“I, God, probe the heart, search the mind” (Jeremiah 17:10) is a resounding theme in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy, underscoring God’s unique access to man’s inner thoughts and true intentions.
Some journalists behave as if they share God’s privileged insight. They seemingly fancy themselves in possession of the divine ability to see beyond pronouncements and actions, and interpret the private reflections and genuine desires of leaders.
The very human discipline of ethical journalism, authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel explain in The Elements of Journalism, rests on transparency and reporters’ humility about the limits of verified facts and their own knowledge.
In coverage of Israel’s conflict with its neighbors, leading news agencies have repeatedly acted with arrogance, reporting as fact their personal understandings (either correct or not) about leaders’ inner wishes.
By playing God, they defy journalism’s commitment to the hard work of objective news reporting, which values verification and discourages editorializing, or the insertion of the reporters’ own views.
Thus, a gratuitously inflammatory September 7 Associated Press heading declared: “Muslim nations condemn Israeli proposal to empty Gaza.”
The text went on to explain that “Any Israeli plan or action to remove Palestinians from Gaza would violate international law and undermine the US-backed plan for drawing down the war, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and five other governments said in a statement.”
In fact, there is no “Israeli proposal to empty Gaza” or to “remove” Palestinians from Gaza. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Defense Minister Israel Katz have separately floated plans – their own and not the government’s – to enable Palestinians who want to emigrate to do just that.
Therefore, the characterization of Katz’s statement as “Israel is prepared to facilitate the removal of Palestinians” is likewise problematic. That language – “removal” – suggests forcible expulsion, and not emigration by choice.
As reported by Ynet, Katz said: “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end. The Migration Directorate is ready to do this by sea, by air, and by any means. Egypt is not willing for it to go through its territory.”
Ynet further reported that Katz said, “80% want to emigrate. We are constantly checking this in surveys. Hamas does not allow it, and there are no countries in the world willing to take them in. What is delaying this is that the countries willing to take them in want US support.”
According to a May 2026 Jerusalem Post report, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) shared with senior Israeli officials its survey finding that 80% of Gaza Strip residents were “interested in receiving information about mechanisms for relocating to a third country through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings.”
Reasonable observers can disagree as to whether Katz and Ben-Gvir are genuine about the expressed desire to facilitate “voluntary emigration,” or whether in their hearts they secretly long for forced removal. But unless AP has ditched news reporting for mind-reading, it’s inappropriate to frame speculation about a plan to “empty Gaza” as fact.
The sin of arrogance
THE AP ISN’T the only news agency guilty of the sin of arrogance, assuming the godly role of prober of hearts. In June 2025, Reuters, too, departed from its declared mandate to provide “unbiased and reliable news,” with an unexpected detour into dream deciphering.
Reuters’ Crispian Balmer wrote, “Fast forward five weeks and the United States has bombed Iran’s main nuclear installations, fulfilling a decades-old dream of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to convince Washington to bring its full military might to thwart Tehran’s atomic ambitions.”
As media watchdog CAMERA asked at the time: “How does a news reporter purport to know Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dreams? While we can’t know Netanyahu’s dreams, we do know his statements concerning US action on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. And they all point towards encouraging the US to lock into a stricter deal with Iran and tougher sanctions, not war.”
Reuters’ own coverage over the years documented that Netanyahu repeatedly pushed for a better deal, not a US war with Iran. For instance, Reuters reporting in 2012 cited “urgency to [Netanyahu’s] demand that [p]resident Barack Obama set a ‘red line’ for Tehran,” and noted “Netanyahu’s sharpened demands for a tougher US line against Iran.”
In 2013, Reuters accurately reported: “Netanyahu said continued economic pressure on Iran was the best alternative to two other options, which he described as a bad deal and war.” The news agency’s reporting consistently cited Netanyahu’s statements urging a better deal in 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024.
Reuters’ 2025 claim, then, that Netanyahu dreamed for decades of convincing Washington to wage war on Tehran says more about the reporter’s imagined view of the prime minister and less about the historical record and verified reality.
It’s not only Israeli figures whose secret thoughts have loomed large in journalistic divination dressed up as news reporting.
One month after the October 7 massacre, Agence France Presse (AFP) maintained that Hamas leader Yahya “Sinwar dreams of a single Palestinian state bringing together the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank – controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party – and annexed east Jerusalem.”
As CAMERA previously noted, “The article doesn’t explain how AFP has access to Sinwar’s dreams, but there’s no question that he heads the Gaza branch of a terror organization with a guiding mission which rejects the existence of Israel within any borders.”
In response to communication from CAMERA, AFP subsequently clarified: “The same year [Sinwar] was elected, Hamas for the first time accepted in principle a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders, while not recognizing Israel and retaining the ultimate goal of ‘liberating’ all of historic Palestine.”
“Tell the audience what you know and what you don’t know. Never imply that you have more knowledge than you actually do,” media scholar Rosentiel advises journalists. In other words, do your job as a good journalist. Don’t play God.
The writer is director of research and media analysis at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis and director of CAMERA’s Israel office.
