"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Closely aligned with Israel’s Prime Minister, Channel 14 has become one of the country’s most influential broadcasters. But behind its success lies a propaganda machine working for Netanyahu, churning out fake news, hate speech and conspiracy theories.
November 2023, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A few weeks after the October 7 attacks, Keti Shitrit – a Likud MP, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu – appears live on television. Wearing a smart purple suit with matching jewelry and immaculate manicure, the Israeli politician chooses her words carefully. Calm but firm, she declares:
“If you ask me, personally, I would raze Gaza. I have no feelings, because there is no difference to be made between the murderers who killed women and children [Hamas – Ed.] and the Gazan ‘citizens.’”
Elsewhere in Israel, such words would have triggered outrage, or at least some shocked reactions. But not here. Not on Channel 14.
For several years, this pro-government rolling news channel has been polarizing and radicalizing Israeli society by spreading disinformation, systematically attacking the democratic foundations of the Jewish state – the press, the opposition, the Supreme Court – and routinely calling for the destruction of Gaza and the eradication of its inhabitants. In this sense, Channel 14 (Aroutz arba esrei in Hebrew) is the purest embodiment of what several journalists and Netanyahu’s political opponents call a “poison machine”: a well-oiled propaganda vehicle serving the Prime Minister. And like Fox News, its American counterpart, the channel is a conveyor belt for conspiracy theories. The formula seems to work. Little watched a few years ago, Channel 14 has become a major player in Israel’s media landscape, reflecting a shift in public opinion to the far right.
A few weeks ago, while the UN was raising alarm about a looming famine in Gaza – since officially confirmed – several guests mocked a Palestinian woman whose daughter had reportedly died of hunger in the enclave. Laughing at her weight, which they claimed showed she was well fed, they suggested she had “eaten all her children’s food,” or even that she had “eaten her own daughter.”
Drawing in particular on the work of Israeli outlets such as the independent investigative site The Seventh Eye, Conspiracy Watch examined Channel 14. What emerges is the rise of a true propaganda machine, built on a steady stream of conspiracy narratives.
Channel 14 began broadcasting in 2014 on Channel 20. Originally devoted to Jewish cultural and religious heritage programming, it struggled to attract viewers. Two years later, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority allowed the small station to air its own news shows. In 2018, Likud pushed through legislation enabling it to rebrand as Channel 14 and present itself as a news channel – the start of a meteoric rise, clouded by controversy.
From the outset, the “Israeli Fox News” targeted a right-wing and far-right audience: nationalist settlers, traditionalist religious groups… In May 2024, a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research center, found that nearly a quarter of Channel 14 viewers watched no other television news at all. Unsurprisingly, it is shunned by left- and center-leaning voters, as well as by secular Jews, who make up only 25% of its audience, compared with 59% for Channel 12 and 63% for Channel 13, its main rivals.
Broadcast 24 hours a day, Channel 14 goes dark only on Saturdays for shabbat. Its majority shareholder, Yitzchak Mirilashvili, an Israeli oligarch of Russian origin, co-founded the social network Vkontakte, later acquired by a Kremlin-linked group. He also owns the ultra-Orthodox station Radio Kol Chai and the far-right news site 0404. His father, billionaire Mikhael Mirilashvili, made his fortune in oil, casinos and real estate. Close to Netanyahu, he has been on the Ukrainian government’s sanctions list since 2023 for alleged ties to Moscow. According to Israeli investigative outlet Shakuf, the businessman also maintained close links with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former founder of the Wagner paramilitary group and key architect of Russian disinformation campaigns.
The channel has benefited from millions of shekels in state subsidies while still classified as a “micro-channel,” which exempts it from many of the rules and restrictions applied to rival broadcasters. In January 2025, the Association of Israeli Journalists even raised alarm that government advertising on Channel 14 had increased by 280%, while other outlets faced drastic cuts. At the end of the year, for example, the government imposed new sanctions on Haaretz, the country’s leading opposition daily.
These advantages have turbocharged Channel 14’s rise. Since the protests against judicial reform, it has become Israel’s second most popular news channel, gaining ever larger market share. The war with Hamas has only fueled this dynamic.
