Israeli media (not the IDF) guilty of shooting first and asking questions later

Maybe certain members of the Israeli media establishment are trying to get back at the IDF for not letting them cover the recent Operation: Cast Lead in Gaza. Or maybe they are angry at how the Gilad Schalit saga has now surpassed its 1000th day.

Whatever the hidden reason may be, it does not negate the fact that by releasing ‘witness’ accounts in a special Haaretz ‘expose’ they displayed gross journalistic incompetence usually reserved for the likes of tabloid newspapers and Israel bashing professionals.

I say ‘witness’ and ‘expose’ because you have to sift through the rhetoric and emotive language to understand that this was part of a group therapy session for front line soldiers who took part in Cast Lead. Furthermore, this ‘expose’ presupposes that the IDF are trying to hide information or mislead the public with regards to the tactics used during Cast Lead and is also a sign of its tabloid nature. Israeli journalists have a close working relationship with the IDF, Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office – I guess they believed this story was worthy of sidelining such a relationship.

Haaretz did succeed in getting their story out to the world audience, headlines run along these lines:

‘Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Killings Raise Furor in Israel’
‘Israeli military to probe Gaza campaign allegations’
‘Israeli soldiers admit deliberately killing unarmed civilians in Gaza’

These headlines are complete with photos that are nauseatingly out of context and just make you want to sigh in despair.

But we must also ask ourselves why it took over a month for these to go public? According to the Haaretz report, the soldiers met on the 13th of February. The Haaretz report ironically did not wish to publish the names of the soldiers making these claims to protect them from public backlash, though they did not see a need to protect the other 98% of the IDF that also have a well earned reputation. They will not be spared the public backlash that will ensue in the coming few days – the vast majority of them will not even be present when this occurs on university campuses, editorials, blogs and human rights websites where they will again be unable to respond (not that anyone will listen).

These were stories after all, the soldiers did not actually carry out the events described in their debrief but that is not the point: There were tens of thousands of IDF soldiers in Gaza during the operation. That means tens of thousands of stories each with their own unique perspective on the conflict. Tens of thousands of incidents, near misses, confusions, lucky escapes and military operations.

Finally, without footage and IDF documents all that we can rely on now are these stories which shape and redefine our reality of the Gaza conflict – humans are after all storytellers. Good stories sell newspapers and make the headlines but I doubt that will be any comfort to the soldiers who fought in Cast Lead and to those who will say that once again the media has missed the boat on the morality of Israel’s conflict with Hamas - unfortunately for us it was a misguided member of the Israeli media but the world media did not (and will not) hesitate to follow suit.