In 2024, military censorship in Israel reached the most extreme levels since +972 Magazine began collecting data in 2011. Over the course of the year, the censor completely banned the publication of 1,635 articles and partially censored another 6,265. On average, the censor intervened in about 21 news reports per day last year — more than double the previous peak of about 10 daily interventions recorded during the last war in Gaza in 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), and over three times the non-war-time average of 6.2 per day.
These figures were provided by the military censor in response to a joint request from +972 Magazine and the Movement for the Freedom of Information in Israel, ahead of World Press Freedom Day.
While the military censor does not disclose the reasons behind each intervention, Israel’s ongoing war of destruction in Gaza, as well as its conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, is likely the main reason behind this record surge in censorship.
The escalation is reflected not only in the sheer volume of activity by the censor, but also in higher rejection rate of submitted materials, and in the increased frequency of outright bans (as opposed to partial redactions).
Under Israeli law, any article dealing with the broadly-defined category of “security issues” must undergo military censorship review, and editorial teams are responsible for deciding which piece to submit based on their own judgement.
When the censor intervenes, media outlets are forbidden from indicating that censorship has taken place, meaning most of its activity remains hidden from the public. No other self-described “Western democracy” has a comparable institution.
Graphic showing number of articles redacted by the Israeli military censor from 2011 to 2024. (+972/Local Call)
It should be noted that, under this law, +972 Magazine is legally compelled to submit materials for review. For more on our stance regarding military censorship, click here.
‘The public deserves to know what has been hidden’
In 2024, Israeli news organizations submitted 20,770 news items to the military censor for review — nearly double the previous year’s total, and four times the number in 2022. The censor intervened in 38 percent of these cases, a full seven percentage points higher than the previous peak recorded in 2023. Blanket rejections of entire news articles accounted for 20 percent of all interventions, up from 18 percent in 2023. In the preceding years, the average stood at just 11 percent.
Israeli news outlet i24 reported on Sunday that Chief Military Censor Brigadier General Kobi Mandelblit asked the Attorney General to investigate Israeli journalists who allegedly circumvented censorship law by sharing restricted information with foreign media outlets. The Attorney General rejected the request.
The military censor is not obligated by law to respond to Freedom of Information requests, and it voluntarily provided the figures above. However, it refused to provide additional data we requested, including: a breakdown of the data by month, by media outlet, and by reason for intervention; details about cases where it proactively ordered media outlets to remove content that hadn’t been submitted for review; and any records of administrative or criminal proceedings against censorship violations. (To the best of our knowledge, no enforcement action of this kind has been taken so far.)
Additionally, while the military censor would previously provide data on censorship in books — typically those written by former members of the Israeli security establishment — it now withholds this information. And over the past decade, it has also been reviewing and intervening in online publications by the State Archives. In some cases, it has even blocked the release of documents that had already been deemed harmless by the archive’s security experts and were previously accessible to the public. This act of “re-concealment” has faced widespread criticism.
Last year, the State Archives submitted 2,436 documents for censor review. While the censor stated that “the vast majority” were approved for publication unchanged, it consistently refuses to disclose how many archival documents it “re-concealed” from the public.
Graphic showing number of articles sent to the Israeli military censor from 2011 to 2024. (+972/Local Call)
Or Sadan, an attorney from the Movement for the Freedom of Information and the director of the Freedom of Information Clinic at the College of Management Academic Studies, told +972 that while he was not surprised by the surge in censorship last year, he was hopeful that “the publication of this data would help minimize the use of censorship tools which, while sometimes necessary, are also dangerous when it comes to the public’s access to information.
“Even if certain information cannot be published during an emergency, the public deserves to know what has been hidden from them,” he explained. “Censorship means the concealment of information that a journalist believed the public had a right to know. During times of war, many people already feel that they’re not being told everything, and therefore it is appropriate to review censorship decisions retrospectively.”
A war on free press
Beyond the unprecedented spike in military censorship, this year’s World Press Freedom Day arrives as a grim milestone for Israeli journalism. In 2024, Israel ranked a dismal 101 out of 180 (a drop of 4 places from the previous year’s ranking) in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index; that ranking has now dropped even further to 112. This evaluation only reflects the state of journalism within Israel, without factoring in the mass killing of journalists in Gaza.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military during the war, more than in any other recorded violent conflict in recent decades. Other organizations place the number as high as 232. In collaborative investigations with Forbidden Stories, +972 revealed a pattern of Gazan journalists killed by the army merely for operating drones, or being attacked by army drones when clearly identified as press. Additionally, Israel treats journalists working for media outlets affiliated with Hamas as legitimate military targets, and on more than one occasion claimed that other journalists it killed were connected to Hamas, usually without presenting any evidence.
But journalists in Gaza don’t just have to contend with the constant threat of death from Israeli bombardment, while also often suffering hunger, thirst, and displacement. They also face suppression from Hamas itself, which pressures journalists who criticize the organization or cover protests against it. Israel has compounded this dire situation by blocking all foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for over a year and a half — a move upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court that many journalists around the world condemned as both a severe blow to press freedom and a deliberate effort to conceal what is happening in Gaza.
At the same time, Israel has been systematically arresting and imprisoning Palestinian journalists from both Gaza and the West Bank, often without charges, as a form of punishment for critical reporting. This repression has accelerated during the war, as seen in the banning of media outlets such as Al-Mayadeen and Al-Jazeera from operating in Israel.
The government has simultaneously come after Israel’s own free press: moving to shut down public broadcaster “Kan,” financially strangling the liberal daily Haaretz, and making deliberate efforts to weaken long-established media outlets, all while bankrolling new pro-government outlets like Channel 14 with public funds. Beyond this, the government has imposed severe restrictions on publishing the identities of soldiers suspected of war crimes, and ongoing incitement against journalists by lawmakers and public figures affiliated with the Netanyahu government have led to several violent attacks on reporters.
And yet, the most devastating blow to Israeli journalism hasn’t come from government censorship, but from the newsrooms’ betrayal of their core mission: to inform the public of the truth about what is happening around them. Israeli journalists, even those who once expressed remorse for not covering what was happening in Gaza in previous wars, have been deliberately obscuring the bombed hospitals, starved children, and mass graves that the world sees daily.
Instead of bearing witness to the truth of the war, or amplifying the voices of Gaza-based journalists (let alone showing solidarity with colleagues targeted by their state’s army), most Israeli journalists have enlisted in the war propaganda effort — to the point of joining combat troops and actively participating in demolishing buildings — and freely platform direct calls for genocide, starvation, and other war crimes. This isn’t coercion, it’s complicity. The censor didn’t erase Gaza’s horrors from Israeli screens — the journalists and editors did.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.
Haggai Matar is an award-winning Israeli journalist and political activist, and is the executive director of +972 Magazine.
Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war. The world is reeling from Israel’s unprecedented onslaught on Gaza, inflicting mass devastation and death upon besieged Palestinians, as well as the atrocious attack and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing this violence.
We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies.
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