Hersh “has died,” says @CNN in its opening paragraph.

Readers shouldn’t have to wait until the 11th paragraph to learn that, according to the IDF, he and five other hostages, were brutally murdered by Hamas.https://t.co/bdpkcK59yz pic.twitter.com/pnSKYjF7Mr

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 1, 2024

Unfortunately, CNN chose not to lead with the truth, saying Hersh Goldberg-Polin “has died,” referring to his “death” once more, and then quoting an IDF official statement explaining how he was actually murdered by Hamas terrorists just shortly before he was found.

This despicable delaying of facts is misleading, to say the least.

The same can be said of this embarrassingly mild headline from USA Today:

No, @USATODAY, Hersh didn’t just die. He was murdered. By Hamas terrorists.https://t.co/GtxsvbfybJ pic.twitter.com/hEkaZDa60j

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 1, 2024

Did Hersh die peacefully in his sleep or after a long battle with an illness? This headline suggests it.

But alas, he was murdered. By who, we may ask? You would not know the context just from scrolling by the headline on the site’s front page.

Say it: Hersh was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after 11 months of captivity.

The article also says that 1,200 Israelis died during the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Does this word have a different connotation than we think?

The IDF and Hostages Families Forum are quoted halfway down the article to clarify it was indeed murder. But why not lead with that?

Despite The New York Times backtracking on this headline below, their initial response was to misquote US President Joe Biden:

President Biden specifically referred to “the hostages killed by these vicious Hamas terrorists.”

Hersh and the others were murdered. But @nytimes even distorts the President’s words to avoid saying it.https://t.co/EJddU57KIh pic.twitter.com/cPljzKZE7R

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 1, 2024

Biden actually said this: “We have now confirmed that one of the hostages killed by these vicious Hamas terrorists was an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.” [emphasis added]

There was more.

These CBS and NBC articles not only minimized the circumstances of the hostages’ death in their headlines, but they both misquoted and then completely omitted this part of Biden’s statement completely:

It’s a shame that the media can’t just be accurate. It’s not a complicated story. So why make it so, by playing word games and pushing agendas?

The Campaign to Absolve Hamas on Social Media

Meanwhile, on social media, anti-Israel figures like Muhammad Shehada of Euro-Med Monitor NGO also used mounting domestic Israeli frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a weapon to amplify Hamas’ denial of responsibility and put it all on Israel for not closing a hostage and ceasefire deal.

It’s important to note that regardless of Netanyahu’s political narrative, this doesn’t diminish Hamas’ responsibility for committing murder and for starting this war in the first place.

Israeli media is near unanimously blaming Netanyahu & Israel’s gov for the death of the six hostages whose bodies were found yesterday & who were alive until very recently

Israeli media admits: Netanyahu is the one refusing the deal

Why is none of that being reported in the US? pic.twitter.com/rA94esdVKu

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) September 1, 2024

That there is currently political turmoil within Israel over policies concerning the fate of the hostages and the desire of some to pursue continuing military pressure on Hamas is the product of a democratic society still traumatized and trying to come to grips with the impossible dilemmas inherent in this appalling situation.

Compare and contrast with the Palestinian arena, where Hamas never gave its own people any choice when it embarked upon its October 7 massacre, knowing full well that the consequences would be enormous.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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