Inside the TV Network Pumping 'Genocide' Into Israeli Homes
A special Zeteo report examines the racist and genocidal statements broadcast on Channel 14 – and hears from the coalition of Israeli groups hoping to hold the popular right-wing network accountable.
“I don't sleep well unless I see houses collapsing in Gaza. What am I going to do? More, more, more houses, more towers, they shouldn't have anywhere to return to.”
This is what Shimon Riklin, a host on Israel’s Channel 14, said live on air in December 2023.
It’s just one of countless genocidal and racist statements uttered on the popular Israeli television channel over the past 19 months – rhetoric so prevalent that a coalition of Israeli groups had asked the attorney general to investigate the network for inciting war crimes and genocide and to prevent the channel, as much as it still can, from becoming a “modern Israeli version” of the infamous Rwandan genocide-inciting RTLM radio station.
With no action taken and the rhetoric continuing, the coalition – which includes Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, the Democratic Bloc, and the Association for Fair Regulation – last month escalated their complaint to Israel’s highest court.
"A media channel that is in every home in Israel, watched by soldiers and officers operating in the name of the State of Israel in Gaza, has become a machine for inciting war crimes, violence, and racism,” the complaint filed to Israel’s Supreme Court on May 8, 2025, reads.
The coalition accuses Channel 14, also known as Now 14, of helping fuel the brutality Israel has unleashed on Gaza. The death toll in Gaza now officially stands at more than 54,500, though it is likely much, much higher. More than 2 million people have been displaced, and Israel for months blocked aid from reaching the enclave, leaving many Palestinians facing “severe starvation” as food supplies run out.
All the while, Channel 14, which was seen as a smaller player in the Israeli media landscape just two years ago, has flourished. The network is among the rare outlets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the past granted interviews to – again and again, while boycotting most others.
Hosts on the channel have faced no apparent discipline for calling for Gaza to be wiped off the planet; the broadcaster has platformed politicians and former officials calling for the “eviction” of Palestinians and cheering on the military setting fire to Palestinians homes; it’s even aired a guest calling for children to starve to death.
The network has sought “to prolong the war and to delegitimize the very right of Palestinians in Gaza to exist, or at least to exist in Gaza, and to attack everyone who is opposed to continuing the war,” says Oren Persico, a staff writer at The Seventh Eye, an independent Israeli outlet dedicated to freedom of the press.
A Legacy of Controversy
Channel 14 has built its reputation off a legacy of controversy. In 2018, when the network went by Channel 20, it drew mass condemnation for airing an interview with Yitzhak Gabbai, who served three years in prison for setting fire to a Jewish and Arab bilingual school in Jerusalem. In 2021, the network fired one of its reporters after he said live on air that “one rocket fell on a soccer field in a large Arab town. Unfortunately, it did not result in mass deaths there.” In early 2023, a court ordered the network to pay tens of thousands of dollars in compensation to Reform and Conservative Jewish groups for systematically discriminating against them and excluding them from the air.
It wasn’t until Netanyahu’s 2023 announcement of policies to overhaul the judiciary, however, that the channel’s popularity began to spike, analysts say.
“After being caught lying on live television on several occasions, and after meddling with other news organizations with limited success” for which he is facing trial right now, “Netanyahu decided he wanted a Fox News-style channel that would not dare challenge him,” said Yuval Katz, an Israeli communications and media lecturer at Loughborough University in the UK. “Many of the people working on the channel currently are essentially Netanyahu's cronies; they are briefed by Netanyahu, who is obsessed with controlling the news media, and promote his agenda.”
That has appeared to earn the channel several exemptions and benefits not given to competing outlets, helping to expand its reach and cover its overhead – with the government even exempting it from certain broadcast fees. Channel 14’s controlling shareholder is Russian-born Israeli investor Yitzchak Mirilashvili, the co-founder of Russia’s largest social network, VK. Mirilashvili, who is the son of Israeli billionaire Mikhael, grew up in Israel, and Netanyahu has in the past boosted the tech company owned by Mikhael – including at an AIPAC conference and the United Nations.
With the channel already on the rise, it became even more popular – and the proliferation of its dehumanization towards Palestinians intensified – after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
‘Why Do We Even Have an Atomic Bomb?’
The coalition that filed the complaint against Channel 14 compiled a list of more than 200 quotes said by both hosts and guests on the Hebrew-language network that it claims showcases the extent of the genocidal and other incendiary rhetoric.