58 Palestinians injured in IOF raid on Central Ramallah. Photo: Andalou Agency
The offensive is considered a major escalation as it took place in Ramallah, the political and administrative hub of the Palestinian Authority.
Daily raids carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have for decades been routine for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank. However, Ramallah city center has been relatively safe compared to other areas, largely since the second intifada ended in 2005.
This isn’t to say that such relative calm extends to the entire governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh; it applies exclusively to the few square kilometers surrounding the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters near the center of the city.
Although this particular part of the city was previously subjected to IOF raids, such offensives happened rarely, for a brief time and usually not during daytime.
In a major escalation, the IOF stormed Ramallah city center on Tuesday, August 26, at rush hour in the afternoon, shooting at passersby and a journalist’s vehicle. Eyewitnesses and media workers reported the use of live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, and gas canisters during the raid.
Those taking part in a sit-in to commemorate the National Day for the Recovery of the Bodies of Slain Palestinians, a day when families demand the return of their martyrs’ bodies, 700-1500 of which are reportedly held by Israel, were also suppressed by Israeli military personnel when they raided the area.
At least 58 Palestinians were wounded in the assault, which lasted for hours, including a 13-year-old boy, who sustained an injury to his abdomen.
The IOF also arrested three people from a money exchange shop, and confiscated around 1.5 million Israeli Shekel (USD 447,000), over allegations that the shop was transferring money to Hamas.
The IOF continues its military operations across the West Bank
On Wednesday, August 27, the IOF raided the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, and imposed a siege on its Old City.
Dozens of Palestinians were reported injured in the attack, which lasted 14 hours. Palestinian citizens also told Turkish news agency Anadolu that the IOF turned a number of houses in the city into military barracks.
The spokesperson for the Palestinian Presidency Nabil Abu Rudeineh condemned and rejected the IOF’s intensified military operations in cities, villages, and refugee camps across the West Bank on Wednesday.
Abu Rudeineh called the latest Israeli military actions in the West Bank a “dangerous escalation”. He also held the Israeli government responsible for the escalating assaults of the IOF, and the terrorist acts of illegal Israeli settlers against the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian official warned Netanyahu’s government that continuing with these policies will lead the region to further tension and instability.
He also reiterated his call for the US administration to pressure Israel to stop these dangerous policies, which violate the resolutions of international legitimacy and international law, and to oblige it to end the war and other acts of aggression.
In his last dispatch for Al Jazeera (8/10/25), journalist Anas al-Sharif reported, “For the past two hours, the Israeli aggression on Gaza City has intensified.”
Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.
Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”
Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.
Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.
We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.
Prioritizing Israel’s pretext
Fox News (8/11/25) went farthest in embracing Israel’s “terrorist” narrative.
Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC,8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”
Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”
Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”
Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.
The New York Times (8/10/25) gave the Israeli government ample space to smear one of the journalists it had just killed, claiming he was “the head of a terrorist cell” who was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New YorkTimes devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.
Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.
Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.
Unnecessary qualifiers
Including the October 7, 2023, breakout as background for the killing of journalists, NBC (8/10/25) specified that “many of the targets of those attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” Palestinians killed subsequently by Israel, by contrast, were just described as “people…in the Hamas-run enclave.”
A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.
The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities. They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.
These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.
The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.
NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.
In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.
False equivalences
Reuters‘ original headline (8/11/25) was written from the point of view of al-Sharif’s killers.
Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.
Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”
Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)
The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, and Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit pose for a group photo after issuing a joint statement condemning Israel’s decision to block their planned diplomatic visit to Ramallah, at a meeting held in Amman, Jordan on June 1, 2025. [Jordan Foreign Ministry – Anadolu Agency]
Arab states on Friday condemned Israel for the famine officially declared in the Gaza Strip, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Muslim World League and Palestine accusing Tel Aviv of committing grave crimes against starving civilians and demanding urgent international intervention, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, the Saudi Foreign Ministry accused Israel of committing genocide against civilians in Gaza, describing the famine as a “stain on the conscience of humanity.”
The ministry said the famine, confirmed by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), is a direct result of systematic crimes committed by the Israeli army, including the obstruction of humanitarian aid and forced displacement of civilians under siege.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expresses its deep concern following the IPC report and the official declaration of famine in Gaza,” the ministry said.
“The continuation of these crimes without deterrence or accountability represents a disgrace to the international community.”
Riyadh condemned what it called “repeated genocide crimes” by Israeli forces and called on the international community, particularly permanent members of the UN Security Council, to take urgent steps to end the famine and stop Israel’s extermination war against the Palestinian people.
