The labels terrorist and antisemite

The recent coverage in the German "Bild" reveals a troubling pattern in how Palestinian voices are discredited and erased. Within a single week, the paper published one article claiming that famine in Gaza was staged for “Hamas propaganda” and another reporting the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif not as the assassination of a reporter, but as the elimination of a Hamas “mastermind disguised as a journalist.” In both cases, the Israeli army’s propaganda is presented as fact, while the work and testimony of Palestinians are either sidelined or cast as inherently illegitimate. In Germany, the label “terrorist” in the Israeli military lexicon functions much like the label “antisemite” in domestic political discourse: once applied, it overrides the need for evidence, context, or due process. Both operate as totalising accusations that collapse complex realities into moral absolutes. “Terrorist” justifies extrajudicial killing, erases civilian status, and silences documentation from Gaza. “Antisemite” delegitimises Palestinian narratives, constrains criticism of Israeli policies, and polices solidarity movements and migration. These accusations work through the same mechanisms: pre-emptively discrediting a source before their words or images can be considered; collapsing a person’s role into the accusation so that a journalist is no longer a journalist, a protester no longer a protester; and granting immunity to state violence by making it politically and morally unassailable. The targeting of journalists in Gaza is thus not only an attack on press freedom but it is part of a broader logic in which Palestinian speech is always-already suspect, whether under the label of “terrorism” or “antisemitism.”