Massive death tolls from months of Israeli crackdowns in the Gaza Strip have been sparsely covered by the media, particularly in the US. But even where US media outlets have found fault with the killings, US Ambassador David Friedman is expressing anger, saying it’s “not reporting” to cover the killings critically.

Friedman says media coverage that wasn’t supportive of the deaths was “completely superficial,” and that Israeli military officials had assured him that they had to kill all of those Gazans to defend the nation of Israel.

A US Ambassador to Israel criticizing US media outlets is probably not going to amount to much, but Friedman also slammed Israeli newspaper Haaretz for its own coverage of the deaths, saying Haaretz never explored if there were “other alternatives” besides killing the Gazans.

That might be a bigger deal, as Haaretz is a major Israeli newspaper, and having a foreign ambassador to Israel publicly condemning an Israeli paper for criticizing an incident that happened inside Israel is likely a diplomatic faux pas, and further presents the US role within Israel as politically aligned with one faction’s narrative

Sources: antiwar.com, antimedia.com