I will start with the fundamental facts in the year 2026: Israel is an apartheid state. It is committing genocide in Palestine. And it has killed over 200 journalists in Gaza.
That horrifying sum is higher, according to the Costs of War Project in Brown University, than the total number of journalists killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the other wars in Indochina, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the US war in Afghanistan…combined. (Here’s a link to a summary and to the full paper.)
Let me add one more fact: International public opinion about Israel has turned markedly negative, likely because many now perceive it as an apartheid regime, running a relentless campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip (and encouraging settler violence in the West Bank). The 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that, even in the Philippines, 64% of the population held unfavorable views of Israel.
In the controversy over the press visit organized in August by the Israeli government for Filipino journalists, this is my starting point. These are my premises. The press visit is a deliberate and disciplined attempt, by a determined and extremely capable government, to counter the negative perceptions about the state it represents. Negative but accurate, because Israel does run an institutionalized system of segregation and discrimination against Palestinians in occupied territory and even in Israel itself, and because Israel does continue to wage an organized and ruthless campaign (visible through the partial but still graphic view seen on media and on social media) to destroy Palestine and its people in Gaza.
