The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.
-- Hiram Johnson (1866-1945)
"Israel's oldest daily, Haaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024
(FYI: Ranked 101st in 2024's World Press Freedom Index, Israel fell to 112 (score: 51. 055) during 2025, sandwiched between Haiti and Madagascar
Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, XLIII: "covering the war"
Covering the War
you, a reporter
hide behind the headlines
of deaths and famine ...
I mourn this Dead-Sea-wide chasm
bombed out by your contextless words
beware, beware
of my hunger and anger
as airstrikes rage
I drop fake-news-busting wordbombs
on the spokesmen for Israel
Dec. 9, 2025: IDF Strikes Responsible for Nearly Half of Journalists Killed Over the Past Year, Report Finds
The Gaza Strip remained the world's most dangerous region for reporters in the past 12 months...
The Paris-based organization's annual report covers the period of December 1, 2024 through December 1, 2025. Its report found that 67 journalists were killed around the world during that time – 29 of them, or 43 percent, in Gaza.
"The Israeli army is the worst enemy of journalists," the report states, adding that a total of 220 journalists have been killed in Gaza since Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent two-year war waged in the Strip...
(FYI: Reporters Without Borders' report, December 9:
2025 ROUND-UP: of journalists killed, detained, missing and held hostage worldwide)
written in response to Democracy Now, DECEMBER. 20, 2023: [NewYork-based, American NGO] Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel Is Killing Media Workers at Unprecedented Pace
smoky rubble
a bullet-riddled helmet
marked PRESS
Reprinted on My Haiku Pond, Nov. 23 2024
Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CL: "first casualty of war"
the
bloodied
man
nailed to a wooden cross
in
a
press
vest
2026 Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology
To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share wth you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLVI: "blood libel"
Gaza famine!?
It's blood libel, blood libel ...
flanked by Flags of Zion
the P/Crime Minister rumbles
to cameras' rapid fire
FYI: The Times of Israel, August 23 2025: Netanyahu’s office calls Gaza famine declaration a ‘modern blood libel’
After a UN hunger monitor on Friday, August 22 declared for the first time that famine had struck northern Gaza, Israel vehemently denied the reports as “lies” and “modern blood libel.”
And Haaretz, October 31, 2025: Inside the Israeli Media's 'Shocking Self-censorship' of the Horrors of Gaza
Throughout the Gaza war, the tremendous difference between international coverage and Israeli media coverage was obvious to anyone exposed to both.
In a new report, media scholar Dr. Ayala Panievsky's research quantifies precisely how pronounced that difference was...
"The professional journalists, people who Israelis spend their entire lives trusting to tell them the truth, rallied around the military in many ways – any criticism of what our soldiers were doing was just out of bounds. It wasn't part of the conversation."
Opinion, December 11, 2025: Save Israel's Self-censoring 'Free Press' - From Itself
The greatest blow to responsible freedom of expression comes from the media itself. It is not the government that silenced it during the past two years: The media silenced itself, and there was no opposition from inside. The media willingly censored itself; it mobilized to conceal the truth, out of fear and commercial considerations, in order not to annoy its customers.
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