Unveiling the Undercurrent

Bias Against Israel in German Media—Overlooked Amidst the Country’s Role as Israel’s Ally in Europe?

Last week, a new report was released about the BBC, addressing its bias in media coverage related to Israel, a topic that has troubled British media for decades.

Shortly after, my colleague Dr. Dave Rich from the British Community Security Trust (CST) published an article on Israel’s “always-critics,” denouncing biased attitudes in Western public debate.

But what about Germany? How do mainstream media outlets view the Arab-Israeli conflict? Can we truly speak of a more comprehensive understanding of both sides, or do we see the same tendency toward oversimplification, lacking nuance, and most crucially, balance?

To gain clarity on this, I briefly examined the work of Martin Klingst, who has long served as a U.S. correspondent and political journalist at Die Zeit, a widely read liberal quality outlet in Germany, particularly popular among academics.¹

Since October 7th, Klingst has written several pieces on Israel and the Middle East conflict. Just a few days ago, the journalist published an article addressing the “pager attacks” in Lebanon. In this article, I observed parallels to some of the critiques raised by Rich.

From the headline alone, I felt disconcerted. Klingst claims Israel had “crossed red lines” with this attack—a phrase that mirrors the language used by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, which is now spreading worldwide and echoed by various commentators. As Sam Harris put it, Israel’s attack “has been widely criticized as a dangerous escalation, as a breach of the rules of war, and most ludicrously, as an act of terrorism.”

While Nasrallah’s rhetoric is unsurprising to anyone familiar with Hezbollah’s goals, it’s alarming to see this same language, steeped in one-sided blame, echoed by one of Germany’s leading media outlets.

Context: Since October 2023, Hezbollah has been continuously attacking northern Israel, forcing over 70,000 Israelis to stay away from their homes for nearly a year. The tragic peak of this ongoing terror campaign was the murder of twelve children and teenagers in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.

Anyone aware of the ongoing situation would likely stumble over the author’s puzzling wording. It should be clear that these lines were crossed long ago when Lebanon first launched rockets and established the state of war. Israel’s operation involving exploding pagers and radios, obtained by Hezbollah and its allies, was a surgical feat by Israeli intelligence, specifically designed to avoid civilian casualties. Yet, the author implies that recent civilian casualties were “indiscriminately” accepted. What exactly do Western journalists expect Israel to do in response to months of relentless rocket fire? What level of even more sophisticated surgical precision could they possibly wish for, considering the attack targeted the communication infrastructure of actual terrorists? No answers are offered by Klingst’s article.

While Klingst does acknowledge the threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Israel’s right to self-defense, this preemptive acknowledgment—a stance often lacking in British media—seems at least preserved in German contexts. However, following this concession, the focus inevitably shifts back to Israel’s perceived failures. Yes, Israel has made mistakes since October 7th and before, but only Israel is consistently called to act, despite the fact that none of the major escalations in the past two decades were initiated by it. Where is the media critique specifically aimed at the terror groups and surrounding dictatorships that have continuously opposed Israel?

The structural imbalance between concessions to Israel and the subsequent focus on its shortcomings—a “Yes, but...” approach—remains a hallmark of both German and global journalism.

In line with this pattern, Klingst criticizes Israel for bombing hospitals and schools in Gaza without mentioning that Hamas had repurposed them as command centers, weapons depots, and tunnel network access points—facts well-documented on numerous occasions. He also mentions Israel allegedly subjecting Palestinians to “starvation,” without referencing COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) statistics, that present a more nuanced, and certainly diverging, picture. The accusation of genocide is picked up in many articles, among other things in reference to the ICJ trial, without clarifying, however, that this charge—the most severe that can be leveled against a state—relies on Hamas-provided figures and is considered, by many legal experts, at least distorted.

The issue of a one-sided responsibility comes into even sharper focus in another article. In the opening paragraph of a piece published on March 2nd, Klingst refers to a “war of annihilation” (“vernichtender Krieg”), again aligning with the prominent image of genocide.

The use of “vernichtender Krieg” is striking. The more commonly used term is “Vernichtungskrieg,” a historically charged phrase that, intentionally or not, evokes a dark chapter every German is acutely aware of.

Diachronic analyses of Die Zeit have shown this isn’t an isolated instance. As far back as 1948, they allowed a piece titled “Völkischer Ordensstaat Israel” to draw comparisons between the newly founded Jewish state and Nazi Germany. At the time, the Israeli government was defending itself against five attacking Arab armies but was warned by the publication to “recognize how far they had already traveled down the path that recently led another people to disaster.” It’s clear which “people” is being referenced.

The most significant issue with Klingst’s and other journalists’ articles, archived by Die Zeit, is this: they repeatedly suggest that Israel always has a choice between military and peaceful solutions but persistently chooses escalation, leaning toward the use of force. Relying solely on such media reports to understand the Middle East conflict risks misinformation, as it obscures the fact that Israel’s declared enemies aim for its total destruction, not merely a shift in borders or legal frameworks.

The patterns discussed here are symptomatic of the broader media discourse. I see in this reporting a biased and potentially irresponsible skew, one that disregards the existential threat facing the Israeli population and turns the media into political tools rather than institutions of balanced reporting.

This text is not about playing the blame game with a German journalist. I believe many of these patterns have become so ingrained in media reporting that some authors aren’t even aware their choice of words and judgments shift once Israel becomes the focus. However, double standards and unbalanced critiques in any form must be questioned in light of the media’s responsibility. We, as readers, should demand this—otherwise, the media, which is supposed to bridge the events of the world and us as readers, will obscure the reality.

Several discourse-analytic studies have already explored the structural distortions in leading media outlets that invert cause and effect in the Middle East conflict and draw on narratives conducive to demonization. Just to mention the Tikvah Institute in Berlin, Gisela Dachs, Georg M. Hafner & Esther Schapira, Robert Beyer’s contrastive corpus study or, roughly 20 years ago, the report of the Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung (DISS).

The data-driven analysis that I mentioned above examined BBC’s language and argumentation patterns since October 7th in detail and comprehensively, giving us a clearer understanding of the web of narratives and rhetoric. This project should serve as a blueprint for large-scale analyses and audits of major media organizations.

If these distortions were confined to traditional media, the danger would be relatively limited. However, leading media outlets crucially shape public perception. With a long-term impact. Moreover, the antisemitic radicalization we’ve witnessed on social media in recent years would be unthinkable without the communicative groundwork laid by traditional media over decades. This distorted portrayal of Israel as aggressive, vengeful, and morally questionable has paved the way for classic antisemitic tropes, which have entrenched themselves in the anonymous discourse of the interactive web and, thus, in society.

In the end, Israel is nearly denied any leeway for action in public perception, with all the fatal consequences this entails. It cannot be the media’s role to foster this kind of sentiment.

1. As an aside, analyzing narratives in traditional media and their capacity to shape discourse on social media has long been a focal point of my academic work. For instance, in 2021, I published the English version of my comparative study on Die Zeit and The Guardian, offering insights into the correlations between top-down media influence and bottom-up online debate culture.