The ministry of defense also kept Gaza closed to the international media, defying a Supreme Court order to let a pool of reporters in. Prevented from covering the war first-hand, the disgruntled foreign television crews set up their cameras on a hill overlooking Gaza. Several international correspondents assigned to cover the war told me that their wartime interactions with the Government Press Office and the IDF’s senior officers led them to question Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press. Fredrik Græsvik, a correspondent for Norway’s TV2, bitterly described Israel as “a country that used to be a democracy.” New York Times bureau chief Ethan Bronner, who was also incensed at the army’s brazen defiance of the judiciary, said he was “pretty horrified” that there had not been a single editorial in the Israeli press about the moral dimension of the decision to keep the press out of Gaza.

But Israeli reporters seemed unperturbed by the limitations. They were used to covering Gaza from a distance, having been forbidden by law from entering the territory since 2006. And they understood, as the Yonit Levy incident illustrated, that the public was not interested in critical reporting about the war or in human interest stories about Palestinians in Gaza. Israelis wanted stories about the home front—about the civilians within rocket range, the soldiers called up for the ground incursion, and the worried or grieving families left behind.

Since Israel has a conscript army, there is a uniquely intimate relationship between civilians and soldiers, who are seen as the children of the collective, sent out to protect the homeland. Their deaths are treated as a national tragedy; often, the death of a soldier is given greater coverage than that of a civilian. This explains, partly, why the public was so anxious to be assured that the army was not taking excessive risks with soldiers’ lives.

Press military analysts were completely dependent on reports from the army spokesman, Brigadier-General Avi Benayahu. Alon Ben-David, chief military analyst for Channel 10 and a Middle East correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly, did not oppose the army’s decision to keep the press out of Gaza; but he acknowledged, in an interview published by the Tel Aviv weekly The City, that the army spokesman’s monopoly on information meant that, while the nature of television requires a wartime military correspondent to be seen reporting from the field, he could have covered the war from his desk in Tel Aviv. Information released by the spokesman’s office was usually reported as straight news, with little skepticism and less independent verification.

Yet the accuracy of the spokesman’s reports was challenged in several incidents involving Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

For example, during the first week, the media gave prominent coverage to an IDF report about a successful strike on a truck in Jabalya Refugee Camp that was filled with long-range Grad rockets, which are manufactured in Iran. The spokesman’s office released grainy black-and-white footage taken by a drone that showed human figures loading tube-like objects onto a truck, followed by an explosion indicating the target had been hit. But according to field workers for B’tselem, an Israeli human rights group, the truck belonged to a welder named Ahmed Samour. The “rockets” were in fact oxygen tanks; and the “Hamas terrorists” were his relatives and neighbors. Samour was subsequently interviewed by Channel 2 and his story dutifully reported, but with less prominence than the original IDF report. The military correspondents I spoke with did not recall the incident.

Another case involved a mortar landing on the street in front of United Nations Relief and Works Agency school, killing forty-two civilians who had taken shelter there and were standing just outside the gate. The Israeli media reported that Hamas gunmen had been firing from inside the school. An UNRWA spokesman’s denial was reported, but with far less prominence. Later, the IDF’s story changed: the shooting had been “near” the school. An AP report appeared to confirm that Hamas militiamen had been shooting near the school, but none of the eyewitnesses was willing to speak on the record, lest there be reprisals (Hamas militiamen frequently dispatch suspected traitors with a bullet to the head). In the absence of additional, non-Gazan, reporters on the ground, most Israelis chose to believe the IDF’s first explanation, while UNRWA’s denial made a greater impression amongst European reporters I spoke with—even though they had no way of carrying out independent verification until it was far too late.

Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin said that Israeli intelligence suspected Hamas’s leadership was hiding in a bunker located under Gaza’s Shifa Hospital. This claim was widely reported in the Israeli media, although it was impossible to verify. Both Yedioth and Maariv reported Diskin’s theory as a fact that explained why the IDF was forced to hit civilian targets in Gaza—including some small hospitals near Jabalya Camp—because that was where the militants hid. Haaretz indicated its skepticism with a cartoon that shows a female receptionist at Shifa Hospital who, in response to the presence of two IDF soldiers dressed in combat gear, opens a concealed door in the floor and calls out the name of a well-known Hamas leader.

The most extraordinary incident involved Dr. Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish of Jebalyah Refugee Camp. The Hebrew-speaking gynecologist and peace activist was one of the few Gazans allowed regularly into Israel, where he performed research at a hospital. A widowed father of six daughters, he was frequently interviewed for Israeli television, offering eyewitness reports from embattled Gaza in his fluent Hebrew. During the final days of the campaign, just a few minutes before he was scheduled to be interviewed on Channel 10, his house was hit by a tank mortar. Dr. Aboul Aish’s niece and three of his six daughters were killed instantly; two additional daughters were severely wounded. Shrieking with raw grief, he called Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar to beg for help.