A man gestures the victory sign as he holds a Hezbollah flag, on the second day of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher

There are moments in media criticism when the usual words — bias, omission, misleading framing — feel inadequate. Because this isn’t just about bias. It’s about a line crossed. It’s about a piece of so-called journalism so grotesque, so inverted in its moral compass, that it demands a different kind of response.

The Associated Press has published a photo essay titled “Portraits of survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah last year.” It features carefully staged portraits and sorrowful quotes — not just from Hezbollah operatives themselves, but also from a few of their relatives.

Let’s not forget this is a US- and EU-designated terror organization, and the men were injured in a precision Israeli strike that neutralized dozens of Hezbollah fighters who were using encrypted pagers to coordinate attacks on Israeli civilians.

But the AP doesn’t frame them as terrorists. It casts them as victims. As tragic figures. As men whose disfigured hands deserve your sympathy.

It is repulsive propaganda. Nothing more, nothing less.

We’re not going to walk you through what’s wrong with this piece. It’s too obvious. The entire thing is a distortion. Every image, every quote, every omission — from the total lack of context about Hezbollah’s crimes, including the fact that these very pagers were used to orchestrate lethal attacks on Israelis, to the aesthetic choices that frame mutilated killers in dramatic, reverent lighting — is an insult.

An insult to the thousands of Israelis murdered or maimed by Hezbollah. To the innocent Lebanese civilians crushed under its rule. And to the readers themselves, because how many millions around the world have been directly or indirectly torn apart by Islamist terrorism?

The Aestheticization of Terror

The portraits are the first clue. Each fighter, or relative of a fighter, is photographed against a pitch-black background, lit just enough to highlight scars, stumps, and furrowed brows. Their eyes are cast downward or off into the middle distance. They are composed. Thoughtful. Vulnerable.

There is no blood. No chaos. No evidence of what came before. Just the frozen dignity of men, women, and teenagers supposedly broken by war.

This is not journalism. It is image-crafting. And it works.

The disfigured Hezbollah operatives appear mythic, stoic, tragic. Not for what they’ve done, but for what’s been done to them. The visual language here is not accidental. It mimics portraiture used for cancer survivors, injured veterans, and victims of domestic violence. The kind of images that demand empathy and suspend judgment.

Now contrast that with how Israeli victims of Hezbollah are typically shown in Western media, if they’re shown at all. Blurry photos from attack scenes. Names barely mentioned. Faces rarely shown.

But the AP found the time, the resources, and the artistic vision to give Hezbollah fighters a studio-style shoot and a global platform. The goal was simple: to soften their image, obscure their crimes, and make you forget who they are — so you remember only how they look now.

.@AP looked at terrorists who helped murder Israelis and thought:
“Let’s interview their mothers.”
No mention of the victims. No mention of the terror.
Just tears for Hezbollah.
This is how you sanitize evil. pic.twitter.com/t1GbrxXbCR

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 6, 2025

The Inversion of Victim and Aggressor

One of the men featured, Mahdi Sheri, 23, a Hezbollah member, laments that he can no longer return to his former job on the front line. “Now,” the AP reports with near admiration, “Hezbollah is helping him find a new job.”

Other captions allude to trauma and paint a picture of resilience. Even the children of terrorists, AP notes, “now fear coming near their fathers.” As if the real tragedy isn’t the terror their fathers unleashed — but the fact that their children are afraid of their monstrous parents.

Not once does the AP mention what these men were doing before they were injured: actively working to kill Israelis.

These were not bystanders caught in crossfire. These were operatives of an Iranian-backed terror group, engaged in covert operations using encrypted pagers, the same technology Hezbollah has used for decades to coordinate rocket fire and ambushes targeting civilians.

But instead of reporting that fact, the AP chose to wrap them in tragedy and give them the space to monologue about their pain.

So allow us to do the job they wouldn’t.

The Real Victims: Murdered by Hezbollah

• 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers, serving in a multinational peacekeeping force, murdered in the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983.

• 114 people killed in the Israeli Embassy bombing (1992) and the AMIA Jewish Center bombing (1994) in Buenos Aires.

• 19 US Air Force personnel murdered in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

• Eight Israeli soldiers murdered in a cross-border raid, with two others taken hostage and later killed — the attack that triggered the 2006 Lebanon War, during which 43 Israeli civilians and 121 IDF soldiers were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire.

• Dozens of Israeli civilians and security personnel killed in Hezbollah attacks during the 2023–2024 Israel–Hezbollah conflict, launched after the October 7 Hamas massacre. Over 60,000 Israeli residents of the north were displaced.

• In July 2024, a Hezbollah rocket struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams, killing at least 12 children.

This is not a full list.

The media finds its focus when photographing the wounded bodies of terrorists. But it falls silent when it comes to their victims.

Call It What It Is

This isn’t journalism. It’s image laundering — the glorification of terror, repackaged as human interest.

And it’s not new.

We’ve seen it before: when The New York Times ran glowing features on Hamas-linked “journalists,” when the BBC called Qassam Brigade commanders “fighters,” and when Reuters gave Islamic Jihad operatives a platform without ever asking why they fire rockets at Israeli kindergartens.

It’s the same playbook: Humanize the perpetrator. Aestheticize the violence. Erase the victims. Call it balance.

But this isn’t balance. It’s complicity.

The Associated Press didn’t just publish a photo essay. It published a shrine.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect

As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.

The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.

On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”

“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.

The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”

Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.

In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”

Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.

Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.

Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”

Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.

In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.

Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.

“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.

In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.

Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.

Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.

However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.

This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.

Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.

The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.

The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.

“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect

The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.

On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.

This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.

Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.

According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.

While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.

In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.

“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.

“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.

This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.

The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.

For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.

Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.

Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”

“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”

Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.