How the Media Covered the Latest Hostage-For-Prisoner Release

Three Israeli men — Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami — were freed in the latest hostage-for-criminal exchange. They were described as “gaunt,” though even that word does not convey their horrific appearance, that reminded many in Israel of the Jews who were found, still alive but starving, when the Allies entered the Nazi death camps. Each had lost at least 30% of his original weight Their cheeks were sunken, their eye sockets dark. Their bodies were described as “skeletal” in the Israeli press. Their families at first did not recognize them. They walked with great difficulty. They had been kept in chains for long periods, for as much as a year in one case. Israeli doctors say that their long months of malnutrition — at times they were forced to subsist on just a quarter of a piece of pita for their day’s rations — has health consequences that are not visible, including permanent damage to internal organs, including the heart.

But the non-Israeli media were not up to the task of conveying the condition of the three released hostages. Worse still, several of the most important outlets — the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian — were determined to liken the treatment in captivity of the hostages to the treatment of the Palestinian criminals in Israeli prisons. More on this grotesque comparison can be found here: “Media Coverage of the Hostage Release Was Shameful—But Three Outlets Disgraced Themselves,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, February 9, 2025:

This time, there was no way for the masked terrorists—green headbands wrapped around their anonymous faces—even to attempt hiding the hideous abuses they had inflicted on their captives. No showy stage parade, no gun-wielding militants forcing their emaciated hostages to recite scripted words before a rapturous crowd, could distract the world from what was plainly visible: three Israeli civilians, violently abducted from their homes, now bearing the marks of 16 months of unspeakable torture.

We know now that these hostages were held for almost their entire captivity in the tunnels underground, thus deprived of sunlight. They were chained, and could neither stand nor sit, but lay on the stone-cold floor. They were malnourished, with a daily diet that at times was as little as one-quarter of a piece of pita. They were allowed to take one shower every six months. They were beaten whenever one or more of their guards felt like harming them. They were constantly being threatened with execution, and taunted about the family members they had left behind, and whose fate they did not know.

Every one of those 491 days spent underground, in darkness, in a space barely big enough to stand, was etched into their hollowed cheeks, their skeletal frames causing some to evoke images of survivors from Nazi concentration camps.

As the families of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami watched live footage of their release, the initial flood of relief quickly gave way to shock and agony. Their loved ones were unrecognizable. It was a gut-wrenching sight.

We have criticized the media’s coverage of these hostage releases from the very beginning. Sometimes, it’s sheer sloppiness—misleading terminology, factual errors, like outlets falsely referring to kidnapped Israeli civilians as “soldiers.” Other times, it’s far more insidious: a grotesque imbalance, an eagerness to humanize Palestinian prisoners—most of them convicted of violent, deadly attacks against Israelis—while downplaying the suffering of Israeli hostages.

But even by these dismal standards, Saturday’s coverage of the hostage-prisoner exchange was a new low.

And a few media organizations, in particular, deserve special condemnation: the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian.

The coverage of Saturday’s events does not deserve to be classed as news. The reporters who wrote these pieces and the editors who approved them are not journalists in any meaningful sense of the word. And their readers and viewers should know the sheer contempt these media organizations have for them.

The BBC’s reporting marked a new nadir for the taxpayer-funded British broadcaster, with its live news coverage stating there were “concerns over appearance of hostages on both sides.”

The prisoners freed by Israel were not starved, but provided with food just as nutritious as that which was fed to soldiers in the IDF. They had access to doctors and dentists. They had regular visits by members of the International Red Cross. They had access to books, and computers, and were able to enroll in programs run by Palestinian universities which award them both BA and MA degrees. None of this was available to the Israeli hostages, chained and unable either to stand or sit, enduring life in the dark in their hellish tunnels.

Like the BBC and CNN, The Guardian was determined to equate the treatment of the prisoners to that of the hostages. Both were described in one of the paper’s headlines as “gaunt captives.” To repeat: the Palestinian prisoners were not “gaunt”; they have been living on the equivalent of IDF rations. It is the Israeli hostages who were forced to subsist on a diet that at times limited them to one-quarter of a single piece of pita, and caused them to lose at least 30% of their original weight. The wildly different appearances of the freed hostages and the freed prisoners deserved to be noted in a truthful headline in The Guardian, such as “No Comparison: The Famished and the Fed.”

There is no fit comparison between the starved, tortured, and tormented Israeli captives, who were chained in dark dank underground tunnels, while the Palestinian prisoners — who should not be called “captives,” for they had been convicted of crimes, including murder —-appeared well-fed and healthy. Such comparisons are odorous, as Shakespeare wrote. That means they stink to high heaven. But what else can you expect, given the anti-Israel animus so often displayed by the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian?