I keep banging on about The Narrative™.
It's not because it is a hobby horse that I like to ride, but because The Narrative™ is the most powerful tool propagandists use to shape public opinion. By choosing what to report, what not to, and how you chop us video or images, a skilled propagandist can shape how you see things in obvious and subtle ways.
No doubt you have seen the sob stories about federal employees losing their jobs and the hardship that has been created for them. The stories are heartwrenching, and in many cases, there is some substance to them. But do you see the stories about the people who lost their jobs due to regulations, or the government workers tossed out because they refused to get the vaccine?
We see the stories where an MS-13 member transforms into "Maryland Man" and "father"--by choosing what to emphasize--this illegal alien gang-banger was a father and did illegally reside in Maryland--the Pravda Media shaped how you saw him.
Reporting from Gaza often features the "Gaza Health Ministry," suggesting that it is a neutral bureaucracy just keeping statistics. If they called it Hamas--because the Gaza Health Ministry IS Hamas, a designated terrorist organization with the explicit goal of killing all Jews--you might take their word a bit differently.
Honest Reporting presents a great example of how "journalists" have been shaping Gaza coverage in the most dishonest way.
5/
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 8, 2025
The teddy bear in the rubble is not just a toy. It’s a message. And when that message appears again and again, posed for the camera, it stops looking like journalism. The media must do better.https://t.co/nvlo2tRU4V
It's the teddy bear in the rubble gambit.
The organization noticed a pattern in photographs from Gaza. Palestinian children were often pictured picking through rubble to recover their prized big red teddy bear. It is heart-wrenching.
And faked.
Like Mr. FAFO, that teddy bear is recycled again and again as a convenient tool to manipulate people into a particular emotional state. Rather than seeing those same children in the pre-war days, brandishing weapons and explaining how their UNRWA teacher is training them for Jihad, we are seeing the children as innocents who Israelis are depriving of their childhoods.
On January 21, 2025, as residents returned to their homes in Rafah during a ceasefire, two different photographers captured images of children pulling a red teddy bear from the rubble. The captions described them as rescuing possessions. Yet the same bear appears in multiple shots, handled by different children, raising questions about how the scene was presented.
This is not an isolated case. A photo taken on October 6, 2024, by Abed Rahim Khatib for Turkish agency Anadolu, shows teddy bears placed atop rubble in Khan Yunis. The caption describes widespread devastation caused by Israeli strikes.
The same bear, in a nearly identical setup, appeared again in another Getty image, dated December 1, 2024. This photo, credited to Saeed Jaras of Middle East Images, was posted alongside the caption, “The girl who gathered them attempts to preserve joy amid the devastation.”
A broader search of Getty’s Gaza archive shows similar images again and again. The bears are often clean, carefully positioned, and stand out starkly against the grey rubble around them.
None of this is to suggest that children are not victims of war. They are. Civilian deaths occur even when precautions are taken. But the repeated appearance of carefully placed toys should raise questions. Not about whether tragedy exists, but about how it is presented and by whom.
Where are the photos of the Hamas minders shepherding the photographers? Why are those buildings turned to rubble? Could it be that a Hamas tunnel was dug under them, filled with terrorists and weapons? Was the building being used as a hideout for terrorists?
We don't get to know those things. We are told to look at this big, red teddy bear. Why would you bomb a child with a toy?
The teddy bear in the rubble is only one obvious case, and many are more subtle. Although Pallywood is rarely subtle--you see "parents" holding a dead child who turns out to be a doll, or children who have had ashes smeared on their faces. And while there are undoubtedly a lot of casualties from the war, you can't trust a single statistic because Hamas is feeding them to you.
ABC recently described the Israeli hostages in Gaza as "detainees."
The Israelis being held in Gaza are hostages. Not "detainees."
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 8, 2025
A vicious terrorist group is holding them in Gaza's tunnels. They have not been "detained" by a state army or police force.@ABC, please fix this abuse of language. pic.twitter.com/RNhoqJBb1i
That's quite a feat of linguistic gymnastics. But "hostages" sounds so bad, and we can't make the "victims" of Israel's aggression look bad, can we?
And so it goes.
The whole idea is to short-circuit our rational capacities, manipulating us emotionally by massaging reality into an easily digestible and palatable--to the "right" people--informational meal. It is informational junk food, and it is making our minds flabby.
When I read the news from Gaza, I no longer know what to believe. I know there is a war there, and that there are tragedies. But what exactly is going on? I honestly am not sure. All we see is propaganda, and much of it is staged. I don't assume that the Israelis are telling us the whole unvarnished truth--in war the belligerents never do--but I am certain that anything written or photographed in Gaza is carefully crafted by Hamas to influence us.
And it is working with a lot of people, at least partly because our media is a co-conspirator with Hamas.
