Media avoid drawing line between Trump’s ‘Gaza plan’ and ethnic cleansing
Feb 9, 2025
When Donald Trump proposed recently to “clean out” Gaza of its entire population, you might have thought what you heard was a plan to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians from their lands – I mean, it’s right there in that word. But not according to most of the media.
An analysis of the Dow Jones database of 33,000 news organisations around the world shows of the 897 news articles published on the topic in the 10 days after the US president made his remarks, ones which he has followed up on twice since, only 170 mentioned ethnic cleansing in their reporting of the story — about 19% or roughly one in five.
Of eight news stories (not counting duplicates) in major Australian newspapers (there were another eight mentions in the letters section) two published the phrase “ethnic cleansing”: The Adelaide Advertiser under the headline “Don’s Gaza ‘clean-out’ plan riles neighbours” and The Daily Telegraph, duplicating the story, but only in its online edition. Both quoted an Arab League statement that “the forced displacement and eviction of people from their land can only be called ethnic cleansing”.
Under the headline ‘Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as ethnic cleansing plan”, The Guardian website quoted a number of organisations calling it ethnic cleansing, but made no attempt to qualify this in its article, which only referred to it as a “proposal”. Not that there were bigger fish to quote. Of the politicians that didn’t ignore the story completely, those that dismissed it made no judgment on the morals of it.
The majority of news outlets that did mention the term ethnic cleansing did so carefully, in quotes, or cadged as accusations from the “Arab world”. None bothered to define what it was or examine whether Trump’s indecent proposal met that definition. Those that went as far as stating it were almost exclusively from the global south. PakistanToday, for example, described Trump’s plan as a “stark manifestation of ethnic cleansing”.
In opinion pieces and editorials, the term was mostly taboo. There was no mention in The Australian, which instead gave Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes the space to muse that “some of these scenarios have no chance of implementation, starting with the expulsion of Gazans. Simply put, which country would take in this population of two million?”
Both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Hobart Mercury (Quick Views, Feb 1, 2025) left it to their readers to level the accusation in the letters section.
When the term was mentioned in Western media, the prominence of it within the story was usually downplayed and placed towards the end of articles. In a rare acknowledgment by a broadcaster, CNN anchor Kim Brunhuber in conversation with Daniel Levy, the head of the US Middle East Project, on Sunday cautiously dropped the allegation towards the end of a lengthy discussion when he said Trump’s comments “have been taken by many as an encouragement for, you have to say, ethnic cleansing, to get rid of all of the Palestinians who are in Gaza”.
Though Trump’s plan was quickly rejected by Arab nations and the news cycle moved on as displaced Gazans began returning to their ruined homes in the North of Gaza, media outlets, many of which need little encouragement to criticise Trump, were unusually reticent in their language.
While some went as far as lauding the proposal, with independent journalist Antoinette Lattouf noting Sky News calling it a “bold solution”, most played it down, using language that avoided criticism and lent legitimacy to the idea.
Under the headline “Trump’s ‘clean out’ Gaza plan falls flat” (p8, 28-01-2025), The Australian described the proposal as “resettling” the Palestinian population of 2.3 million people. The Age and SMH also described it as “resettling”, and The Daily Telegraph as a “plan”.
Ethnic cleansing is defined as “the policy of forcing the people of a particular ethnic group to leave an area or a country”. The United Nations further outlines what methods of ethnic cleansing include: “murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, severe physical injury to civilians, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, use of civilians as human shields, destruction of property, robbery of personal property, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, and locations with the Red Cross/Red Crescent emblem, among others.”
In his 20-minute Air Force One Q&A with travelling journalists, Trump even spelt out how it would be done, with Egypt and Jordan cajoled into taking in Gaza’s residents. Trump claimed to have already broached the plan with King Abdullah of Jordan and said he would follow up with a call to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“I’d like him to take people. I’d like Egypt to take people,” he told reporters. “You’re talking about, probably a million and-a-half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’ I’d love for [Jordan] to take on more, ’cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.
“It could be temporary or long term,” he added, “… it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there. So I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
In reports on 5 February, Trump doubled down on the scheme telling AFP: “They have no alternative right now [to leaving].
“They’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now…. I would think that they would be thrilled to do it. I think they’d love to leave Gaza.
“What is Gaza?”
Early in the war it was reported by The Times of Israel and other media that the Israeli Government, which denies planning to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, explored the option of moving the Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Some members of Israel’s Knesset and of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, including the then Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, have also advocated “forcible expulsion” of the occupied territories, and Israeli settlers have continued to illegally occupy Palestinian land and displace the residents, a process that escalated in 2023, increasing by 180% over a five-year period. And these are not small numbers. In 2023, 30,682 plans and tenders for illegal housing units for Israeli settlers were submitted in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In February last year, in an interview with Harvard University, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner proposed a similar idea, of moving the Palestinians into southern Israel’s Negev desert, and redeveloping Gaza, but stopped short of suggesting it should be a permanent displacement.
“From Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” he said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.
“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there. I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
When discussing sensitive topics like proposals involving the displacement of populations, media outlets often use careful language to describe these actions.
Terms like “ethnic cleansing” are highly charged and typically used only when there is clear evidence or widespread consensus that the actions in question meet the legal or moral definition of the term. Some organisations, including The New York Times, have even issued directives to staff on what terms are deemed appropriate on the subject of Gaza.
But, while the use of such language varies depending on the editorial stance of the publication and its context, it’s hard to ignore the sweeping silence on a plan that so forensically meets the accepted definition of ethnic cleansing.
In contrast to this, when discussing other conflicts the news media has been less circumspect when alleging ethnic cleansing. A search of Dow Jones’ Factiva database shows the term has been evoked no less than 26 times by Australian newspapers to describe Russia’s actions during the war in Ukraine, often in response to isolated incidents or attacks on the country’s energy grid.
Martin Newman
Martin Newman Lecturer in Journalism at University of Technology Sydney. Coordinator of Media Law & Ethics. Publishes media blog News2Me.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
