The Idea of Israel Read Online Free PDF Page B

policy against the Arab states in the 1950s, its atomic policy in the late 1960s, or its arms trades during the 1970s were avoided. This consensual approach to ‘security’ meant that there was no need for the state to impose sanctions on any of the main newspapers. The same situation applied to broadcast media. With the arrival of Internet media, which were far more pluralistic and beyond the reach of government, a new reality unfolded. Nevertheless, self-censorship still held sway.
    Until 1965, Radio Israel was part of the prime minister’s office. That year, it began to be operated (soon to be joined by television, which appeared in Israel in 1968) by a public company, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, whose advisory board comprised representatives from several political parties. One of the main reasons for the smooth cooperation between the government and the press during Israel’s first decades was that most journalists were affiliated with the Labour movement, which held power from the creation of the state until 1977.
    The ascension of the Likud to power created a schism between the more left-leaning press and the right-wing government. The press, for instance, did not accept Likud’s aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and was not enthusiastic about the Lebanon War of 1982. Vigorous criticism of government policy, however, did not lead to any change in the basic approach to the ‘sacred cows’ that make the idea of Israel what it is today.
    The press was (and is) guided by a self-appointed committee of editors-in-chief who met regularly with the military censor, accepting his advice on matters concerning state security. The Editors Committee, established in 1948, reviewed every piece of information the press wanted to publish concerning the army or the security services. It should be noted that this self-censorship had wide public support throughout the 1980s: opinion polls showed that the majority of Jewish Israelis favoured limiting the media’s freedom to report on ‘national security’ issues. Overall, then, the press did not deviate from the Zionist consensus, either in the tone of its reports or the orientation of its lead articles.
    Nor did the press, in its by-and-large dismissive presentation ofArabs, especially the Palestinians, deviate from the public imagery of Israeli Palestinians as a ‘fifth column’ of aliens from within. The term ‘Israeli Arabs’ or even Bnei Miutim (members of minority groups) were in common use, the latter term having been coined in the early years of the state. When dealing with Jewish and Palestinian fatalities, whether caused by accidents or acts of terrorism, the press employed different font sizes and placed the items in more or less prominent sections of the newspaper, giving extended and careful detail where Jews were concerned and only brief and general references where Palestinian casualties were reported. 11 Even tragedy or loss operated on different scales. Indeed, the very presence on newspaper staffs of ‘our special reporter on Arab affairs’ to cover Arab politics within Israel – even infrequently and in a limited fashion – underscored the segregation (there was no Arab correspondent who was an expert on Jewish affairs).
    In the 1990s, changes began to occur in the Israeli press, as they did in academia, caused in part by new ideological insights but also facilitated by the partial privatisation of the print and electronic media at that time. The three leading dailies, Haaretz, Maariv , and Yedioth Ahronoth , were owned by three families, and Israel’s second TV channel, which appeared in the 1990s (as well as channel 10, which arrived with the advent of cable TV), was run by private companies that shared time on the screen. 12 This turned the media into a kind of liberal watchdog, a function it had not previously fulfilled. Now granted a greater degree of free speech and opinion, the press took stands against human