Telling the Whole Truth: A Call for Honest Journalism in Times of War

In times of war, journalism faces its greatest challenge. Reports must navigate government messaging, propaganda campaigns, and public fatigue while still providing clarity and truth. For many readers, the demand for honesty has grown urgent, with calls for newsrooms to resist sanitized narratives and confront the uncomfortable realities of conflict. Journalists themselves describe a profession caught between duty to inform and pressures to align with national interest. This piece examines how truth-telling, even when painful, remains central to the survival of a free press and the public’s ability to understand the wars fought in its name.

What Does It Mean to Tell the Whole Truth? A Reader’s Call for Honest, Uncomfortable Journalism in Times of War

I’ve read your submissions, essays, testimonies, and the deeply human stories emerging from Gaza. I’ve watched, like much of the world, as homes have been leveled, children buried, and hospitals turned to rubble. What is happening there is catastrophic, there’s no question. The scale of destruction, death toll, and psychological and generational trauma being inflicted in real time demands global attention and demands to be documented with care, precision, and urgency.

But if we’re going to talk about truth, I believe we have to talk about the whole truth. Not just the stories that reinforce one side’s suffering, or that match the prevailing ideology of a moment. Because when journalism, especially journalism rooted in human pain, frames one kind of loss as central and another as peripheral, it ceases to be journalism. It becomes something else entirely: advocacy without accountability.

So I want to ask you, sincerely and directly:

Are you willing to tell the whole truth? Even when it complicates the narrative you set out to tell?

Here are some of the questions we’re asked most often:

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Q. Do you acknowledge that Israel has the right to defend its citizens, especially in light of the October 7 attacks?

Yes. A state has the right to protect its people. That is not up for debate. The horror of October 7, 2023, is a real and documented event. Over 1,200 Israeli civilians were killed in a single day. Children were executed in their homes. Women were raped. Entire families were burned alive. It was one of the most brutal mass killings of civilians in Israel’s history, and it was an act of terrorism and the targeted slaughter of human beings.

We must hold space for that truth. For the grief of the survivors. For the trauma of those who watched their families die. For the hostages still being held, and for those who came home to find nothing left. That pain is real, and if we ignore or minimize it, we are not practicing justice. We are practicing denial.

But here's the second truth, and it’s just as urgent:

Nothing—nothing—that happened on October 7 justifies what is happening in Gaza today.

Not one massacre excuses another. Not one act of terror licenses a military campaign that has, as of this writing, killed over 38,000 Palestinians, displaced over 80% of the population, and systematically targeted hospitals, schools, bakeries, refugee camps, journalists, and aid workers. These are not defensive strikes or targeted warfare. This is a large-scale, state-led destruction of a civilian population that lacks both an army and escape routes.

To suggest that Gaza’s destruction is necessary for Israeli security is to accept a framework in which entire cities, families, and generations can be sacrificed under the language of defense.

October 7, 2024, was horrific, but it was not a blank check, and we must stop treating it like one.

Justice does not require us to choose between the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians. It demands that we see both and refuse to weaponize one grief to erase the other.

If we are serious about peace, we have to be serious about proportionality, international law, and human life—every human life. Because if the legacy of October 7 becomes the justification for collective punishment, then we are not building security. Instead, we are laying the groundwork for a permanent state of war.

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Q. Have you considered the reality of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza?

Yes, and we must.

As of today, over 100 Israeli hostages remain in captivity in Gaza—many of them civilians, including young children, elderly people, and individuals with chronic illnesses. Some were abducted from their homes during the October 7 attacks. Others were taken from music festivals, neighborhoods, or farms. Some are presumed dead. Most have not been heard from since. Their families have waited for months in a state of suspended terror, not knowing if their loved ones are alive, suffering, or already gone.

These hostages are not a political talking point. They are human beings. Their captivity is a humanitarian crisis in its own right, and their absence is a deep, unresolved trauma—not only for the families, but for anyone invested in a future that does not hinge on vengeance and erasure.

Their stories must be told, their names must not be forgotten, and any attempt to document this war honestly must include their pain and their right to come home.

We also must be clear that he continued captivity of hostages cannot be used to justify the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

It cannot be used to flatten refugee camps, starve children, target journalists, destroy medical infrastructure, or block humanitarian aid. More importantly, it cannot be used as a cover for a campaign that has killed tens of thousands and left entire communities without food, shelter, or water.

To weaponize the suffering of hostages to rationalize the suffering of millions is not defense, but exploitation.

If we care about the hostages, and we do, we must demand their return without condition. Not as a bargaining chip or as an afterthought, and certainly not as a reason to escalate a war that is already destroying the very future they might come home to.

At the end of the day, grief does not justify more grief, and liberation cannot come at the cost of annihilation.

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Q. Is it possible to condemn mass killing without erasing legitimate suffering on both sides?

Yes, and it is not only possible, it is necessary.

Many of us believe, based on overwhelming evidence, that what is happening in Gaza crossed into the legal and moral threshold of genocide long ago. That word is not rhetorical. It is grounded in international law: the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the flattening of entire neighborhoods, the bombing of hospitals, the starvation of children, the killing of aid workers, the obstruction of humanitarian relief—these are not "unfortunate byproducts of war." They are systematic, state-led violations of international humanitarian law.

Saying that clearly is not anti-Semitic. It is not one-sided. It is a moral and factual obligation.

