In a move that perfectly encapsulates the moral bankruptcy of both Israel’s public relations machine and much of the Western press, forty-five US journalists have descended on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—not to witness the devastation in Gaza, but to take part in a choreographed tour designed, funded, and controlled by the Israeli government.
The delegation, lavishly hosted at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, began their trip on 11 August via an audience with Israeli president Isaac Herzog:
While international journalists are barred from visiting the Gaza Strip, yesterday, a group of 45 U.S. journalists met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog as part of a large-scale media tour.
Today, the delegation is set to visit the Gaza crossing points from Israeli side as… pic.twitter.com/s2it0ReVL6
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) August 11, 2025
Then, the itinerary on 12 August includes a visit to the Nova Music Festival site, stops near the Gaza fence and so-called “aid entry points” (on the Israeli side) and meetings with the Israeli foreign minister, Speaker of the Knesset, prime minister, and Ambassador Huckabee:
Tomorrow around 45 US journalists will be taken on an Israeli-organized tour of the Gaza envelope, all expenses paid, staying at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
The itinerary includes a visit to the Nova Music Festival site, stops near the Gaza fence and so-called “aid entry…
— Ziad Kh. Abu Zayyad (@ziadazj) August 11, 2025
There will be no sight of bombed-out hospitals, no interviews with bereaved Palestinian families, no first-hand experience of the blockade’s crushing impact.
Let’s be clear: this is not journalism. This is stage-managed propaganda, and the so-called “journalists” participating are, wittingly or not, acting as extensions of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is bankrolling the entire trip:
Great meeting today with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, first lady Michal Herzog at president’s home in Jerusalem. Israel’s real enemy: big media! pic.twitter.com/kEcBGYm6yo
— Christopher Ruddy (@ChrisRuddyNMX) August 11, 2025
Silencing the truth about Israel’s genocide in Gaza
The hypocrisy is staggering. While this delegation is feted by Israeli officials, not a single international journalist has been allowed into Gaza since the war began.
Israel continues to impose an absolute blockade on independent media access to the Strip, effectively controlling the narrative by denying the world a raw, unfiltered view of the destruction. This censorship is not incidental—it is strategic. By keeping reporters out, Israel ensures that the only imagery and testimony the global public receives is filtered through its military’s carefully vetted footage and statements.
The result is a grotesque distortion of reality. As Israel kills or displaces tens of thousands of Palestinians, Western MSM presents the genocide as somehow abstract—stripped of its immediacy and reduced to bloodless euphemisms like “conflict” or “clashes.” This is not journalism in the public interest; it is information warfare.
US journalists and their complicity with Israel
The presence of these 45 US journalists on an Israeli government-funded junket raises profound ethical questions.
Accepting an all-expenses-paid trip from Israel—accused by human rights organisations and UN officials of committing war crimes—should be a clear violation of journalistic independence. Yet these media outlets, many of which loudly proclaim their commitment to truth and accountability, appear content to let their reporters be shepherded through a Potemkin tour of Israel’s preferred talking points.
This is not simply bias—it’s structural complicity. Western media has a long history of privileging Israeli narratives while marginalising Palestinian voices, often adopting the language of “security” and “self-defense” to justify military aggression. The Gaza junket is merely the latest, and most brazen, example.
The cost of manufactured consent
The damage goes far beyond one media tour.
By participating in this charade, these US journalists help manufacture public consent for Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. Every sanitised photo-op, every official quote unchallenged, helps launder a war in which civilians are paying the ultimate price.
Meanwhile, Palestinian journalists—hundreds of whom Israel has assassinated—remain the primary source of truth, their work often dismissed or ignored by the same outlets now happily amplifying Israeli state messaging.
If journalism is, as it claims, the first draft of history, then this junket represents an act of deliberate historical revisionism. Independent media is currently writing the truth about Gaza. But thanks to Israel’s blockade and Western corporate media’s moral collapse, much of its “coverage” will be remembered not as reporting, but as propaganda in its purest form.
Featured image via the Canary
