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A landmark report by the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, made waves this week, drawing widespread attention to the systematic atrocities committed during the Hamas attack.
Spanning over 300 pages, the report meticulously documents the use of sexual violence as a deliberate tool of war, as well as the torture of family members to inflict deeper psychological trauma on victims. It was, by any measure, a sobering and necessary reckoning with the events of that day.
Yet the conversation surrounding the report was quickly overshadowed. A New York Times opinion piece entered the discourse with its own set of claims, this time focused on alleged abuses on the other side of the conflict, including accusations of Israeli forces using trained dogs to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners.
The timing proved explosive, and what could have been a focused moment of accountability for Hamas's documented crimes devolved into the familiar cycle of Israel-Palestine finger-pointing that has long plagued coverage of the conflict.
The episode raises an uncomfortable question: Is journalism serving the public, or undermining it? Ruth Marks Eglash, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Report, joined Jacob Laznik to unpack the media dynamics at play.
The concern isn't simply about which story gets told, but about when and how, and whether the news cycle, by design or negligence, is preventing society from fully processing some of the most serious human rights violations of our time.