Terrorism in Israel, Media Coverage and its Implications

Yesterday, Palestinian terror cells targeted civilian buses and vehicles in the early afternoon. Israeli intelligence knew of the risk of a coming attack on civilians and responded to the scene effectively, but was not able to prevent the attack, which left six civilians and two soldiers dead. In retaliation, Israeli forces hit a leadership site of the Popular Resistance Committee, based in Gaza, who is believed to have coordinated the terrorist attack, killing six, including the head of the "militant" wing of the organization, and sadly, the young son of one of the members as well.

The weather today in Israel is fair, but the mood is gloomy. The radio plays mostly sad songs, acknowledging the melancholy mood of a nation in mourning. The economic demonstrations which have gathered support across many different sectors of society in Israel have lulled to a quiet hiatus, as demonstrators do not want to belittle or overshadow the state of mourning of the families of those killed in the attack. Strangers ask each other for updates on the critically wounded. It's almost eerie how the whole country so quickly adapts its attitude to such an attack; you can tell they are distraught, and yet you can tell they've been here before.

The attack feels completely unprovoked. The Palestinians have their causes, but the Israelis had been physically inactive in Gaza for quite some time, where people seem to forget Israel had withdrawn after countless claims that their presence alone was the cause of the turmoil there. The international news is already reporting "tit for tat" attacks, but from here, this definitely feels like something intentionally incited by the Palestinian political machine and terrorist organization in Gaza.

It should also be noted that this seems largely to be a strategic move to destabilize Israeli and Egyptian relations. Israel had already given permission for an increase in Egyptian military presence in the Sinai peninsula (the area from which the attackers crossed into Israel), permission the Egyptians require under the 1978 Camp David Accords and permission they sought as jihadist activity had been increasing in the region since the fall of the Mubarak Regime, largely under Al-Qaeda and Hamas influence.

Israel has been openly nervous about the change in Egypt as they have been concerned about what instability along the border would mean for Israel and if the new government would honor the peace treaty as completely as Mubarak had. This put stress between the Israelis and Egyptians, the latter of whom want Israel to stay out of the development of their new government. Israel has been cognizant of that and has clearly made efforts not to seem at odds with what will inevitably become a new Egyptian regime, but the concerns remain of a new regime supporting Hamas and being incapable of providing security along the border.

To me at least, the terrorist attack seemed strategically aimed at creating tensions between Egypt and Israel by playing upon those concerns. The terrorists attacked from the Egyptian border, and Egyptian security forces were killed when Israeli soldiers pursued the terrorists back to the border. It seems unlikely the terrorists brought the fight to the Egyptian security post by coincidence.

At first, the tactic seemed to work. The day of the attack, the Israelis pointed fingers at the instability in the Sinai region and the Egyptians threatened to withdraw all diplomats from Israel. Despite protests in Cairo today, which clearly played right into the hand of the terrorist’s intentions and plans, Israel and Egypt seem to have quickly patched things up politically and Israel’s language is focused far more on Gaza. Meanwhile, the Egyptian forces have been cracking down on the jihadist elements in Sinai and Israel has been making targeted attacks on the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.

However, the strategic intentions of the attack and the complex dynamic between Egypt, Israel and jihadist forces in Sinai are far too detailed and uninteresting for the mainstream media to cover. They’d rather cover dramatic photos, blood, bullets and airstrikes. But they don’t seem to be capable of even doing that objectively.

Reading international news coverage today was ... disappointing. The New York Times headline was "Israel Strikes Gaza After Eilat Attack," leaving any reader who did not have previous knowledge of the incident or a good understanding of Israeli geography to assume that Israel was the aggressor. The Guardian's headline similarly showed "Israel air strikes hit Gaza following Eilat attacks" with the subtitle "Up to six Palestinians killed hours after attack in southern Israel leaves at least seven dead."

This could also be part of the strategic intentions of the attack. The Palestinians will be asking the UN for recognition of statehood this September, despite their inability to make concessions like removing the destruction of the State of Israel from their constitution. They know that a day after the violence begins, people will forget that they incited it. International news coverage tends to garner support for the underdog, so creating conflict which they know Israel will retaliate for will likely help build support for their cause, as when the more powerful force retaliates, the coverage will likely play into support and sympathy for the Palestinians. So far, that seems to be working for them.

