Welcome to the daily Inside Scoop newsletter. Three years have passed since the deadliest day in Israel’s history. The Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7 sparked the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip that has killed tens of thousands of people. Now, Israel’s parliamentary elections later this month may serve as a referendum on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the attacks and the war. I spoke with the cousin of an Israeli hostage as well as an aid worker in Gaza for yesterday’s “Here’s the Scoop.”
Below, we share more from those conversations. Let’s get into it. Israelis gathered at vigils across the country today for a day of collective mourning marking the third anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. For many, the day that militants killed over 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage is still a raw memory.
NBC's anniversary newsletter names Israel as the party waging war on Gaza and says that war has killed people. It gives the Israeli dead and hostages exact figures but never says the Gaza dead are Palestinians, leaving them as a vague 'tens of thousands of people'. It also credits militants with every one of the 1,200 deaths on 7 October, which the documented record contradicts in part.
Writes Palestinians out of their own story
Minor
“tens of thousands of people”
Why this matters
The words 'tens of thousands of people' give the Gaza dead as a rounded, unnamed mass and never say who they were.
The impression it gives
A reader learns that many people died in Gaza but is never told they were Palestinians or how many were killed. The Israeli dead and hostages get exact counts.
The context
The Gaza Ministry of Health recorded the Israeli occupation as having killed 74,392 Palestinians. The article gives the Israeli toll exactly but never uses the word Palestinian anywhere.
How we know
On the recordGaza's Ministry of Health recorded the Israeli occupation as having killed 74,392 Palestinians, a cumulative toll that NewsCord's reading of BBC coverage cites as of October 2026.newscord.org (opens in a new tab)
Elsewhere in the article“killed over 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage”
In its own voice NBC credits militants with killing everyone who died on 7 October.
The impression it gives
A reader takes it that every one of the more than 1,200 dead was killed by the attackers.
The context
Israel's own military investigations and memorial records attribute at least 13 of the deaths on 7 to 9 October 2023 to Israeli fire.
How we know
On the recordIsrael's own military investigations and memorial records attribute at least 13 of the deaths on 7 to 9 October 2023 to Israeli fire.newscord.org (opens in a new tab)