Eli Sharabi reunites with his family after his release from Gazan captivity. Photo: IDF spokesperson’s unit

Israel’s Energy Minister, Eli Cohen, has announced the halt of Israel’s energy supply to Gaza. According to major Western media outlets — including The Guardian, BBC, ABC News, and others — this decision was supposed to lead to an apocalypse, if not immediately, then very soon.

Here’s what Reuters reported:

The Israeli government’s decision to cut the supply of electricity to Gaza, including to a crucial water treatment plant, has sparked fresh warnings of a dire health crisis in a population already in desperate need of food and medicine https://t.co/yd9HSgLo4l pic.twitter.com/J4oPUVeJcy

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 11, 2025

Then there’s CNN’s coverage:

“There is already water scarcity, and the position of the Israeli government will intensify this crisis in Gaza Strip,” the mayor of Gaza municipality Asem Al Nabih told CNN Monday. “Cutting off the electricity (to) Gaza will increase the need for water, especially drinking water.”

“The decision will still have a severe impact on desalination efforts in the enclave,” according to the mayor of the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, Nizar Ayyash. “In addition to our severed supply line, there will be a 70% reduction in the amount of desalinated water suitable for drinking in the central region and the south,” Ayyash explained.

Or this one in The Guardian:

Hamas accused Israel of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail” over its decision. “We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine and water,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement, adding it was “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics”.

Hamas’ concerns are understandable. After all, for years it’s been the terror group’s exclusive right to deprive Gazans of food, medicine and water.

For anyone with a basic understanding of the situation in Gaza, it’s clear that this depiction is a big stretch from the reality.

Israel cut most of its energy supply to Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack. Since then, Gazans have primarily relied on private generators and solar panels. The minister’s latest decision mainly affects the Deir al-Balah desalination plant, which serves more than 600,000 Gaza residents through tankers or the water networks of the Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis governorates. The plant was reconnected to Israel’s electricity grid in December 2024 — an event that attracted almost no media attention. Since then, it has produced approximately 16,000 cubic meters of water per day, according to UNICEF.

Simple arithmetic shows that, assuming that the plant works on full capacity, the halt in Deir al-Balah’s operations accounts for approximately 30% of the clean water supply for Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, while CNN and others used the information from Hamas-appointed officials to report a 70% reduction. Also, the media didn’t emphasize enough or failed to mention completely that this cut would affect only a part of Gaza’s population, equating to about an 8.6% reduction in the total clean water supply for all of Gaza.

Thus, while Eli Cohen’s decision does contribute to the existing water shortage, it is far from the catastrophic, total freeze of electricity that media reports suggest.

How Has Western Media Turned This Into an Imminent Apocalypse?

The answer: unprofessional journalism that fails to exercise basic due diligence. Instead of relying on publicly available data, these reports take at face value the statements of Hamas-appointed officials.

Behind the seemingly neutral titles of “the mayor of the central Gaza city” or “municipality spokesperson” are individuals directly appointed by Hamas. Gaza has been under totalitarian Hamas rule for years, making it virtually impossible for officials not to toe the party line. Asem Al Nabih was appointed by Hamas in 2019, and Nizar Ayyash was appointed in 2024.

Eli Cohen’s decision may well be aimed at his domestic political constituency. However, the Western media are far too eager to frame Israel as committing crimes against humanity, war crimes, and sheer immorality — portraying this decision as if Israel had abruptly stripped all Gazans of electricity overnight.

Meanwhile, consider recent Turkish airstrikes in November 2024 in drought-struck northeast Syria. These strikes cut off access to electricity and water for more than a million people, mostly Kurds. A year earlier, attacks on electricity infrastructure in October 2023 shut down the region’s main water station, Alouk, and it has not been operational since. There is an ongoing conflict between Turks and Kurds, yet Turkey has not suffered an attack from the Kurds equivalent to Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

Despite this, no prolonged international outrage comparable to the case of Gaza followed, no humanitarian organizations launched urgent campaigns, and the International Criminal Court did not issue an arrest warrant for Turkey’s President Erdoğan. BBC, for example, merely noted that “experts say it may be a violation of international law.”

A Media Blind Spot

Returning to Gaza, even international aid organizations estimate that Hamas has enough fuel to run generators for approximately 45 more days. This estimate, however, should be taken with extreme caution, given these organizations’ repeated failures to provide reliable data on famine, their lack of serious efforts to assist Israeli hostages, and their documented links to Hamas.

But even if we assume their numbers are accurate, the real question remains: What would a humane government that genuinely cares about civilians do to avoid the dire consequences of running out of energy in 45 days? And what about the civilians themselves — those who truly care about their lives and the lives of their children?

There is only one answer: They would release the innocent hostages who have now been held for over 500 days. Now think about a government that prioritizes holding 24 live hostages and 35 bodies over providing its own population with food and clean water.

Paraphrasing Golda Meir: The core problem is not that Israel does not care enough about civilians in Gaza. It is that people in Israel care so much about their civilians, they’re ready to release thousands of murderers. In stark contrast, Hamas and its supporters, who constitute a significant part of their population, care much more about destroying Israel than about the wellbeing of their civilians — including children.

And that is how trustworthy media should present it.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.