Iran Just Hit Israel Where It Bleeds

Right, so Israel built its war on the assumption that nobody inside Israel would ever hear the truth. The Military Censor screens the news before it airs. The broadcast networks stay inside the security frame. The public receives the war through an approved script and we thought our media was bad. Gaza is shown as a target map, not a place where people live. The ICJ ruling naming plausible genocide is not in the nightly bulletins. The UN reporting on starvation is not on the main channels. The collapse of hospitals and neighbourhoods is not presented as fact. The state needs the silence. And so information warfare is about to become the next battlefront.
Iran is setting up a Hebrew-language television channel.
Not for dialogue. Not for diplomacy. But for entry.
And Israel is losing its mind over it.
Right, so Iran has approved the establishment of a Hebrew-language television channel. The directive comes through the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, they do have some very on the nose departmental titles don’t they? The council recorded the decision in its policy register. Foreign Minister Masoud Pezeshkian chaired the session, he’s behind this move. Implementation sits with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the Iranian state broadcaster. The purpose is to counter the propaganda of the Zionist regime in the media space. The announcement did not include a launch date for this it has to be said, but the network structure already exists. IRIB broadcasts in English through PressTV, in Arabic through Al-Alam, in Spanish through HispanTV. A Hebrew-language station extends a standing broadcast architecture rather than creates a new one, so what they’re planning here is quite feasible.
The field it will enter is heavily controlled though. Israel operates a Military Censor with legal authority to review publications. Israeli news organisations submit sensitive material to the censor before publication. Haaretz has documented newsroom procedures. Journalists describe clearance as standard workflow. The censorship is not symbolic. The directives are binding. Material can be blocked or amended before broadcast.
The wider media environment is concentrated too. Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 101st of 180 in its press freedom index. Ownership is clustered among political and commercial elites. Coverage aligns on national security framing. During wartime the alignment intensifies. Dissent is marginal in broadcast scale. The core narrative fields remain stable. The public is addressed within this structure, they don’t get informed outside of it and that inarguably plays a part in the narratives heard amongst the Israeli populace.
This all occurs of course while the International Court of Justice has declared that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has submitted several reports now to the Human Rights Council describing the assault as genocidal in intent and pattern. UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri has stated that starvation is being used as a method of war. These findings are present in the international legal and human rights record and across international media to varying degrees. They do not circulate with equivalent scale inside the Israeli broadcast field. They make sure of it.
Trust in government inside Israel sits at low levels regardless of that though. The Israel Democracy Institute records trust at around twenty percent. The survey maps declining confidence across institutions. Secular and Haredi communities are polarised. Left- and right-aligned blocs remain divided. The pattern extends across multiple reporting cycles. War mobilisation occurs under conditions of declining civic trust.
So now picture a Hebrew-language Iranian broadcast entering this environment. It enters during a period of documented institutional distrust. It enters while the state narrative emphasises unity. It enters while the military censor maintains control over sensitive reporting. It enters while legal proceedings naming genocide continue in the international arena.
Satellite broadcasting bypasses domestic licensing. Private dishes receive signals directly. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar has broadcast into Israel via satellite. Israel attempted to obstruct Lebanese broadcasting during conflict. Lebanon accused Israel of jamming signals back in 2006. Al Obstruction occurred. Complete prevention did not.
Online distribution bypasses broadcast control. Telegram channels circulate video without central oversight. Encrypted messaging distributes material peer-to-peer. URLs can be blocked. VPNs bypass blocks. Private circulation persists. Fragments travel faster than official statements. The broadcast environment cannot be sealed efficiently, less so now than when Israel was doing it to Lebanon.
The fracture between external documentation and internal narrative remains open. The genocide case continues. UN reports remain active. Civilian death continues. Displacement continues. Starvation conditions continue. The internal broadcast narrative maintains national security framing though. So this divergence persists.
The channel, assuming it launches in the none too distant future, will broadcast into this divergence therefore. It will enter the language space where doubt is already present. It will not require majority adoption. It will require contact only. Contact between external record and internal militarily censored speech.
There is no restoration to a singular narrative once competing accounts circulate inside the primary language field, the division grows.
The state’s narrative infrastructure depends on coherence. Coherence requires control of the language through which events are understood. The Military Censor controls the flow of information to the public. The broadcast networks align with the security framing. The public receives the war through an authorised account. The authorised account positions the actions in Gaza as necessary. Civilian destruction is minimised in presentation. Responsibility is assigned to the population under assault. The international record contradicts this presentation. The contradiction exists. It is documented. It sits outside the domestic frame.
Trust collapse alters the conditions of reception. When trust is low, narrative coherence requires greater enforcement. The enforcement remains formal. The enforcement remains legal. The enforcement remains cultural. Throw an Iranian Hebrew-language news channel into that and watch the sparks fly.
Satellite access brings external accounts into the internal space. Internet circulation brings external accounts into private networks. The control structure cannot block all movement. It can slow it. It cannot stop it. The movement continues.
A Hebrew broadcast drops the translation barrier. It speaks in the language used at home. It speaks in the language used to justify the war. There is no distance in the words. There is no external frame to dismiss.
The genocide case is live at the International Court of Justice. The provisional measures orders are binding. The reports documenting starvation are current. The destruction is recorded in satellite imagery and humanitarian assessments. The internal broadcast field presents the war as defence. So the contradiction stands.
The public is living through mobilisation. Through economic pressure. Through political division. The trust collapse is recorded in national data. The fracture is not a prediction. It is measured.
The broadcast arrives while the fracture is active. It does not generate the doubt. The doubt is already present. The broadcast does not need to convince. It only needs to be heard.
Iran has approved a Hebrew-language television channel under state broadcasting. The purpose is written in the policy record: counter the propaganda of the Zionist regime in the media space. The structure for foreign-language broadcasting already exists inside IRIB. The channel merely adds Hebrew to English, Arabic, and Spanish.
Israeli media reported the move as an Iranian propaganda effort. Israel National News described the channel as an attempt to influence the Israeli public. The framing treats the broadcast as a hostile information operation. The language of dismissal arrives before the broadcast begins. The defence is pre-emptive and frankly hypocritical given the internal censorship Israel already implements.
The Military Censor continues to screen Israeli reporting. The broadcast networks continue to follow the national security frame. Gaza is presented within that frame. The ICJ ruling naming plausible genocide is not presented within it. The UN findings on starvation are not presented within it. The public receives the war through that authorised presentation.
Trust in government remains low. The Israel Democracy Institute records the decline. The division in the public remains. Mobilisation continues inside that division. The fracture is not theoretical. It is documented in state-linked research.
A Hebrew-language broadcast arrives into that fracture. It does not arrive as foreign speech. It arrives in the language used to explain the war to the population when that information is being withheld from it by its own government. Iran have decided shenanigans are in order in tis regard and there are ways to ensure their Hebrew-language content gets to through. Israel may well whinge, but if they were more honest with their own people, this wouldn’t be a problem for them now would it?
As it happens its not just Israel Iran are getting one over on this week, Trump falls into that category too, though you can argue it was his own laziness that opened the door for another Iranian win that also comes at Israel’s expense, so get all the details of that story here
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