Kuwait also denounced Israel’s policy of starvation, repression, and forced displacement in Gaza.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry called on the international community to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza and hold Israel accountable for crimes against humanity, citing UN Security Council Resolution 2417, which prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
The GCC likewise urged immediate international pressure on Israel to open crossings and allow unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza.
GCC Secretary-General Jasem al-Budaiwi called the famine a result of Israel’s “inhumane starvation policies” and reaffirmed support for Palestinian rights and protection under international law.
Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sufyan Qudah called the declaration “a dangerous indicator of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, resulting from the systematic inhumane policies and measures by the Israeli government that have turned starvation into a weapon against the Palestinians.”
He condemned Israel’s continued restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which he said have led to “alarming levels of famine.”
Qudah called on the international community to “act immediately and without delay to compel Israel to end its aggression on Gaza, put an end to the famine and humanitarian catastrophe caused by the aggression, and ensure the sufficient and sustainable entry of aid into the Strip.”
A statement by the Muslim World League (MWL) General Secretariat, Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, and chairman of the Organization of Muslim Scholars, stressed that “this extremist government poses a grave threat to the Palestinian people in particular, as well as to the region and the international community at large.”
His renewed the MWL’s “urgent appeal to the international community to assume its moral and legal responsibilities, to take an immediate and decisive stand to end the famine and genocide inflicted upon the people of Gaza, and to deter the occupation government’s war machine, which continues its tyranny and disregard for the lives, rights, and human dignity of the Palestinian people.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called for “decisive international action to compel the occupying state, Israel, to immediately halt the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation, as the only way to stop, contain, and address famine, prevent its spread, ensure the opening of crossings, allow sustainable delivery of humanitarian aid, and begin the immediate reconstruction of Gaza.”
It “urged relevant international courts to assume their legal and moral responsibilities regarding the perpetrators of famine, including upholding international law in addressing all acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people witnessed by the world.”
The ministry also affirmed that the IPC report “has left no room for interpretation and speculation regarding the occurrence of famine in Gaza.”
Hamas said the UN report on the spread of famine in Gaza governorate represents “conclusive international testimony to the crime being committed by Israel.”
The group said the announcement “constitutes undeniable international evidence of the crime perpetrated by the Zionist occupation against more than two million besieged people.”
It called for the UN and the Security Council to “act immediately to stop the war, lift the blockade, and open the crossings without restrictions to allow the urgent and continuous entry of food, medicine, water and fuel.”
The IPC’s latest report, released Friday, confirmed that famine conditions are already present in Gaza, affecting over 500,000 people. The crisis, described by UN agencies as entirely man-made, is projected to spread further south in the coming weeks, unless a large-scale humanitarian response is urgently allowed.
UN officials and humanitarian agencies have blamed Israel’s blockade, destruction of civilian infrastructure, repeated displacement, and severe restrictions on aid deliveries as the main drivers of the famine.
Israel has killed nearly 62,300 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a speech in Jerusalem on August 13, 2025.[Photo by RONEN ZVULUN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday the Israeli occupation army will occupy Gaza even if the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, agreed to a ceasefire prisoner swap deal.
“We are close to ending the war in Gaza. We will continue to control Gaza, even if Hamas agrees to a last-minute ceasefire agreement” Netanyahu told Sky News Australia.
“The war could end today if Hamas lays down its weapons and releases the remaining hostages,” he said, reiterating his previous claim that Israel’s goal of the war in the besieged enclave is to release all the captives, disarm Hamas, and eliminate Hamas’s last stronghold, which is essential to achieving lasting peace.
“My goal is not to occupy Gaza, but to give it and Israel a different future, and I believe we are close to achieving that” he further claimed, adding that US President, Donald Trump fully supports his military goal of controlling Gaza City in order to eliminate Hamas.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Palestinian and Israeli activists take part in a protest against the killing of journalists in the Gaza Strip as they gather in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, August 15, 2025
With foreign media banned from Gaza, Palestinians themselves have reversed most of zionism’s century-long propaganda gains in just two years — this is why Israel has killed 270 journalists since October 2023, explains RAMZY BAROUD
THE killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on August 10 has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.
By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no-one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.
More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist.”
This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.
This Israeli discourse, which dehumanises entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAVote Labour for Genocide.
Palestinian and Israeli activists take part in a protest against the killing of journalists in the Gaza Strip as they gather in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, August 15, 2025