Israel Matzav

Israel's poor handling of the media

Here's a tell-all interview with Danny Seaman, the outgoing director of Israel's Government Press Office.

The Israeli media is the original skewer of the conception of Israel, and the foreign media then plays into that?

Absolutely. An example: During the war in Lebanon [in 2006], I was up North, among the journalists. In the evenings I saw the interaction between Israeli media and the foreign media. Some of the Israeli journalists were sitting there and making the most atrocious statements about the State of Israel. They had been p***ed off about a lot of things, unhappy with the way [the war was] being conducted. In some cases there was a political tone to what they were saying. That’s good and legitimate for the internal debate. But somebody from the outside doesn’t understand the basis for this or that argument. Yet [the Israeli journalists] are more than happy to convey their opinions to somebody from the outside, not understanding how somebody from outside perceives this. They’re legitimizing the delegitimization of the State of Israel.

This is perhaps the greatest threat that we have been facing over the past decade: It’s no longer a case of Israel versus the Palestinians. It’s a deliberate, concerted effort to delegitimize Israel’s existence. [Our enemies] tried to beat us on the battlefield. They tried defeating us on the low-intensity battlefield. When they lost on these two levels, they suddenly understood that the only way to fight us today is to delegitimize our right to exist...

Part of my problem with the foreign press – and I’ve been accused of being combative and feisty in fighting them – is that you have journalists coming in here not having the faintest idea of what is going on.

They live off what they get from their colleagues; they meet certain people who come from the same social-economic background; they live off of one newspaper, Haaretz. They don’t make an effort. When you have a conversation with them, you find that they have a complete lack of knowledge of the elementary issues.

This didn’t used to be the case.

Journalists from the ’70s, ’80s, who were here during the beginning of the ’90s, were very knowledgeable, very experienced. This is a different generation.

The narrative has shifted. They’ll adopt the Palestinian narrative. That has become the bon ton. They’ll talk about “the Palestinian right of return.” There is no such thing. They talk about what the Palestinians call “Israel’s violations of Oslo.” What exactly are they talking about? They have no knowledge about the facts.

Today, if you bring in, say, an expert on international law [to hold a briefing for foreign journalists], they delegitimize the person based on what they perceive to be his political opinions. This is unacceptable, especially for a journalist. We the people, in a democratic society, rely on them to provide us with the information for us to make an educated decision on a particular issue. In this case, many journalists are failing in their duty. The media outfits that employ them are giving them automatic backing. And when the media doesn’t exercise its checks and balances, they’re failing in their job.

This began with the year 2000.

People call it “the Oslo war” – the Palestinian violence which erupted at that point. I’ve been working for Israeli public relations for 27 years, and there were certain “truths” that we were told: That if we adopt UN resolutions, there’ll be peace. If we recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination, there’ll be peace. If we remove settlements, there’ll be peace. And over the past 25 years, there’s been a progression in the Israeli position: Israel recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people; relinquished territory; removed settlements.

Regarding Lebanon, Israel fulfilled all the UN resolutions.

Yet the end result was not the peace that we were promised. In no way am I criticizing the efforts for peace. Peace is a strategic necessity for the State of Israel. But here, in this case, these “truths” that we were promised never came about. On the contrary, it only increased violence, increased extremism. Yet there was a failure by a lot of the media to be intellectually honest, to say “maybe we need to reevaluate,” to say “maybe we shouldn’t always be taking the Palestinians’ side because they’re the underdog.”

So in the year 2000, with the violence, with the bombs exploding here, [the foreign media’s] political positions couldn’t be [justified]. Yet every time there was a bomb here, directed against civilians, instead of an automatic expression of disgust at an assault on civilians, there were always conditions: “Well, we have to understand why [the bombers are acting].” Why do we have to understand it? But morally, you can’t make that “logic” [stand up], so they went to this other “logic,” and that was the numbers: “Look how many Palestinians were killed. If there are 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis, therefore the Palestinians must be victims.”

It’s nonsense. It’s morally repugnant. It’s intellectually unacceptable to make that kind of equation.

But the media repeated this. Not only in one-to-one discussions.

Reuters, AP, AFP would end their articles saying, In the recent violence, 4,000 Palestinians died compared to 1,000 Israelis. They were doing this deliberately, to create the impression that the one side that is suffering more must be justified. They were using small journalistic techniques to create an impression that put Israel in a negative light.

I noticed it most during the Lebanon War. Israel being singled out for criticism. The terminology used for Israel: Israel is always aggressive.

Israel is always active. Other things just “happen.” Missiles “rain down” on Israel. But where Israel is concerned, and I’m quoting from some media reports, they even adopt Nazi terminology: “Israel's blitzkrieg.”

Always using negatives and very aggressive terms.

By contrast, the suffering Israel endures is always caused by some obscure [force]. It’s never quite clear what’s happening, and who is responsible. The number of ways that Israel is depicted negatively is, astoundingly, much greater than with Hizbullah. Hizbullah is a terrorist organization! It is considered so by every country in the world, including the United Nations. [Yet I found foreign media] to be taking their word, their narrative as fact.

...

When the [second intifada] violence erupted, in many ways the foreign media became a tool being used against the State of Israel. We have clear evidence that shows Marwan Barghouti’s and Yasser Arafat’s involvement with [Palestinian journalists] who were employed by the foreign press [and whose status and capacity to work in Israel, with attendant concerns about security risks, was an issue that Seaman dealt with extensively, including in court battles and face-offs with various Israeli politicians].

It developed over years, beginning back in the late ’80s. [Some of these Palestinian journalists] started off at the Palestinian Information Office [in east Jerusalem], which was shut down by [prime minister Yitzhak] Shamir during the first intifada. They were shut down because it was clear that they were serving to incite people on the ground. So they left and started being employed by the foreign press.

Then foreign journalists started giving cameras to Palestinians because they were getting good pictures. It evolved over the years.

With the advent of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat adapted the same measures [he had used in] Beirut.

Some of these [foreign] media organizations knew. And not only were they sympathetic, they had people who were connected to the PLO who were assigned here as journalists because it gave them that access.

Until the year 2000 it was fine, but the moment all hell broke loose, some of these people saw it as their jobs – and I’m talking about the foreigners right now – to help the Palestinian cause. And the Palestinians involved saw it as their job and they were getting clear instructions.

Read the whole thing. I don't know which is more appalling - the extent to which the foreign media is controlled and biased against us or the extent to which we don't stick up for ourselves.

Labels: Danny Seaman, foreign media, Government Press Office, Mohamed al-Dura

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:28 AM