Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University, and an award-winning author who has written a dozen single and co-authored books.
In Democracy in Exile's latest book series piece, Robin Andersen offers excerpts from her forthcoming book, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza." The book is co-published with OR Books and the Institute for Palestine Studies, and can be pre-ordered here.
The assault on Gaza's hospitals by Israel — particularly Al-Shifa — unfolded not only as a military campaign but as a media event. Graphic imagery, anonymous intelligence claims and carefully staged briefings shaped how mainstream media reported the destruction of Gaza's medical infrastructure and presented it to global audiences. In the process, attacks on civilians and health care facilities were framed as contested narratives rather than urgent violations of international law, reflecting Western establishment media's complicity in Israel's genocidal assault on the Strip.
By Nov. 11, 2023, Israel began its first attack on Gaza's largest medical complex, which Al Jazeera described as the "beating heart of Gaza." The hospital was filled with newborns, wounded patients, thousands of sick and displaced people, hospital staff and international aid workers. Before the attack, Israeli tanks approached the hospital, encircling it and ordering everyone to evacuate. Patients fled with wounds still bleeding — some in wheelchairs, others pulled by carts.
In Mondoweiss, Tareq Hajjaj wrote, "In the days leading up to the Al-Shifa exodus, Israel's forces continued to close in, bombing and shelling the neighboring buildings and outer parts of the hospital" and "launching missiles into the hospital's courtyard where refugees were sleeping, cutting them up into pieces." The tanks continued to approach Al-Shifa until they were "right at its gate." Doctors Without Borders (MSF) appealed for international intervention to halt the assault as medical personnel pleaded for sanctuary.
Reporting left audiences with a sense of numbness amid overt efforts by mainstream Western outlets to justify accounts of unprecedented brutality as retaliatory, necessary and inevitable.
- Robin Andersen
A CNN broadcast on Nov. 13 further exemplifies Western mainstream coverage. Beneath the headline confirming that "Hamas had a command node under Al-Shifa Hospital," two presenters describe the "desperate situation" at the hospital: "We've just learned that three babies in the neonatal unit have died." Then they add a key phrase used to cast doubt on the incident, describing the source as the "Hamas-run health ministry." A reporter on the ground says the hospital is "surrounded by Israeli tanks," claiming he can hear "nearby shelling." The hospital has "run out of fuel," and oxygen devices are "no longer functioning."
The blow-by-blow description of brutality stands without condemnation. No plan to stop the attack was offered, nor any objection to the violence, as anchors declined to explain the apparent violations of international law prohibiting attacks on civilians, health care facilities and medical staff. The segment was framed alongside text claiming Hamas had a "command node under Al-Shifa." It included a major charge: "A U.S. official with knowledge of American intelligence says Hamas has a command node under the Al-Shifa hospital, uses fuel intended for it and its fighters regularly cluster in and around Gaza's largest hospital."
Like CNN, NBC News and ABC News similarly quoted White House officials claiming that Hamas had infiltrated hospitals, including Al-Shifa. Other media reported the attack as a potential war crime, but added that hospitals lose protection when used for military purposes. Addressing the issue of war crimes, Bloomberg concluded that Israel's actions were "likely legal," and NBC News repeated Israeli assertions that it was a "targeted operation." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was featured across media, declaring that terrorists were everywhere. This reporting left audiences with a sense of numbness amid overt efforts by mainstream Western outlets to justify accounts of unprecedented brutality as retaliatory, necessary and inevitable.
In the days leading up to the assault, Israel designed an extensive and preemptive hasbara (propaganda) campaign widely distributed across Western media. The three-dimensional animation purportedly depicted underground spaces beneath the hospital complex. At the time, it gave graphic life to nonexistent Hamas infrastructure at the hospital, as the animation pictured a multilevel headquarters extending deep beneath the complex. The slick visual trickery made a powerful appeal to corporate media, especially network news outlets favoring sensational videos. As such, media lined up behind the campaign, eager to report extensively about the invented, sprawling underground Hamas complex.
The animation featured interior spaces adorned with Hamas logos and animated "commanders" moving through the clean, high-tech labyrinth springing from the Israeli imagination. Writer Jeet Heer of The Nation described the dazzling graphic, saying it "showed an extensive network of well-lit tunnels and large rooms that resembled nothing so much as the villain's lair in a James Bond film." Some even referred to it as a "Hamas Pentagon."
