Israelis have a skewed view on extent of Gaza’s hunger plight - driven by censorship and media that downplay humanitarian crisis

Under mounting international pressure, Israel announced on May 19, 2025, that it would lift its monthslong humanitarian blockade on Gaza.

The aid, which the Israeli government said would include a “basic amount” of food to stave off starvation, comes as more than 90% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing acute food insecurity.

Despite the staggering number of people at risk of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, however, two-thirds of Israelis are opposed to allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That’s true even when that aid is delivered by international organizations not linked to either Hamas or UNRWA, the U.N.’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees that the Israeli government has banned and refuses to work with.

What drives Israeli opposition to aid?

As researchers with a keen interest in conflict resolution and humanitarian aid, we wondered whether a key factor driving Israeli attitudes may be misperceptions about the scale of humanitarian need.

To find out to what extent misperceptions shape opposition to humanitarian aid, we surveyed close to 3,000 Jewish Israelis between Jan. 21 and March 19, 2025, across all age groups, regions, income levels and sex in an online survey.

We found that many respondents believed that fewer than 10% of Gazans were going hungry - revealing a stark disconnect between public perception and the situation reported by international humanitarian organizations. Indeed, when asked to explain their opposition to humanitarian aid, one of those we surveyed responded, “They don’t have a shortage of food, it’s just presented that way.” Another replied, “The vast majority of Gaza residents have enough food, there are restaurants and shopping malls operating in Gaza.”

Does credible information change attitudes?

Our survey pointed to the role that media bias and censorship may be playing in distorting Israelis’ understanding of suffering in Gaza.

Media bias is a common phenomenon during war. But since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, in which 1,182 Israelis were killed by Hamas fighters, media bias over the war in Gaza has been institutionalized in Israel. Citing national security reasons, the Israel Defense Forces has ramped up censorship.

A recent analysis suggests that more than 35% of articles from Israeli media have been partially redacted and almost 10% completely censored in 2025.

While Israelis are free to consume international news, many do not due to language barriers and perceived bias against Israel.

As a result, what Israeli citizens read, hear and see in national media increasingly reflects the interests of the government.

Furthermore, online platforms such as Facebook and X are designed to promote posts that reinforce users’ preexisting beliefs, resulting in an echo chamber rather than exposing people to diverse viewpoints.

Exposure to dire humanitarian situation

But what happens when people expressing skepticism over the level of suffering in Gaza are presented with credible information?

To test this, we asked a randomly chosen subset of participants to read parts of news articles published by Ynet — Israel’s most popular online news source — about the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. These included reports that managed to escape the censor of children whose weight had dropped by half and families surviving on grass and garbage.

We then compared whether those who had read these news reports demonstrated higher levels of support for aid delivery than those who did not. The results showed that exposure to the news reports portraying the humanitarian situation in Gaza led to increased support for humanitarian aid - but only by a modest 5 percentage points increase.

This limited shift underscores how deeply held many Israeli views on the war in Gaza are and how resistant to change attitudes are, even when it comes to basic humanitarian assistance. Understandably, part of this relates to the continued collective shock and anger provoked by the brutal Hamas attack in 2023. In addition to the killings, more than 250 hostages were taken, with dozens still be being held.

Fitting with a broader pattern of Gazans being seen as undeserving of sympathy, our survey found that more than a third of Israelis believe that more than 90% of Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas.

A common refrain we heard is that “there are no uninvolved” in Gaza. Many respondents explicitly justified their opposition to humanitarian aid with statements including, “Everyone in Gaza is involved in what happened on October 7,” or “They don’t deserve to be taken care of after they were happy about what they did to us.”

However, this view starkly contradicts evidence of significant opposition to Hamas within Gaza.

According to the latest poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, taken in early May 2025, only 37% of Palestinians in Gaza thought the Oct. 7 attack was “correct.” Moreover, half of all Gaza respondents said they supported recent demonstrations calling for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza.

Given this reality, Israelis’ attribution of collective responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack creates a troubling moral calculus that rationalizes civilian suffering. Again, it points to the role that misperceptions play in the ongoing conflict and resulting humanitarian crisis.

Another likely reason for the limited impact of being given accurate reporting of the humanitarian crisis is that it represents just a drop in the bucket compared with the broader information environment most Israelis are exposed to.

A single news story, no matter how compelling, is unlikely to outweigh the cumulative effect of months of emotionally charged and partially censored media coverage, political messaging and social media discourse that emphasizes threat and distrust.

In such an environment, deeply entrenched narratives are difficult to shift.

In this regard, the fact that reading even a single brief news story had any effect is encouraging. It suggests that a more accurate and sustained information environment - one that conveys the true extent of humanitarian suffering and the complexity of public sentiment in Gaza - could have a much greater impact on Israeli public opinion.

Jori Breslawski receives funding from The Hartoch Institute of Government, The Colton Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Global Religion Research Initiative.

Carlo Koos receives funding from the European Research Council (www.wareffects.eu)