In the offensive that Israel launched last Friday against Iran and continues this week, propaganda is a very important element. But so is informative censorship – both the operations of Israel's defense forces on Iranian soil, as well as the attacks directed against the Jewish state.
The Israeli army has asked citizens to “not publish or share the locations or images of the impacts” of the missiles that Iran are launching daily against Israel in response to the bombing campaign initiated on Friday by the Government of Benjamín Netanyahu.
“The enemy monitors these images to improve their impact capacity. Be responsible! Do not share online locations,” says a brief military statement that has been repeatedly disseminated in recent days, when a smell of missiles reaches Israel – where at least 23 people have died since Friday, the more than 220 they have lost their lives in Iran.
The instructions for the press are much stricter than the army gives to foot citizens. The military censor, General Kobi Mandelblit, has issued several orders since last Friday with new indications about the censorship of the media, which are added to those that apply to the coverage of the war in Gaza, since October 7, 2023.
Many contents related to the Israeli offensive in Iran and Tehran's response must pass the military censorship filter before being published. This is the case of information on the military operations and capacities of the Army, Defense and Emergency Plans in Israel, Damage to Israeli soil and its infrastructure, coordination with regional partners, intelligence information, etc.
Do not spread images or location
Specifically, the military censor has asked the media to refer to the authorities any printed or digital material about the place of an attack in Israel, as well as the type of projectile used (missiles, drones, etc.). In addition, he has warned of televisions that they have special care with the information they offer in their live broadcasts from the place of the impact of the projectiles released by Iran, that do not disseminate the exact address if the target of the attack is civil and do not take images if it is military. The media cannot issue images of Israeli air defense systems or projectile interception, nor videos that circulate on social networks.
These last instructions also interest foreign media, who usually do not have to submit to previous military censorship. This Thursday, the Israeli police have prevented some international media from filming the sites where Iranian missiles hit, as reported by the local press.
“It is necessary to highlight and clarify the censorship policy on this aspect. Its main purpose is to prevent the enemy from helping during war times, which constitutes a tangible threat to state security,” writes General Mandelblit in one of the documents sent to the media in the past days.
In fact, the military censor can censor a part of the content or prohibit its publication only when it considers that it affects “national security”, but that concept can cover many information in the midst of a conflict.
From reporters without borders, Martin Roux, head of the crisis office, explains that all media in Israel are obliged by law to submit any article or reports related to “security issues” to military censorship. “The term is very vague and, therefore, can be applied to a wide variety of stories,” says Roux.
He adds that “the opacity of the process makes it even more dangerous, since it encourages self -censorship and can allow the censor to favor certain media over others.” Part of that opacity is that the media cannot indicate when information has been censored, so the public does not know. The media can appeal the decisions of the censor and address a committee formed by a citizen, an army representative and one of the press, and the verdict of that committee is binding.
“Against the public of the public to be informed”
“Military censorship in Israel Attentive, by definition, against the free and independent press. It goes against the right of the public to be informed, a right that RSF defends throughout the world,” says the head of the organization's crisis office.
The institution of the military censor dates from the time of the British mandate on Palestine. Israel, after its creation in 1948, has maintained it and has regulated its work. In peacetime, it is the editors of each medium that evaluate what information should be reviewed by military censorship before publication, although the censor can subsequently request that some materials that have been published without passing that filter are eliminated.
In times of conflict, the censor redoubles the supervision of the media, as has happened since Israel launched its brutal offensive against Gaza – where it has killed more than 55,000 Palestinians in just over 20 months – and, even more, since its campaign of bombing began against the Iran regime a week ago.
Recently, The independent publication +972 Magazine He denounced that military censorship had increased considerably in 2024, coinciding with the war in Gaza and Israeli offensives in Lebanon and Syria, in addition to the bombings in Yemen. Last year, the censor prohibited the publication of 1,635 information and censored parts of more than 6,000. The media sent to the military censor 20,770 information, almost double that the previous year, and 38% of them were censored, seven percentage points more than in 2023.
The data were provided by the military censor in response to a application of +972 Magazine and the movement for freedom of information in Israel, but the censor did not offer the reasons why he censored that material. According to data analysis, not only censorship increased in 2024, but the percentage of information that were censored in their entirety and the frequency with which they were censored.
RSF has found “The constant decline of press freedom in Israel after October 7, 2023”. “In the context of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the multiple fronts that (Israel) opened in the Middle East, members of the Israeli government are using an aggressive rhetoric against the media that report on these wars in a way that contravenes the official narrative,” Roux denounces. “In the last 20 months it has become increasingly difficult to produce independent and critical journalism in Israel,” he adds.
The RSF representative recalls the difficult situation of journalists who try to inform about the land and those who can no longer do it, such as the Qatari to the Jazeera television network, whose activity has been prohibited by the Israeli authorities. “In Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the aggressions and murders perpetrated by the Israeli army against journalists pursue the same objective: to annihilate the Contranarivo. For this, the Israeli army has killed almost 200 journalists in Gaza in an attempt to impose an informative silence in the territory.”
From the beginning of his war of punishment against the Gazatí population, Israel has vetoed access to the press To the strip and has repeatedly attacked the Palestinian journalists who have been informing from the enclave. According to local authorities, more than 220 informants have been killed, some of them, in their homes with their families.
