How +972 fights for the truth

Ghousoon Bisharat wrote on becoming +972 magazine’s editor-in-chief in September 2024:

‘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.

‘This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalised siege on Gaza.’

An online, bi-national, Israeli-and Palestinian voice, +972 magazine is almost alone amidst the horrors of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and a public in almost compete denial about the murderous, vengeful destruction that has been unfolding around them for over a year. Standing head and shoulders above what passes for journalism in most of our media, it has earned worldwide respect among those who want honest, open, investigative reporting about the conflict and its background.

The magazine’s core values combine equity, justice and freedom of information. It lives by high journalistic standards of accurate reporting; a non-party, pluralistic approach; a willingness to tackle issues in depth that others shy away from; and its occasional, brilliant, journalistic scoops.

Its focus is citizen journalism: people getting out on the ground and reporting first-hand wherever possible. The nuances of what is happening, the divides and tensions, the untidy realities of resistance are never ignored, as Dimi Reider, a founding member in 2010, made clear to me.

An English-language publication, it works closely with Local Call, a Hebrew-language sister journalistic project co-published by the team behind +972 and Just Vision, which operates independently of, but along very similar lines to, the magazine. Subscribing to The Landline, its free weekly newsletter, is essential for anyone wanting to understand the cracks and fissures in Israeli society and the spaces for resistance within it, as well as getting a clear and cogent account of its overall regime of occupation and apartheid.

Bi-national collective

Starting out as a volunteer blogger collective in 2010, +972 has developed a professional editorial hub with a wide range of contributing journalists. Dana Mills, its resources development manager, is at pains to stress its bi-national nature and its vibrant collective working practices. The editorial group is mixed and Palestinian voices strong.

Indeed, one of its significant contributions was an article by Maha Nassar published in October 2020 drawing attention to the lack of Palestinian voices in the international discussion: ‘US media talks a lot about Palestinians — just without Palestinians’. That’s not something you can fault +972 on.

It has consistently put the realities of the occupation first and foremost but recognises that understanding cannot be reduced to ‘the occupation’ alone. There are different editorial opinions on, for instance, to what extent Israel is a settler-colonial society and an apartheid society; or 1948, not 1967, the necessary starting point; also to what extent activists’ demands should appeal to wider constituencies within Israel itself. The magazine has no line and debates these issues in the material it publishes.

Dana Mills puts its reporting into three categories: in-depth high impact investigations; commentary and analysis, which is always nuanced, never going for the easy option of taking sides, maintaining its ethical commitment to and concern for human rights and their violations no matter who is responsible; and its nuanced on the-ground reporting of daily life, particularly among Palestinians.

Pathbreaking analysis

Yuval Abraham’s pathbreaking analysis in ‘“Lavender”: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza’ is the outstanding exemplar in the first category. Published in April 2024, this highlighted how the Israeli army has used an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties to identify tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination. It also drew the magazine to international attention in the way nothing else had done before.

In relation to the second, in its commentary on the conflict, the magazine, almost uniquely, did not collapse after 7 October into a purely Jewish victimhood narrative. A moving example of how to think about 7 October is contained in Haggai Matar’s ‘Six months after October 7, a lament for the paths not chosen’, written to Israelis and people who care about Israelis ‘who believe they have no place in their hearts for Palestinians in Gaza’. This fuses analysis and lived experience to explain changes in Israeli society over recent decades, choices made and not made, talking about what is needed to emerge from the nightmare, no matter how unlikely this might have seemed at the time Matar was writing.

Hadas Binyamini’s recent ‘What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?’ – on how hope is kept alive in a left more divided and marginalised than ever following 7 October – is also essential reading.

Not to be downplayed in the slightest is the third category, the large output of careful reporting from the ground, particularly from Gaza but also from the rising settler insurgency on the West Bank and the Palestinians on whom it is inflicted. A glance at its website will make this clear. So do subscribe to the newsletter, become a member and support and donate to the project.

This article first appeared in Issue #247 The Last Issue? Subscribe today to support independent socialist media and get your copy hot off the press!