Taken from to-days Guardian newspaper -
Headline : Israel's Media Assumes A Critical Stance On The Military's Handling Of The Situation.....
Israel's media is more critical today than it was in the immediate aftermath of the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, raising the question that, while justified, the Israeli military response may have been badly handled. There were also complaints that Israel bungled its international PR.
Yesterday's coverage mostly surmised that the Israeli army had to respond as it did, in the face of a violent, premeditated and provocative assault. "They chose this way," said Alon Ben David, defence correspondent of Israel's Channel 10, of the activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the Gaza flotilla ships on which at least nine people were killed and dozens injured. "Israeli forces had no choice but to open fire and the result was much worse than we'd wanted."
Israeli journalists corroborated the army accounts of an attack by violent protesters bearing knives and metal bars. Ron Ben-Yishai, a veteran war correspondent aboard the Victory, an Israeli missile ship, wrote a piece headlined 'A Brutal Ambush at Sea', in which he suggested that those being violently ambushed were the Israeli army. He wrote that the naval forces that stormed the flotilla were unprepared for the "severe assault" that awaited them and only fired when under attack.
The incident was routinely depicted as a "lynching" of Israeli forces during the dawn raid on the aid flotilla, and reporters referred to "peace-lovers bearing sticks and knives," as one journalist for Israel's Channel 1 put it.
Today, many media commentators are angered that Israel did not release its version of events sooner. Writing in Yediot Aharonot, Roni Sofer holds that Israeli officials failed on PR, allowing "harsh accusations against the violent Israel" to go unchallenged for hours.
Writing in Haaretz, military correspondent Amos Harel berated the Israeli army for falling into a trap set by the aid flotilla, landing the nation in a "diplomatic mess". He insisted, though, that the military did nothing wrong and should not have been put in that position.
This argument is repeated across the comment pages of the mass circulation dailies Ma'ariv and Yediot Aharonot today. Soldiers are praised for their actions, politicians chastised for putting the nation's forces in a compromising situation. Yediot Aharonot's front page splash, headlined 'The Trap', reports that nine civilians aboard the aid boats died because the army didn't have enough information about the strength of resistance it would face on the flotilla. The paper's finance editor, Sever Plocker, referred to a "provocative trap set by Hamas" and called for the defence minister, Ehud Barak, to resign.
Another of the paper's columnists, appearing in the English edition, said that Israel should not be apologising for its actions. "It doesn't look good and the images it produces aren't pretty, yet the lives of Israeli citizens are more important than any scathing diplomatic protest," wrote Yoaz Hendel.
Ma'ariv's front page accused the government of "stuttering and shifting blame" over what happened, and criticised Israel's "informational failure".
Yesterday, a leftwing former minister, Yossi Beilin, noted that Israel had the worst hasbara – or spin – team possible in the current government, which includes the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and his deputy, Danny Ayalon. "Change the team," he advised on Israeli TV. "First of all we should apologise over the death of civilians and then open an inquiry."
Broadcast media focused this morning on global demonstrations in protest at Israel's raid. Israeli army radio had a London-based reporter effectively describing yesterday's demonstrations in the capital as an anti-Israel hate-fest.
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Topic: Israel Again.......!! (Read 12029 times)