Matthew Cassel is a journalist whose career covering the Mid-East includes work, from 2011-2016, at Al Jazeera, a professional affiliation with the Qatari-controlled, pro-Hamas outlet which included a major role launching AJ+, the Western-facing, youth oriented propaganda unit of the Al Jazeera Media Network.
As an occasional Guardian contributor, Cassel has expressed sympathy towards Hezbollah, as well as former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He came to Tel Aviv recently to produce a short film on how Israelis there feel about the war. He clearly arrived certain of four things: 1) his own moral superiority 2) That Israel is committing genocide. 3) That most Israelis are pathologically indifferent or outright supportive of this ‘genocide’ he’s sure is happening, and 4) That nothing Hamas does has any significance.
His Guardian video report, titled ‘Our Genocide’, How do Israelis feel about the war in Gaza?, Sept. 16, a title which is extraordinarily manipulative, as the words ‘Our Genocide’ was taken from the title of a report by the radical NGO B’tselem, whose international director, Sarit Michaeli, is interviewed by Cassel.
Cassel’s report includes interviews with a handful of people in Tel Aviv, as well a minimum, highly skewed background on the topic he’s putatively addressing. For instance, early on, a brief quote by an Israeli who complains that the world soon forgot what happened on Oct. 7th. This is followed by a short clip showing a Gaza building being destroyed, along with Cassel’s observation that “Since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel has killed nearly 64,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with the real total likely much higher”, failing to note that this (Hamas supplied) number includes both combatants and non-combatants, and omitting the Israeli death toll from the Hamas massacre.
This short backgrounder also omits any clips of the savage pogrom carried out that day, much of which was live-streamed by the terrorists themselves.
He then tells viewers that 1) “Famine has been declared”, without mentioning that the IPC determination that famine has been declared (in parts of the territory) has been fiercely disputed by Israel and other independent researchers, 2) “Much of the territory lies in ruins…with Israel’s military continu[ing] to destroy civilian structures”, without acknowledging that Hamas’s deliberate policy of placing military assets and fighters within civilian structures likely explains most of the destruction.
These glaring omissions again show that the journalist came to Israel accepting the libel that a genocide was being perpetrated in Gaza, and then worked backwards with commentary designed to reinforce his pre-determined conclusion.
After referring to polls putatively showing that most Israeli Jews don’t care about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, Cassel then interviews B’tselem’s Michaeli, who he frames as one of the few righteous Jews in the country.
Later, Cassel travels to Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, where he shows bustling markets with stands selling fruits, vegetables, chocolate and other food items, before claiming that, due to the war, none of the similar markets he once saw in Gaza are operational. He’s wrong, however. Videos posted by Palestinians in Gaza abound showing that, despite the real suffering in the territory brought about by Hamas’s war, markets in the strip with fully stocked vendors are common.
Cassel then repeats that lie when, after asking an Israeli vendor in the Carmel Market how business is, he asks how he feels about the fact that Gazans “don’t have access to any of this…produce, fruits and vegetables, spices and other goods“, before adding, in a query effectively challenging the merchant as to whether he possesses any humanity: “As a human being, does that affect you?“. The Israeli man, in Hebrew, declined to answer, either because he didn’t quite understand the question, or he hadn’t expected the interview – which he seemed to think was narrowly about how the war was impacting business – to delve into politics.
He then speaks to a young Israeli woman, who says she feels safe in the city, but feels horrible when she sees images on social media of the hostages being held for 723 days. Cassel ignores her answer, and the broader topic of Hamas’s torture and starvation of Israelis held captive, challenging the woman instead on the suffering, “famine” and “genocide” in Gaza.
Cassel is then seen at the weekly anti-government demonstration, where he objects that, while the protesters object to the war’s continuation, and call for the release of the Israeli hostages, “what you won’t find much mention of is the Palestinian victims of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza“, and later expresses exasperation that he can’t find any sympathy for Palestinians at the demo.
Later, while touring the bars and clubs of Tel Aviv’s famous nightlife, an interview with a young man at a bar is interrupted when Cassel explains that someone is “looking him up” online and advising the interviewee not to talk to the journalist because he’s anti-Israel, and that his goal is to make Israelis “look bad“. The fact that this an accurate observation becomes even clearer when Cassel concludes by expressing his own emotional pain – his “uneasiness” with the fact that, over three days, he spoke to dozens of people in Tel Aviv “and found little concern for Palestinians in Gaza“. Israelis, it seems, literally make him sick.
If Cassel’s exploration into the Jewish ‘heart of darkness’ is, in some ways, an egregious example of a propagandist – under the guise of journalism – telling Guardian readers exactly what they want to hear about Israel’s putative villainy, the fundamental elements of his moral myopia is quite familiar to those who’ve been following our work since Oct. 7th, 2023.
Within days of the mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation in southern Israel by Gaza terrorists, the worst and most (Trigger Warning) savage antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, there was a pivot of the media’s lens from Jewish victims to more comfortable territory within the journalist monoculture: the IDF’s allegedly ‘disproportionate’ response. By the second week of the war, this framing had already morphed into charges of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide”.
In a healthier, less morally corrupt media landscape, the focus would have remained on the Israeli victims of Hamas’ barbarism on Oct. 7th and the hostages still being held, the inhumanity of the terrorist perpetrators and their fanatical refusal to surrender despite the suffering of civilians in Gaza and the fact that they had no chance of emerging victorious in their campaign to destroy the Jewish state – as well as the appallingly widespread Palestinian support for the terror group’s massacre.
If Matthew Cassel truly wanted to find moral monsters, he should have focused on Hamas and their willing executioners.
Well I question both the Guardian’s humanity and morals, as much as I question those qualities belonging to anyone who enjoys reading their biased piffle. No doubt it is Middle Eastern funded like most of the biased media in the UK.