As Israel systematically destroyed Gaza's health care system and killed its doctors and nurses, Western establishment media's reliance on official assertions helped normalize what should have been unthinkable.
- Robin Andersen
Hospital administrators repeatedly denied Israel's claims that Hamas used Al-Shifa for military purposes. Staff even "prepared for an international delegation to conduct a search of the hospitals and their grounds" to debunk the allegations. Al-Shifa personnel, alongside a European doctor who worked there for years, vociferously denied that Hamas used the hospital. Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert, who worked at Al-Shifa for 16 years, told Democracy Now! that there was "no evidence at all" that this was the case. "If it was a military command center, I would not work there."
Israel's destruction of Gaza's hospitals extended beyond Al-Shifa. As Tariq Hajjaj wrote in Mondoweiss at the time, the "past few hours have been the most catastrophic for Gaza's northern hospitals," including Al-Shifa, Al-Quds Hospital, Al-Rantisi Hospital for Pediatrics, Nasr Hospital in Gaza City and the Indonesian Hospital. In the aftermath of the brutality, journalists were shown what Israeli officials described as evidence of Hamas's presence in hospitals.
At Al-Rantisi Hospital, journalist Marc Owen Jones highlighted a particularly clownish performance by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Standing in the hospital basement, Hagari claimed Hamas had held hostages there, pointing to a piece of paper on the wall. Hagari told reporters, "This is a guardian list, where every terrorist writes his name, and every terrorist has his own shift, guarding the people that were here." As it turned out, this "guardian list" was merely a calendar listing the days of the week.
Hagari's performance was widely mocked on social media. The poorly constructed "evidence" produced after the attack was far less sophisticated than the animated video, and Western establishment media was less enthusiastic about the easily debunked "evidence" of the Hamas headquarters. Yet it repeated it anyway.
Despite the lack of compelling evidence, military chaperones took a CNN crew to the opening of a tunnel that proved nothing, while a wordy New York Times piece discussed whether Israel could hold off global criticism and continue the war. Reporting repeatedly echoed unverified IDF claims that Hamas and independent actors denied. This style of reporting the genocide is known as "both-sidesing," a practice that avoids interrogating official narratives, with claims and truth obscured.
Over a month later, after establishment news cycles moved on, The Washington Post investigated allegations that Hamas had operated out of Al-Shifa's basement. That investigation "found no proof of a Hamas command center under Al-Shifa following Israel's attack on the medical complex." The paper analyzed the tunnels using maps and other open-source materials — some released by the IDF.
Ultimately, The Post's research findings "contradicted claims by Israel that several hospital buildings were connected to and could be accessed from within the tunnel network." The analysis also revealed that several small rooms attached to the tunnel — one of which the IDF described as an evacuated Hamas "operational room" — contained no signs of recent use or occupancy.
Referring to these revelations, The Rolling Stone summarized the significance of the siege: "Last month, the world watched as a spectacle rarely seen in modern warfare unfolded in Gaza. The Israeli military tore through Al-Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip's main hospital, forcing the evacuation of patients and refugees as part of a siege on the medical complex that resulted in dozens of patient deaths and an untold number of additional casualties." The outlet pointed out that, even in a conflict as brutal as the one unfolding in Gaza, "an organized military operation against a hospital is virtually unheard of."
Research by the fact-checking site Misbar found that "Western media outlets failed to correct the false claims they had reiterated about the hospital." It also argued that, due to a lack of accountability, Israel went on to completely dismantle Gaza's health care system. The IDF's efforts have killed over 1,700 health care workers, amounting to a loss of 70 medical professionals per month. In September 2025, an independent U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel's destruction of Gaza's medical infrastructure constituted the crime against humanity of extermination and, ultimately, genocide.
What unfolded at Al-Shifa was not a case of disputed facts but an example of disproven claims amplified long after they collapsed. As Israel systematically destroyed Gaza's health care system and killed its doctors and nurses, Western establishment media's reliance on official assertions helped normalize what should have been unthinkable. The result was not confusion, but manufactured consent that resulted in untold horrors across the Strip that continue to this day.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
