The Media’s War on Israel - with Matti Friedman

16 snips

Oct 23, 2025

Join award-winning journalist Matti Friedman as he dives into the intricate web of media narratives surrounding Israel. He discusses how his 2014 critique of media coverage remains relevant today, especially in the age of social media and AI. Matti analyzes why Israel captivates such global attention and critiques how Hamas expertly wields information to its advantage. He offers insight into Israel's communication strategies and suggests ways for both the Israeli government and Jewish communities abroad to reshape their narratives for better understanding.

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INSIGHT

Mainstream Media Is Ideological

Western journalism often functions as ideological activism rather than explanatory reporting.
Newsrooms prioritize helping the "right people," shaping coverage to favor Palestinians over Israelis.

INSIGHT

Why Israel Occupies Western Minds

Israel's prominence is driven by accessibility, religious significance, and Jewish-focused narratives.
Western storytelling traditions cast Jews as recurring moral villains, amplifying Israel's symbolic weight.

INSIGHT

Hamas Weaponizes Civilian Suffering

Hamas intentionally controls Gaza's information to present a narrative of civilian suffering.
That strategy repeatedly pressures international opinion and constrains Israel's actions.

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Matti Friedman has spent more than a decade dissecting how Israel is covered in the press and what those stories reveal about the storytellers themselves. His 2014 Atlantic essay, What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel, remains one of the sharpest examinations of why global attention is fixated on Israel and why the coverage so often skews against it.

In this conversation, Matti reflects on whether the problems he identified then still hold true today in an age of social media storms. He explains why Israel remains outsized in the Western imagination, how Hamas has weaponized Palestinian suffering, and why the media so often amplifies their playbook.

We also explore whether Israel’s failures in the narrative war are the result of its own missteps, entrenched hostility, or something deeper, and what both the Israeli government and Jewish communities abroad can and should do differently.

The Atlantic - What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel

Tablet - An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth

Guest Bio:

Matti Friedman is an award-winning journalist and the author of four non-fiction books. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Tablet, Smithsonian, and elsewhere, and he’s currently a columnist for the Free Press.

Matti’s most recent book, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, was published in 2022 in the US, Canada, Israel, and Italy. His previous book, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, won the 2019 Natan Prize and the Canadian Jewish Book Award. Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War was chosen in 2016 as a New York Times Notable Book and one of Amazon’s 10 best books of the year. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Matti was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem.