How German media outlets helped pave the way for Israel's murder of journalists in Gaza

The Guardian

3 days ago

What is the role of journalism when Palestinian reporters are treated as criminals and left to die? Last October, I spoke with the journalist Hossam Shabat. He described families packing what little they had left in northern Gaza as Israel began implementing its 'generals' plan'. Six months later, Shabat was dead – killed by Israel, accused of being a Hamas operative.
Israel does not try to hide these killings. Instead, it often smears its victims in advance – branding journalists as 'terrorists', accusations that are rarely substantiated. These labels serve a clear cause: to strip reporters of their civilian status and make their killing appear morally acceptable. Journalists are not legitimate targets. Killing them is a war crime.
The latest round shook the world: five Al Jazeera journalists were assassinated in a press tent in Gaza City, among them Anas al-Sharif, whose face had become familiar to anyone following Gaza up close. Both the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had warned that al-Sharif's life was in danger. Weeks later, he was dead.
Meanwhile, a growing consensus recognises Gaza as the site of a livestreamed genocide. Yet in Germany – a country that prides itself on having learned the lessons of its own genocidal history – some of the most powerful media institutions have played a part in enabling Israel's actions. Some German journalists have even justified the killing of their Palestinian colleagues.
The clearest example is Axel Springer, Europe's largest publisher and owner of Bild, Germany's biggest newspaper. Hours after the killing of al-Sharif became public, Bild splashed his image under this headline: 'Terrorist disguised as journalist killed in Gaza' (which was later changed to 'Journalist killed was allegedly a terrorist'). Let that sink in.
About a week before, Bild had published another piece: 'This Gaza photographer stages Hamas propaganda.' The article targeted the Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, accusing him of staging images of starving Palestinians as part of a Hamas campaign, despite the evidence that the subjects of the photos were indeed starving and waiting for food. In the article, Fteiha's title as journalist appeared in quotation marks, implying he wasn't a real journalist, and that images of starvation were exaggerated fabrications.
The Bild story – along with a similar piece in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) – was swiftly amplified on X by Israel's foreign ministry, which cited them as proof that Hamas manipulates global opinion. Fteiha was branded an 'Israel- and Jew-hater' serving Hamas. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation quickly piled on, joined by rightwing influencers.
In this case, German media had become a direct pipeline for Israeli talking points, quickly recycled into the international arena and repackaged as 'evidence'. Fteiha said in response: 'I don't create suffering. I document it.' Calling his work 'Hamas propaganda', he continued, 'is a felony against the press itself'.
Just days before the Bild and SZ articles were published, one of Germany's largest journalists' associations, Deutscher Journalisten-Verband (DJV), issued a statement warning of 'manipulation' in press photography. It specifically cast doubt on images showing emaciated children in Gaza, claiming their condition 'apparently is not attributable to the famine in Gaza'. The DJV offered no evidence for this claim – largely because no such evidence exists.
Facing backlash online, the association cited a July article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, whose author had speculated whether images of emaciated infants were really the result of starvation – or rather of preexisting conditions such as cystic fibrosis. The piece suggested that publications had been either negligent or manipulative in publishing these photos without further detail. Omitted was the fact that hunger and preexisting conditions can't be neatly separated and that no preexisting condition alone could produce such extreme emaciation.
Bias isn't new in the German media landscape. At Axel Springer, support for the existence of the state of Israel is second on the list of the company's guiding principles, its so-called essentials. In September last year, Bild helped derail ceasefire negotiations by publishing an 'exclusive' report – excerpts from a Hamas strategy leaked to Bild by Benjamin Netanyahu's aides. In it, Bild claimed Hamas was 'not aiming for a quick end to the war', which neatly absolved Netanyahu of any responsibility for the breakdown in talks at the time. (In response to queries about the story, a Bild spokesperson told +972 magazine that the publication does not comment on its sources.)
As it turned out, the Hamas document had been broadly misrepresented by Bild. The timing couldn't have served Netanyahu better: the story landed as mass protests put pressure on his position. Shortly after the Bild report was published, Netanyahu cited it in a cabinet meeting to cast the demonstrators as pawns of Hamas. The Bild article remains online, uncorrected.
The problem, however, extends far beyond Bild and Axel Springer. Across legacy German media, failures to provide fact-based, balanced coverage of Israel and Palestine have been far reaching – and became glaringly obvious after the 7 October attacks. Fabricated claims, such as that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies, along with various other pieces of deliberate misinformation, remain uncorrected.
Outlets across the political spectrum in Germany routinely omit historical context, frame Palestinian deaths in passive, depoliticised terms, and display a near-blind faith in Israeli military 'verification' – while ignoring a well-documented record of misinformation by Israeli state sources. In January, the ostensibly leftwing Die Tageszeitung ran a piece headlined: 'Can journalists be terrorists?' The article cited the Israeli military four times – and did not quote a single journalist in Gaza.
Across the German media landscape, such narratives contribute to stripping Palestinian journalists of credibility, and – in the worst case – handing Israel readymade justifications for targeting them.
Germany's 'never again' pledge should carry weight given its deeply genocidal history. Yet it rings hollow when the country's dominant outlets launder or supply propaganda to legitimise mass killing in Gaza. This is not journalism in the service of truth – it is journalism in the service of violence. Breaking this cycle would require a serious reckoning with the editorial cultures and political loyalties that have enabled German journalism to be weaponised in this way.
The killing of journalists in Gaza makes one thing painfully clear: Israel does not want a record to be left. When the history of this genocide is written, there will be chapters on the media's role. Germany's section will be uncomfortably large. No one should claim they didn't see it happening.
Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author. He worked as a senior editor in Berliner Zeitung's culture department, specialising in contemporary art and politics