ISRAEL: Wartime media during Gaza operation, Part 2
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On a good day, Israelis like to know what’s happening. On bad days, this becomes an obsession.
Jan. 5 was a bad day for Israelis. Three soldiers were killed and 30 injured by ‘friendly fire’ in Gaza, but it wasn’t yet cleared for publication.
Military deaths and injuries are not reported in Israel before families have been notified so they do not learn of this through the media (see past post on this). But there were operational reasons for holding back too. The medical evacuation was complicated, and there had been high-ranking officers at the site.
The Israeli public and press share certain codes. ‘Heavy exchange of fire’ not followed by an understood ‘all clear’ means ‘something bad happened, but we can’t tell you yet.’ The media hinted heavily, people got the drift but not the details. This went on for hours. TV anchorwoman Geula Even refused to play the hinting game and explained the next day she preferred to give reliable information when she had it and not promote confusion and panic. (Another anchorwoman didn’t played by some people’s rules either when she acknowledged the tragedy of Palestinian civilian casualties; 25,000 Israelis have signed an online petition for sacking Yonit Levi. A counter-petition has now been launched in her support.)
The incident happened at 19:00; the deaths were cleared for publication at 03:00. In between, everyone scrambled for information. The tight censorship sends Israelis deeper and deeper into the Web these day, often to Hamas websites, Arabic news forums or pro-Palestinian organizations that also show the graphic images of death and devastation from Gaza so notably absent from the ‘clean’ Israeli media. And it’s a two-way street. Palestinian surfers are frequenting Israeli news forums in pursuit of information too.
Rotter.net, was packed with people trying to find out what had happened. It has been so swamped for the past week that it ran in special overload format to accommodate the extra traffic. The forum administrator told members he was being bombarded by the censorship and that any post that returned a 404 meant the content had been erased.
One popular news haunt, the scoop forum on
There were lots of 404s that night.
-- Batsheva Sobelman
Rotter.net that night.
P.S. Get news from Gaza in your mailbox every day. The Los Angeles Times distributes a free daily newsletter with the latest headlines from the Middle East, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can subscribe by logging in at the website here, clicking on the box for ‘L.A. Times updates’ and then clicking on the ‘World: Mideast’ box.