For decades, Western media outlets have played a decisive role in shaping global perceptions of the Palestinian struggle.
The way conflicts are framed, the language employed, and the moral standards applied reveal a persistent pattern of bias. The Palestinian cause is frequently depicted in terms that obscure structural realities, delegitimise resistance, and reinforce negative stereotypes.
Similar events elsewhere, such as Russia’s war on Ukraine, are narrated in strikingly different moral terms. Notably, the volume of coverage deeply varies. At the beginning of the war on Ukraine, when browsing the Western mainstream media, you might have felt that you had almost landed in Kyiv because of the intensity of the support for Ukraine and the anti-Russian mobilisation.
The Western media swiftly and unequivocally labelled the invasion as “aggression,” “occupation,” and “a violation of international law.” The Ukrainian resistance was celebrated as heroic, with civilians who took up arms praised for their bravery in defending their homeland.
This is in direct contrast to the Western media’s coverage of Palestine. When Palestinians resist occupation, whether through armed struggle or even nonviolent protest, they are criminalised. For years, tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition have been used against unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, and they have rarely been condemned in the same terms as the Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities. Instead, the Palestinians are portrayed as the instigators of violence rather than the victims of it.
The bias and double standards in the Western media narratives became even more blatant after the events of 7 October 2023.
Media events theory distinguishes between “ceremonial” and “disruptive” frames. The ceremonial approach focuses on how the media can foster a sense of belonging and how it can have an “integrative function” that brings people together around shared values. Positive news content is seen as essential to fostering national identities and global peace, noticed in the coverage of the Israeli strikes on Gaza and the release of some of the hostages through the ceasefire deals.
Most Western media platforms reported this as a kind of historical victory. By contrast, the “disruptive” approach to the news coming from Gaza is utilised for unexpected and often negative events such as disasters, terrorist attacks, protests, and other crises. This framing focuses on the disruption of normalcy, presenting the scene in a dark mode and in this case presenting the news from Gaza in such a way as to criminalise the Palestinian people.
The Western coverage also reveals a consistent linguistic bias. Words like “radical,” “extremist,” “fundamentalist,” and “terror-linked” frequently accompany reports on the Palestinians, while Israeli policies are couched in bureaucratic language such as “security measures” or “counter-terror operations.” The human costs, in terms of displaced families, destroyed infrastructure, and mass civilian deaths, are often downplayed or presented as collateral damage rather than as deliberate consequences of the military occupation.
Furthermore, the Palestinians are rarely portrayed as having legitimate rights or aspirations. Instead, they are depicted as a “problem” or an “obstacle” to the peace process, which frames their very existence as a challenge rather than as a people entitled to justice. The news on the US network CNN still calls what is happening in Gaza “civil disorder” instead of war crimes or genocide. The BBC still says that hospitals bombed by Israel were “run by Hamas” as if to legitimise killing the children inside them.
One of the most telling examples of bias lies in how the Western media describes Israeli actions. When Israeli military operations kill hundreds or even thousands of civilians in Gaza, the Western headlines often present the situation as a “war between Israel and Hamas.” This framing erases the disproportionate power imbalance: Israel, a nuclear-armed state backed by Western allies, is presented as engaged in a symmetrical confrontation rather than committing acts of aggression against an occupied and besieged population.
By contrast, Palestinian resistance is almost uniformly referred to as “terrorism” or “militancy,” while Israel’s far greater use of force is described in sanitised terms like “retaliation” or “response.” Such framing grants Israel the position of defender, even when it initiates escalation, kills civilians, and starves children.
Undoubtedly, the question “do you condemn Hamas” at the beginning of interviews on many Western news shows is ridiculous. It is not only asked in an offensive tone, as if the guest must say yes to prove he is not a terrorist, but also the same shows never ask the guests whether they condemn the Israeli army. This shows a clear bias towards the Zionist agenda.
Underlying these double standards is a racialised lens through which the Middle East is viewed. Prominent Western journalists and politicians expressed shock at Russia’s actions in Ukraine by highlighting that such violence was happening in “civilised” Europe rather than “the Middle East” or “developing countries.” Such statements show the West’s assumption of superiority and its racism and betray an implicit assumption: violence is expected, and almost natural, when it occurs in Arab or Muslim societies, but unacceptable when it strikes Europeans.
This civilisational hierarchy not only normalises Israeli aggression but also dehumanises Palestinians by treating their suffering as less newsworthy, less shocking, and less deserving of outrage.
As a result, Western media narratives on Palestine are not neutral. Through selective framing, biased language, and moral double standards, they contribute to legitimising Israeli aggression while delegitimising Palestinian resistance. And the contrast with the Ukraine coverage exposes the racial and political biases embedded in Western journalism, revealing that concepts like international law, human rights, and self-determination are not applied universally but filtered through geopolitics and Eurocentric perspectives.
Recognising and challenging these narratives is essential. Only by exposing the mechanisms of bias can a more just, accurate, and humane representation of the Palestinian struggle and other marginalised causes begin to emerge.
The writer is an expert on global media.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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