AMY TEIBEL and IAN DEITCH
AP News
Jan 13, 2009 13:41 EST
Israel's TV screens, radio broadcasts and newspapers
have been filled with images of terrified Israelis
fleeing to shelters, damage from Hamas rocket barrages
and casualty reports. While international media have
focused on Israel's assault on Gaza, including the
deaths of more than 900 Palestinians, Israeli media are
reporting the war through a different prism. With almost
no access to Gaza, and an overwhelming sense the
offensive is just, they have emphasized the Israeli
side, which has suffered 13 deaths.
Images of lifeless
Palestinian babies, bombed-out apartment buildings, and
donkey carts piled with blankets and mattresses as
Gazans seek to flee are buried in Israeli newscasts and
newspaper pages, almost detached from the narrative.
"Israel is at war now, and naturally, the images that
most interest it and the reports that most interest it
are what is happening with the soldiers in battle who
have families at home, and everything that has to do
with the Grad and Qassam (rocket) fire," said Israeli
Channel 10 TV commentator Motti Kirshenbaum.
"But to say the Israeli
public isn't exposed to everything that is happening is
not accurate," he said, because Israeli media do cover
it and Israelis have access to international media,
including Arab channels. Many Israelis, however,
distrust foreign media and don't turn to it for news.
They think the outside world is dismissive of the trauma
Gaza militants have inflicted on southern Israel during
eight years of rocket fire. They feel the world has not
grasped that the rockets amount to a death by a thousand
cuts that could ultimately make parts of the country
unlivable, and that Israel's inability to stop them is
read by its Arab foes as a fatal weakness.
"We watch only Israeli TV,"
said Yael Weinberg, 24, who works in a Jerusalem
bookstore. "Foreign TV is not doing a good job at
covering the conflict. They do not try to understand our
side." Neither side has shown much attention to the
other's ordeal. With one-eighth of Israel within range
of Palestinian rockets, Israeli newscasters regularly
break into programming to report on an incoming rocket
alert or landing. And with Israeli casualties low, the
actual fighting off-limits to reporters and lots of air
time to fill, soft news often carries the day. On
Monday, state-owned Israel Radio even ran a spot on how
chickens raised near the Gaza border have grown
accustomed to rocket fire.
Critical items on the war
are rare, and those who express empathy with the
Palestinian people court angry viewer responses. One top
news anchor, Yonit Levy of Channel 2 TV, has drawn the
ire of more than 30,000 petitioners for saying at the
end of one broadcast that "it's hard to convince the
world that the war is just when we have one dead and the
Palestinian people have 350." Israeli media think local,
and that's not unique to Israel; U.S. news reports, for
example, will focus on Americans killed in a terror
attack or a plane crash or a battle, even though people
from other countries also died.
"The journalists who live
here are not from another planet. They come from within
Israel. They have families and soldiers who are
fighting. There is no doubt that the Israeli journalist
identifies first with his side," Kirshenbaum said. "That
doesn't mean they don't have to show the other side's
truth," he added. "But I don't think they have to show
it in the same proportion as Al-Jazeera and some of the
channels in Europe that took a political stance against
Israel from the very first day."
Accounts of an Israeli
infant injured slightly by rocket shrapnel on Jan. 6
outnumbered reports on the deaths of more than 70
Palestinians killed in Israeli assaults that day,
including an assault near a U.N. school that killed some
40 people. On Channel 10 TV, that attack was sandwiched
between reports on three soldiers killed, updates on
fighting and diplomatic efforts to reach a cease-fire.
Israeli TV stations inform their viewers that far more
graphic pictures of the death and destruction in Gaza
exist, but say they don't show them out of respect for
the dead !!!???. Similar self-censorship exists with
regard to Israeli deaths in Palestinian suicide attacks.
Further influencing
Israel's coverage is the government's near-total barring
of Israeli and foreign media from Gaza, except for
limited pool reporting. Israeli reporters have been
embedded briefly with Israeli troops, but haven't been
allowed unfettered access to Gaza, and so have come away
with the soldiers' side of the story. For the most part,
images from the front line have come compliments of the
military spokesman's office, which has given soldiers
cameras.
Oft-aired clips released by
the military showed blindfolded Palestinian prisoners
and Israeli soldiers wearing night vision goggles and
war paint. Other footage released by the military showed
buildings in Gaza hit from the air. Palestinian lawmaker
Hanan Ashrawi accuses Israelis of becoming "one
unanimous cheering team" for their military, detaching
themselves "from the cruelty and the horror of what
they're doing."
"At a certain point ... people have to face themselves,"
she said. "They have to look inwards and they have to
understand the nature and the implications of what
they're doing."
Bracha Theodorou of the
southern Israeli city of Ashkelon remembers the days 20
years ago when Israelis and Gazans would freely mingle
in each other's cities. She says Ashrawi is just plain
wrong. "I feel for them. I really do," says Theodorou,
who was born in Israel but raised in New York City.
"It's despicable. It's war. War isn't very pretty. But I
don't want to see the bloodshed," she said. "But don't
think we don't know what's happening. We do."
Associated Press writer Hadeel al-Shalchi in Cairo,
Egypt, and Barbara Surk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates,
contributed to this report.
Source: AP News
Content © Antiwar Newswire 2009
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/01/13/despite-gaza-toll-israeli-media-focus-on-israel/
