19 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Financial Times (FT) has called out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”. But in the very same editorial, it remained silent itself about the fact that countless legal, academic, and human rights experts have described Israel’s war crimes in Gaza as a genocidal attempt to ‘cleanse’ the occupied Palestinian territory of its inhabitants. And this constant media gagging of key context is a massive part of the problem. Because how can you expect Western governments, with all their vested interests, to meaningfully hold Israel’s war criminals to account when even the media struggles to do so, despite that being their actual job?
Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.'… pic.twitter.com/0REMlanpKz
— Financial Times (@FT) May 7, 2025
The FT: speaking one truth doesn’t make up for all the others you conceal
To be fair to the FT, its editorial mentioned “accusations of war crimes against Israel”. It just didn’t clarify that those accusations have come from the UN, the International Criminal Court (ICC), numerous countries, and human rights organisations.
The paper also placed blame on Israel for blocking aid, collapsing this year’s ceasefire, and planning to ‘clear and hold territory’ in Gaza. It admitted that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land”. And it criticised Donald Trump’s “plan for Gaza to be emptied of Palestinians”, and how “senior Israeli officials have since said they are implementing Trump’s plan to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza”. But the FT couldn’t bring itself to use the term ‘ethnic cleansing‘ to describe this, despite numerous experts doing so.
Selective blame and context
At the same time, the FT was unable to accuse Israel directly of massacring tens of thousands of people in Gaza. On average, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since their genocide began in October 2023. They have murdered around 17,492 children, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds.
But the FT simply spoke of “19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians”. And this matters, because it had no trouble accusing Hamas directly, saying “Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack killed 1,200 people and triggered the war” (even though the group was not responsible for all deaths on 7 October). It even repeated that with an emotive adjective, stressing that “the group’s murderous October 7 attack is what triggered the Israeli offensive”.
So we’ve established that the FT’s stance is that 7 October triggered Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. But what does it think triggered 7 October? The paper criticised Hamas’s “continued stranglehold on Gaza”, but didn’t mention the long history of the oppressive Israeli stranglehold on Palestine, which clearly led to 7 October.
There was no mention of the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, Israel’s decades-long consolidation of control via war and oppression after that, Western support for Israel as a Cold War anti-communist power, or its role as an ongoing tool for Western interests in the Middle East via ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and war crimes.
FT propaganda is part of the problem
The FT is right, of course, that “US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally… should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity”. But it also needs to turn the mirror on itself as a prominent media outlet. Because it knows full well the very serious evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Just in January 2025, it published a piece acknowledging that “many scholars… would conclude that Israel has committed genocide”. As it reported:
the Holocaust scholar Raz Segal says multiple Israeli leaders have made “explicit and unashamed statements of intent to destroy”. For instance, former defence minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” President Isaac Herzog called “an entire nation” “responsible” for Hamas’s attack. Many scholars, including Israeli Holocaust historians Amos Goldberg and Omer Bartov, say Israel committed genocide.
In short, the paper absolutely understands the context and can state it when the will is there. It isn’t ignorant or incompetent.
When the FT says “those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit”, it should very much extend that accusation of complicity to itself. Because every time it consciously omits key vocabulary or context from its coverage, shifting responsibility for heinous war crimes away from Israel in the process, it it clearly gagging itself. So although it’s right to call out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”, it should accept that its own “cowed” coverage is a big part of the problem too.
Featured image via screengrab