Netanyahu himself has boasted that he “fought like a lion” for Channel 14. The Prime Minister has appeared repeatedly on the channel while largely avoiding the rest of the country’s mainstream media. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, his first televised address was given exclusively to Channel 14. Unsurprisingly, “Bibi” is entirely at ease with the welcome he receives there. Among the channel’s regular presenters and pundits are Yaakov Bardugo, a former political adviser of his; Shimon Riklin, once a far-right activist; journalist and musician Erel Segal; and ex-political consultant Itamar Fleischmann. All are unwavering supporters of the Prime Minister.
And then there is Yinon Magal, star of the talk show The Patriots, the channel’s flagship program. A former MP for the Jewish Home party (an Orthodox, religious Zionist, far-right faction), this ardent Donald Trump supporter has more than 450,000 followers on X. On the night of the October 7 attack, he posted the blunt message: “The time of Nakba 2 has come” – a reference to the forced exodus of Arabs from Palestine during the 1948–49 war of independence.
Across his television appearances, Magal relentlessly attacks the opposition, judges, academics, and rejects all criticism of the government. He does not hesitate to compare Netanyahu to a king, or even to God. He once described himself as the Prime Minister’s official “messenger” – a role he vows to carry out to the letter.
“Channel 14 is literally serving Netanyahu’s political agenda,” confirms Shuki Tausig, director of The Seventh Eye. He also stresses the central role played by social media in the channel’s success. On platforms like X, where moderation is almost nonexistent, Channel 14’s stars amplify the messages broadcast on air. “The whole machine works in unison toward the same goal: domination and power,” Tausig explains. Even if that means distorting reality to the point of tipping into conspiracy theories.
January 2023. In Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem – and soon across the country – hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets against the government’s judicial reform, a plan to curb the powers of the Supreme Court, which the right and religious parties claim is politicized. For months, unprecedented protests conteset Netanyahu’s rule.
On Channel 14, it is all-hands-on-deck. The watchword is clear: discredit the opposition, at all costs.
According to presenter Sarah Beck, the protests were not spontaneous at all but orchestrated by the CIA (at the time Joe Biden was still U.S. President). This classic conspiracy trope was also used by Kremlin outlets to discredit Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in 2014. Protesters were branded anarchists and privileged elites. Between August 2022 and April 2023, Bodkim, a media watchdog and fact-checking group, documented more than 70 false or misleading claims on Channel 14, many aimed at delegitimizing opponents of the reform.
Sometimes the attacks are personal. In October 2023, after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, one guest accused Shikma Bressler, an Israeli physicist and leading anti-Netanyahu activist, of being part of the “Jewish wing of ISIS” (sic). A month later, another guest claimed on Erel Segal’s show that Bressler had deleted posts dating from before October 7 to hide that she possessed prior information about the terrorist attack. This baseless allegation nonetheless spread among Netanyahu supporters. In early 2024, Likud MP Tally Gotliv went even further, claiming Bressler had “communicated with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar before October 7” – recycling every conspiracy blaming Israel’s left for direct responsibility in the pogrom that killed more than 1,200 people.
“The notion of ‘traitors within’ responsible for the October 7 massacre is one of the conspiracy theories most heavily pushed on Channel 14,” confirms Shuki Tausig. “It allows Netanyahu to blame his political opponents while dodging his own responsibilities.”
As with Donald Trump in the U.S., conspiracy theories are also deployed to absolve Netanyahu of his corruption charges. For years the Prime Minister has been mired in multiple cases of corruption, breach of trust and fraud – scandals that could force him from office. But Channel 14 relentlessly pushes a counter-narrative: that the police, intelligence services, judiciary and media – in short, “the establishment” – are conspiring to fabricate these crimes in order to topple him. “All invented to overthrow him,” explains Tausig. However, such claims collapse under factual scrutiny.
Conspiracy theories are now an essential part of Channel 14’s DNA and Almost nothing is off limits. In Akhshav 14, the channel’s magazine, cover stories rail against “LGBTstan” and denounce how “radical leftist organizations are imposing the LGBT religion” in Israel.
This ideological subversion is framed as part of a larger project to “end Western culture,” supposedly explaining “the true motivation for importing ‘refugees’ from African and Muslim populations into the West” – a thinly veiled nod to the “Great Replacement” theory.
