Protestors in Israel accuse foreign media of burying their heads in the sand over of the biggest anti-government protests the country has seen in decades. Tens of thousands of people are staging demonstrations over deteriorating living standards.
The events, however, are little known outside of Israel, because their story is not receiving the coverage which protests in Egypt and other Arab countries did.
“When it comes to Israel, a lot of the foreign media want to see an action movie. This [demonstration] hasn’t been violent,” May Flam, a protestor explained.
It is the largest demonstration in Israel in over a decade. And how did ABC, CBS and NBC cover it? Not at all! While the editors of France 24, BBC and Sky coughed up just a few meager seconds.
“Perhaps it is not that interesting to their editors back in the studios. OK, there is a protest, what exactly is a protest? A social protest? A revolution? It is not the same kind of story, as big and dramatic as some of the bigger revolutions happening around the Middle East,” says Amir Mizroch, English editor for Yisrael Hayom daily.
Amir Mizroch is not surprised by the worldwide lack of media interest. He has worked in the Israeli press for a decade reporting for media both foreign and local.
“There is a box that the international media has put Israel in, and it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also the Israeli-Lebanese and Syrian conflict. And anything that is not directly linked to that is not the immediate type of news item, which is unfortunate,” he says.
Blogger and journalist Danny Schechter agrees, saying foreign media tend to depict Israel as some monolithic country, which in reality it is not.
“When you look at the Middle East, they talk only about the Arab countries. Only they have internal discord. You never hear about Israel’s internal discord. And the fact that this uprising is taking place in Israel while at the same time there is one going on in Syria and there is one going on in Egypt shows that the same pressures are being experienced by the Israeli people as well,” he said.
One of the streets in Tel Aviv has been dubbed Tahrir Corner by some of the protestors in optimism, perhaps, that they too can bring down a government in the way their neighbors in Tahrir Square, Cairo, did. But whereas there the cameras were rolling around the clock they are pretty absent here.
That just makes Hanna Rais and others angry. For nine days she has been camping, furious that she cannot make ends meet as a university student.
“It makes me upset that when Egypt decided to stand up and say ‘we’ve had enough’ and when in Lebanon they decided to say ‘we’ve had enough,’ the media was all over there. I haven’t seen anyone from CNN or Fox News or from any other big news channel here. It’s really sad. We also deserve a chance to be heard out,” she says.
But according to independent media consultant Jeremy Ruden, the protestors need to be patient.
“It hasn’t reached international proportion yet. Its not that the government is fallen, this is like an inside turmoil story. And that is a bit of a problem when you are looking from overseas, thinking of what to cover. It’s not like the economy has collapsed,” he asserts.
But long before the economy collapses, protestors in Israel might have to throw in the towel. Because, as demonstrators have learnt around the world, without the international press and without the pressure of foreign governments, a protest can go only so far.
Lack of media interest to Israeli protests “bad journalism”
Tel Aviv based journalist and blogger, Ami Kaufman, who has recently written a blog “Suddenly, Israel isn't a story anymore?” explained his vision of that to RT.
“I think that a lot of news editors abroad kind of take certain things for granted when it comes to Israel and almost go on a sort of autopilot – if it’s not anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s just not a story,” he stresses.
”If Netanyahu resigned, of course, all eyes would be on Israel as again this would affect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any political change in Israel has an immense effect on how the Israeli-Palestinian relations. So I presume that if there is a chance of regime change then media coverage would be a bit closer on Israel,” he assures.
All-in-all, Israel is often in the news, “but when it comes to something that could affect the political situation and it is not covered, this is actually bad journalism,” believes Kaufman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VzbcpdzfM8&feature=watch_response _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
There is a link between the price of occupation and the price of rent, the public needs to be reminded of this for the left to reemerge as a viable alternative for governance.
By Akiva Eldar - Haaretz
The right wing should be sending baskets of goodies to the tent-dwellers around the country on a daily basis. If there was ever the slightest chance of Prime Minister Benjamin "Supertanker" Netanyahu taking a diplomatic initiative that would stop the expected Palestinian move at the United Nations in September, the popular protest has turned him into a plucked chicken.
This image, which former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon applied in his day to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen ), characterizes the prime minister's clipped political wings.
A few weeks ago, Netanyahu gave President Shimon Peres a mandate to initiate contacts with the Palestinian side concerning a formula for renewing the talks on the final-status solution. But when the prime minister heard that the president was taking the maneuver to buy his silence seriously and was bending over maps of the territories alongside Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, Bibi took the toy away from Peres. That's all he needs now - for Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely to set up a protest tent on Balfour Street.
Thus Abbas has come out of this story too as the good guy, Netanyahu as the bad guy and Peres, as is Peres, as the loser.
At a time when Netanyahu is canceling visits to European capitals for fear there will be nowhere to come back to, Abbas and his people are spending a lot of time in the friendly skies winging their way from one place to another. The expectation that within few weeks, 120 countries, and perhaps more, will recognize their state is making them feel like they are in heaven.
