Doug: 2) How is that attack playing in Israel? Any sense that Sharon has gone too far?
Bryan: The Israeli government and media are doing full time damage control on the incident, and my guess is that when the first retaliatory bombing comes from Hamas et al., that the Israeli public will react just as their now being primed to do...rightious indignation and demands for a retaliation (but it won't be a retaliation, because no connection will be made between the attack, and Israel's actions). Today's headlines in Ha'aretz were "IDF says it thought Gaza raid would not kill civilians", and I saw, walking this evening past a mini-market with several newspapers displayed, a headline in Ma'ariv quoting one of the pilots of the F-16's that did the damage, saying something like "We were sure that the attack would only do minor collataral damage" (not an exact quote, I was just walking by). Moshe Katzav, the President of Israel was quoted as saying: "Shehada caused not only Jewish deaths, but also those of the Arab children who were hit in the IDF attack last night..."Shehada maliciously chose to locate himself in a crowded residential area," Katzav said. "This is a tragedy and shows how criminal Palestinian terrorists, in order to protect themselves, are using the lives of innocent women and children, intentionally making them into helpless human hostages." The President also said that Israel had no choice but to "attack the person who was directly responsible for the murders of dozens of innocent Israelis." "- quote from Arutz Sheva.
Things have really reached a stalemate in the Israeli public, it seems...those who are for what is going on and those who are against what is going on...no "evidence" is going to sway a person to change their view...it is their ideological view that influences the "validity" of any evidence they are shown. This has always been evident, but even more so now...
I remember in 1997 when an interview with Moshe Dayan from 1976 (which had been held from publication until then) came out in Yideot Aharonot. Among the issues Dayan brought up was that the major reason Israel took the Golan plateau from Syria was because Israelis wanted it for farmland:
"Dayan: In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped...The first case was on the fourth day of the Six-Day War, when a delegation from the kibbutzim met with Eshkol in order to convince him to begin a war against Syria...
Q: But they (Syria) were sitting on the Golan Heights and...
Dayan: "Leave off. I know how at least 80% of the incidents began there. In my opinion, more than 80%, but lets talk about 80%. It would happen like this: We would send a tractor to plow someplace of no value, in the demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time that the Syrians would begin to shoot. If they did not start shooting, we would tell the tractor to keep going forward, until the Syrians in the end would get nervous and start shooting. And then we would start firing artillery, and later also the airforce and this was the way it was
Q:So all that the kibbutzim wanted was the land?
Dayan: "I am not saying this. Certainly they wanted the Syrians to disappear. They suffered a lot because of the Syrians. Look, as I said before, they lived in the kibbutzim, they farmed, raised children , lived and wanted to live there. The Syrians opposite them were soldiers who shot at them and they certainly did not like this. But I can tell you in absolute certainly: the delegation that came to convince Eshkol to attack the Heights did not think about these things. It thought about the land on the Heights. Listen, I am also a farmer, I'm from Nahalal, not from Tel-Aviv and I recognize this. I saw them and I talked to them. They did not even try to hide their greed for that soil. That's what guided them."
Bryan Again...At the time that this interview came out, I thought it was the mother load...I went with the inteview and would show it to people (the question of giving up the Golan in a deal with Syria was raging at the time), however, it had no effect whatsoever on anybody's viewpoint. Those who were for land for peace used it as another element in their reasoning for backing it, and those who were the 'Never give up the Golan' type, would just disregard it. The Defence minister during the 6 day war states these things, and all I would hear in reply is: "Who knows if it is not a made up interview"...and I would reply: "It is a taped interview, if it was fake you would have heard something to refute it"... then they would reply: "But perhaps someone altered the tape to make him say things he didn't really say" (I swear this is what people would actually say)... the argument would go downhill from there, with excuses that "he was just angry because of his problems in the Yom Kippur war, Dayan made things up all the time", etc.
However, if he had said the opposite, that his opposition to opening a front on Syria until late in the war was a mistake, I know for sure that they would not have questioned whether the tape was fake, whether he lied or not, etc. It would have been used to back up their pre-existing view that taking the Golan was justified. The denial was merely due to the content of the argument, not its validity...it ideologically couldn't be accepted.
Actually, in this regard, I agree with Zizek in his interview with you, when he says that "I don't think that merely 'knowing the facts' can really change people's perceptions."
Doug: "3) Could you characterize the leading israeli papers by politics and audience? Yediot is mass-circulation - does that mean it's rather sensational and downscale, like a U.S. or British tabloid? And how does Ha'aretz fit in? I imagine it as sort of like the Guardian - leftish but not too."
Bryan: Actually, the influence of the audience on the content of the Israeli papers has some interesting implications. While Ha'aretz is perhaps more liberal on social aspects and the occupation issue (thought the differences between the papers are much smaller than they used to be), it is the paper of the intellectual and business class, and actually tends to be more neo-liberal on the economic side than does Yideot Aharonot or Ma'ariv, who have a more working class audience. I remember being shown some data in one of my grad courses at Tel-Aviv University a few years ago that the economic section of Yideot compared to Ha'aretz were the sections with the biggest difference in content. Though Ha’aretz contains some essential coverage coming from truly great critical-journalists such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, it is important to look at how and where these articles are placed in the newspaper's overall structure. Invariably, articles which are critical of Israeli policies and actions are either part of the opinion page, culture gallery, or, as Gideon Levy's weekly article is, part of the weekend magazine. When discerning the content of the newspapers main news coverage, however, one can see very little difference between Ha’aretz and either Yidiot or Ma’ariv. And Yideot has Tanya Reinhart and Uri Avnery columns on a semi-regular basis on the opinion page, plus Alex Fishman has had some whoppers of late. From a visual standpoint Ma'ariv and Yideot are way more tabloidesque, huge red fonted headlines, large color pictures taking up half a page, less words per article, less articles per paper...after all, it is only like five years that Ha'aretz has lowered itself to allow color pictures in the paper, and that was a big scandal at the time. But they all have some decent reporters and the rest is filled up with crap.
Bryan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020726/3b7eeb71/attachment.htm>