But acknowledging the severity of Israel’s actions does not erase the legitimate suffering of Israeli civilians, nor should it. The trauma of October 7, when over 1,200 people were killed in a single day, is not a footnote. It is a foundational trauma for Israeli society, and the psychological scars it left, especially for those still searching for loved ones or living under the fear of future attacks, are real, ongoing, and deeply human.

Refusing to name or honor that suffering is intellectual dishonesty.

Refusing to name what’s happening in Gaza as genocide because October 7 was horrifying would be dishonest.

You cannot build a coherent moral position by comparing which dead child matters more.

You cannot build peace by dehumanizing the “other” side.

And you cannot build trust by erasing half the truth.

We must be able to say, without hesitation:

• What happened to Israeli civilians on October 7 was terrorism.

  
  

• What is happening to Palestinians in Gaza is genocide.

  
  

• Both are unacceptable. Neither justifies the other.

To document only one pain while denying the other does not produce clarity; it produces propaganda. And if we want to be something more than mouthpieces for ideology, we must be brave enough to name all the suffering, and still say: no more of this.

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A. Telling the truth means holding more than one truth at once.

This isn’t about choosing a side. It’s about refusing to lie, by omission, by distortion, or by silence, and honoring all human life without needing to sanitize, soften, or balance one atrocity against another.

Here is what is true:

• The Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began on October 8, 2023, in response to the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, including more than 15,000 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health as of July 2025. Entire families have been wiped out. Civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings, has been systematically targeted. Aid convoys have been bombed. Famine has been used as a weapon.

  
  

• The attacks on October 7, 2023, by Hamas were acts of terror. Over 1,200 Israeli civilians were murdered, including women, children, and the elderly. Victims were burned alive. Others were shot in their homes or at a music festival. Over 250 people were taken hostage, including toddlers and Holocaust survivors.

  
  

• Israel’s siege of Gaza began in full on October 9, when it cut off electricity, water, food, and fuel to over 2 million people. As of July 2025, 80% of the population is displaced, famine conditions have been declared in northern Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system, and humanitarian access remains obstructed despite UN pleas.

  
  

• More than 100 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza as of July 2025. Some are believed to have died. Many families have not received updates in months. There has been no successful comprehensive hostage deal since the brief ceasefire and exchange agreement in November 2023.

  
  

• Hamas has committed war crimes, yes, including the deliberate targeting of civilians, the use of hostages, and rocket fire into civilian areas.

  
  

• The Israeli government has also committed war crimes. UN investigators and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented repeated violations of international law: the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the targeting of journalists and medics, the use of starvation as a method of warfare, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

  
  

• The lives of Palestinian children buried under rubble in Khan Younis matter. So do the lives of Israeli families murdered in Kfar Aza.

  
  

• The trauma of colonial dispossession, occupation, and statelessness matters, from the 1948 Nakba to the present-day apartheid conditions in the West Bank.

  
  

• The trauma of Jewish persecution and genocide matters, from centuries of pogroms to the Holocaust that ended less than 80 years ago.

  
  

• Empathy is not a betrayal of one group. It is a basic condition of our shared humanity.

  
  

These are not contradictory truths. They are part of the same brutal, unresolved story.

If we want anything beyond perpetual war, apartheid, and cycles of revenge, we must stop pretending that one kind of death is more sacred than another. We must stop using past trauma to justify present atrocity. We must stop asking people to "pick a side" in a war that is already annihilating both.

Because when we allow empathy to be rationed, when we allow grief to be nationalized, we lose the moral foundation for any peace worth building.

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A. So what does it mean to tell the truth?

It means refusing to be a mouthpiece for any power structure, whether state, militant, or otherwise. It means rejecting propaganda, regardless of how familiar or emotionally persuasive it may be. It means reporting what we witness, even when it implicates the governments we were taught to trust, the movements we want to believe in, or the ideologies we thought were righteous.

It means understanding that mass death doesn’t begin with bullets but dehumanization and the erasure of some people’s suffering to justify the survival of others.

And history has already shown us what happens when the world looks the other way.

• In Bosnia, international powers waited years to acknowledge the genocide at Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically executed in July 1995.

  
  

• In Rwanda, over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 100 days in 1994, while the U.S., U.N., and E.U. debated semantics instead of taking action.

  
  

• During the Holocaust, the Allied powers had intelligence on Nazi extermination camps as early as 1942. Most chose not to intervene until it was far too late.

  
  

• In Myanmar, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya was described as a "textbook example of genocide" by the United Nations in 2017, but no international force intervened to stop it.

  
  

Each of these atrocities was allowed to happen in plain sight. Each was made possible by a combination of bureaucratic delay, selective outrage, media complicity, and geopolitical calculation. Each was called “complicated” until the mass graves were counted.

So to tell the truth now—about Gaza, about Israel, about the unbearable human cost from all angles—means confronting this history and refusing to repeat it.

It means recognizing that Palestinian civilians are being systematically killed, starved, displaced, and erased, and that the language of “self-defense” is being used as cover. It also means acknowledging that Israeli civilians were massacred on October 7, that hostages remain in captivity, and that cycles of trauma are deepening across generations.

It means seeing that both peoples are being used, betrayed, and dehumanized by systems of occupation, militarism, nationalism, and religious supremacy, structures that have no genuine interest in human dignity, only in dominance.

Most importantly, it means being honest enough to say: no narrative is complete without all of them. We cannot afford to tell only half the story. That is precisely how genocides are justified and erased from history.