When the entourage returns home to the empty coffers and the officials who have had to make do with half their salary, they walk with their heads hung in shame.
On the one hand, the Qataris have given them a hefty grant for the purpose of hiring a team of British experts on international law who are advising them on modes of action in advance of the vote at the UN General Assembly. On the other hand, the rulers of the Gulf states, who are not great fans of Prime Minister Salam Fayad and his insistence on importing the values of democracy from the West, are chortling with pleasure as they watch him hustle for cash.
At the same time, all the efforts by American Jewish organizations to persuade the Obama Administration to refrain from imposing a veto in the Security Council have proven fruitless thus far. Even a new survey by American pollster Jim Gerstein that shows staunch support for active American involvement in a comprehensive Israeli-Arab agreement has not succeeded in luring U.S. President Barack Obama off the fence.
He has noticed probably that only one-third of the 800 respondents in the survey, which was commissioned by J Street, support an American vote at the UN in favor of a Palestinian state, whereas half are opposed to the idea. The survey also shows that a large majority in the Jewish community and among Jewish donors supports Obama. Why should the president annoy such loyal voters?
The representatives of the Council for Peace and Security who visited the White House last week had an answer to this question. They explained to the president's senior advisors that if the occupation extends one day after the vote at the UN and diplomatic status quo remains as is, it will be the end of the Palestinian Authority. After scores of countries have recognized him as the president of an independent state, how will Abbas be able to hold his head up and fly around the world with the visiting cards of an "authority chairman" who needs entry and exit visas to travel between a foreign country and his own?
The day after the declaration of recognition of Palestine, the PA leadership is expected to come under increased pressure to dismantle the security mechanisms the Americans have nurtured with a lot of work and money, and to give the keys back to Israel, as Erekat puts it. If Obama continues to ignore Abbas' political distress, Hamas will have a good chance of winning the elections planned in the territories in April of 2012. This achievement will to a large extent be chalked up to the winner of a Nobel Peace for Prize.
Peace later
Activists of the Israeli left who have tried recently to enlist support for a petition calling for recognition of a Palestinian state have been following the tent protest with a mixture of envy and hope. For years, they have been trying, in vain, to persuade people that another road for the inhabitants of Kiryat Arba means less affordable housing for the inhabitants of Kiryat Shmona.
Ever since it helped the Labor Party win the elections in 1992, the formula, "security, peace and prosperity," has lost its charm. In an article published in the book, "The Elections in Israel 2009" (edited by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, The Israel Democracy Institute ), Ophir Abu, Fany Yuval and Guy Ben-Porat analyze "the demise of the Zionist left parties."
Segmentation of the voters shows that the Labor Party and Meretz lost power mainly in the wake of mass desertion by members of the upper middle class - that is, the same people who are now demonstrating against the rule of the economic-diplomatic right are the people who brought it into power in the first place.
On the basis of analysis of voter behavior in the socio-economic deciles, the three authors write that the compound of security, peace and prosperity did not last over time. The members of the middle class who despaired of the diplomatic process in the wake of the failure of the peace process in 2000 redirected their support to parties that promised security and stability. Voters identified as "Zionist left" migrated en masse to centrist parties, which succeeded in breaking the connection between peace and prosperity or promoted a secular agenda.
In the 2009 elections, the Likud chalked up an increase of 14.7 percent to 16.9 percent in deciles 5 through 7 (as compared to a moderate increase of 1.2 to 3.3 percent in the three lowest deciles and 12.2 percent to 12.8 percent in the top three deciles ).
The authors end the article with the observation that the parties of the Zionist left need to find a sufficiently broad electoral base in order to once again become a governing alternative. In the very near future, someone will have to remind the tent-dwellers about how much war costs and who is paying the price of the occupation. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 7:55 pm Post subject: Rally rage: Israelis back on streets demanding change
Rally rage: Israelis back on streets demanding change
Saturday night’s anti-government protests, among the largest ever, were staged in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and a number of cities around the country.
Some 300,000 people are expected to take part, and there is a heavy police presence.
Protesters are holding up banners with slogans like “The people demand social justice,” and “People are taking back the country.”
http://rt.com/news/israel-protests-social-rights/
Uploaded by RussiaToday on 4 Sep 2011
Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets of Israeli cities demanding "social justice." The rally has already been called the largest in the history of the Jewish state. According to local media, more than 400,000 Israelis took to the streets in cities across the country on Saturday night. More than 300,000 are said to be protesting in Tel Aviv near the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence, and more than 100,000 demonstrated elsewhere, particularly in Haifa and Jerusalem.
Gershon Baskin, Israeli-Palestinian conflict analyst, says the social unrest amongst Israel's middle class is a strong sign that the country is heading in the wrong direction. Instead of financing settlements in the occupied territories to the tune of billions of dollars, Israel should be spending the cash on domestic construction and social programs.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
