Witnessing undone: silence, noise and the enabling of genocide in Gaza
Abstract
Abstract This article examines the converging roles of legacy news media and official political speech in enabling genocide to take place in Gaza. Drawing on BBC coverage as an example, I explain how dominant Western media relied on a cacophony of silence and noise to amplify state narratives. This repertoire is characterized by selective omission of context from coverage, the policing of words, mainly the word genocide, and the inflation of a “war on terror” narrative and its merger with colonial language about the savage enemy. The effects of this strategic politics of silence and noise are in enabling impunity in committing war crimes, undoing of witnessing as a 20th-century framework with its rhetorical claims towards a universal “never again” modality, and taking a sharper authoritarian turn in Western media’s reporting conventions.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Health and Conflict Studies
Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
Indian History and Philosophy
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Communication Culture and Critique
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 67–74
- Publication date
- 1 March 2026
- Language
- EN