Even as the Trump administration works to broker a peace deal between Israel and Gaza, Google once again revealed its utter disdain for America’s ally.
On the second anniversary of the horrific Oct. 7 attacks that sparked Israel’s war in Gaza, the Google News home page promoted just two articles on the war and the ongoing peace negotiations currently in progress. However, Google promoted two of the worst news outlets looking back on the last two years: The Guardian and The Associated Press.
The Guardian in particular went out of its way to disparage Israel before eventually admitting that the Middle Eastern country was, in fact, the victim of the Oct. 7 terrorism attack. Google’s promotion of such disgusting rhetoric led Dan Schneider, MRC Free Speech America’s vice president, to call the company “Israel’s second worst enemy.”
In an X post thread, Schneider commented on the Guardian article headlined, “The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory,” calling the outlet a “sick, twisted antisemitic mouthpiece for Jew hatred.”
Schneider added, “Not until paragraph 6 does it even suggest that Hamas terrorists started the war in Gaza. But readers must first wade through slanderous framing.” Indeed, as Schneider noted, The Guardian referred to "Israel's two-year assault" and noted that the "Majority [of those killed] have been civilians" despite the fact that this is always true in war for both sides.
The outlet even seemed to gloss over the significance of Oct. 7, 2023, writing: “The war, triggered by a Hamas raid into Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 people and took a further 251 as hostages, has devastated Gaza, in physical and human terms.”
The AP, to its credit, acknowledged how devastating Hamas’s attack was and still is for Israel. And although it mentioned criticism of the country’s defense policies, it included both sides of the argument.
However, this does not negate accusations that an AP photojournalist — whose footage and photographs the outlet used — appears to have been embedded with Hamas. In a 2023 X post, Honest Reporting alleged: “In the hours following our expose, new material is still coming to light concerning Gazan freelance journalist Hassan Eslaiah whom both AP & CNN used on Oct. 7. Here he is pictured with Hamas leader and mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar.”
At the time, Honest Reporting additionally showed footage of Eslaiah “after he crossed into Israel and took photos of a burning Israeli tank. He then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza. Note that he is not identifiable as a member of the press. But AP & CNN deemed it acceptable to use his services."
This is also not the first time Google has displayed an anti-Israel sentiment. In June, Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, would not definitively say that Israel can choose its own capital city. When asked, “If Israel says Jerusalem is its capital, does that make it so?” the AI chatbot argued that Jerusalem as the capital city is “largely not recognized by the international community due to the disputed status of the city and its significance to both Israelis and Palestinians.”
Similarly, in October 2023, when Shneider asked, “Is Hamas a terrorist organization?” the chatbot refused to answer. “I’m just a language model, so I can’t help you with that,” Google’s AI said.
That same month, Google Maps also displayed over 50 bomb shelters near the border with Gaza shortly after the Hamas attack that targeted bomb shelters. A civilian living in Israel, Ilana Sondak, told MRC at the time, “Everyone living in Israel knows where his bomb shelters are located.” When asked if it is helpful for travelers to use Google Maps to identify shelter sites, Sondak added, “You just have to go into the stairwell of the nearest house. You certainly wouldn’t stand in the street and look up Google.”
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