No more hasbara: "Fauda" reveals the path to victory in the war for consciousness | Amit Yagur

An opinion piece by Lt. Col. (res.) Amit Yagur argues that major Western media outlets, including The New York Times and The Guardian, present biased coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. The article cites a study by Prof. Pinker that analyzed 1,559 articles in The New York Times and found patterns of omission and one-sided framing, and accuses The Guardian of cinematic activism. In contrast, the article points to the success of the series "Fauda" as proof that direct Israeli content can reach a global audience without journalistic mediation.

An opinion piece by Lt. Col. (res.) Amit Yagur, published in Maariv, argues that the war for consciousness in the West is no less important than the military war. The article presents two central events: a study by Prof. Pinker that analyzed 1,559 articles in The New York Times from October 7, 2023 to June 7, 2024, and found a pattern of omission and one-sided framing that creates a narrative in which Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians are passive victims, while disconnecting from Hamas's responsibility. The second event is the production of the film "Naz'a" by The Guardian, which the article claims crossed the line between journalistic coverage and one-sided cinematic activism. In contrast, the article points to the success of the series "Fauda" in the Arab world, where viewers testified that they were exposed for the first time to Israeli complexity without journalistic mediation. The article attributes the bias to a post-colonial worldview that divides the world into a "strong oppressor" (Israel) and a "native weakened" (the Palestinians), and states that the events of October 7 did not align with this perception, so the media moved to contextualization. The article concludes with a call to appoint a "consciousness chief of staff" in Israel, parallel to the military chief of staff, with television, Netflix, and social networks being the outposts to be "conquered."