Elsewhere on the channel, in full Trumpian verbiage, Israel is portrayed as “a dictatorship controlled by the Deep State.” Former Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak is accused of plotting “provocative actions on the edge of legality” to try to return to power. The dangers of Covid-19 are played down.
But it is above all the Supreme Court – Israel’s main democratic counterweight and Netanyahu’s most stubborn obstacle – that bears the brunt of Channel 14’s venom. According to Itamar Fleischmann, “the Supreme Court’s ultimate goal is the abolition of Israel as a Jewish state.” He calls it a “dictatorship,” justifying violent disobedience to its rulings. Shimon Riklin accuses its judges of “collaborating with hostile elements against Israel” and “stabbing the nation in the back.” Elsewhere on the channel, judges are said to be plotting to establish a “fascist oligarchy.” The Court is even blamed for having “flooded Tel Aviv neighborhoods with illegal immigrants from Africa.”
Unsurprisingly, this barrage of dubious narratives influences viewers. A study by researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University found that watching Channel 14 correlates with belief in conspiracy theories. Controlling for age, religiosity and political stance, regular viewers are 1.4 times more likely to embrace conspiracy narratives.
Since October 7, Channel 14’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas conflict, marked by disinformation and conspiracist rhetoric, has created a climate where extreme discourse about Palestinians is expressed without restraint. From the first months of the war until May 2024, the channel’s website homepage displayed a running tally of Gazans killed in the conflict – women and children included – under the heading: “Terrorists we have eliminated.” Yet a recent investigation by +972 Magazine, The Guardian and independent outlet Local Call concluded that “Israeli bombardments in Gaza have killed civilians at a rate unparalleled in modern warfare.”
On Channel 14, such rhetoric is routine. In October 2023, columnist Neve Dromi declared on The Patriots that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, adding: “Now they will have a second Nakba, a real one, to complete Ben-Gurion’s work.” Days later, a former military officer went further, claiming there was “no population” in Gaza, only “two and a half million terrorists.” The next month, Yaakov Bardugo called openly for “indiscriminate bombing.”
In other words, on Channel 14 every Gazan is automatically guilty – and deserves death. Its pundits and guests say so bluntly. “Since October 7, what helps me sleep is seeing buildings of all kinds flying into the air in Gaza. I love it! […] Destroy as many as possible so they have nowhere left to go,” declared Shimon Riklin. “I think the most humane solution is to starve them,” countered Itamar Fleischmann. Elsewhere, presenters argue “the time has come to drop a giant bomb on Gaza,” to “violate international rules” and to “break their bones.” They call for “destruction, occupation, expulsion and colonization” of the enclave, for a “Middle East where Arabs are terrified of Jews.” They propose using “fuel-spraying planes” on homes and maintain that Israel’s true interest is to bring about “famine and a humanitarian catastrophe.” As for international law, that is dismissed outright as a “barefaced lie directed only against Israel.”
On social media, the atmosphere is no different. On October 7, Riklin posted on X that “Gaza should be wiped from the face of the earth.” Days later, he urged reducing Gaza’s population “by encouraging them in various ways to leave.” More recently, Elad Barashi, a Channel 14 producer close to extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted words of chilling violence:
“Who can be mad enough to claim there are innocents in Gaza? Who is the vile scoundrel who would let them flee freely to Arab countries or to Europe? […] No! Men, women, children, by all necessary means, we must conduct against them a Shoah – yes, read these words carefully: a H O L O C A U S T. As far as I’m concerned: gas chambers. Train wagons. And other cruel kinds of death for these Nazis. No fear, no weakness – just crush. Destroy. Shoot down. Flatten. Dismantle. Break. Smash.”
These statements sparked indignation among some in Israel. In September 2024, three Israeli NGOs demanded that the Attorney General open an investigation into Channel 14, accusing it of broadcasting content inciting war crimes and crimes against humanity. The complaint alleged that at least 50 of 265 cited remarks “call for or support the commission of genocide.”
None of this deterred Meyer Habib, the former MP representing French citizens abroad, from appearing several times on the channel. A close ally of Netanyahu, he was recently invited to comment on Emmanuel Macron’s decision to recognize the State of Palestine. According to Habib, the French President is simply…under the influence of Qatar.
* Sasha Morinière and Martin Béraud contributed to this investigative report.
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