Only The Economist seemed to get it right, with the headline "Attacks in Israel: Terror Down South." Of course, the Economist is a more academic and cerebral newspaper, not even intended for the broader public.

Perhaps most frustrating was CNN's "Israeli airstrike targets Gaza after multiple attacks," in which they refuse to acknowledge the terrorist attacks as terrorist attacks, also omitting the use of any pronoun assigning responsibility to the Palestinians for the “multiple attacks.” Referring to "Thursday's coordinated attack on Israeli soldiers and citizens," they strangely put soldiers first and only mention in the 11th paragraph that the attacks killed "six civilians and one Israeli soldier [while] 40 people were wounded." They even put the Egyptian crackdown in Sinai in quotations when referring to it as an "anti-terror" operation, which they mention as an almost irrelevant matter in passing.

It was only in the 22nd paragraph where they acknowledged "the incident began when shots were fired at a civilian bus..." If you skimmed the article, focusing on the top as all journalists know most readers do, you would not have realized that everything began with the unprovoked shootings using guns and anti-tank missiles on Israeli civilian buses and vehicles. That is not a military target, so I don't see why those responsible are being called "militants" or why the American news networks seem unwilling to call it a terrorist attack, as it is, and as even the EU has publicly acknowledged it to be.

Of course, this is from the same CNN article that labeled Saudi Arabia as "Iran" in its regional map.

Enormous demonstrations had been taking place in Israel for the past three weeks now, involving over 300,000 people (the percentage equivalent of 15 million Americans marching in the street). The demonstrations are supported somehow by more than half the population. But these demonstrations were about economic and social reforms, and while relevant, they are complicated and not very entertaining. So the international media essentially ignored it. The world did not seem to pay much attention either when Israeli citizens were attacked for simply being Israeli and riding on a bus. Only did the news pay attention when Israel retaliated against the Palestinian terror attack, or rather, when they "conducted airstrikes after deadly attacks." I acknowledge that I have my own biases, but I do not claim objectivity nor am I a journalist.

It makes me wonder what happened to our news organizations. Why do they seem so consistently inept, and so blatantly subjective while pretentiously claiming objectivity? Ever since "what bleeds leads," we've known journalism was falling to a pursuit of readership and sensationalism instead of a pursuit of truth and knowledge. But that doesn’t explain why the coverage of sensational topics continues to be reported with such a bias that it feels insulting to our intelligence.

Even worse, it seems that now the information presented has moved from focusing on the grotesque and violent to the completely vain and irrelevant. Looking online, most news networks did not even have the terrorist attacks in Israel on their website until after Israel had already retaliated. More people seemed to know about Amy Winehouse's death than the simultaneous and tragic terrorist attack in Norway that killed more than 90 people, most of whom were children. Good thing we didn’t let something like that overshadow the self-induced drug overdose of a narcissistic pop star.

So why has our media failed us so miserably? Why are they turning into entertainment networks that feed the masses their own biases and the biases of their own socio-political agenda in between larger chunks of irrelevant celebrity gossip and mind-numbing YouTube home videos? It might be a question of the chicken or the egg as to which came first, but it definitely seems that it's largely because this is what the consumer wants to see.

But for entertainment, we have tons of entertainment networks, not to mention the Internet. The press wasn’t supposed to be about profit and consumerism. It seems to me that amusement is not the role of journalism, which our Founding Fathers had envisioned as the 4th branch of government. The reason the 1st Amendment prohibits infringing on freedom of the press is that the press was intended to remain a part of the system of checks and balances. Our founders believed that a media effectively informing the populace was critical to the healthy functioning of a Democracy.

But the way that information is presented has turned into a manipulative art, and the information used is becoming less and less relevant to the healthy functioning of a Democracy. No longer does the media seem to be focused on keeping our politicians honest or providing insight into politically relevant and comprehensive information. Rather, they are focused on presenting information that entertains, and even when presenting relevant information, doing so in a way that is entertaining. Celebrities and even Reality TV stars are offering their political opinions on everything now, and the news is covering it almost as much as those “Reality” TV show stars’ personal life. Israel faced backlash when its Prime Minister did not meet with Justin Bieber (he was meeting with a representative for Palestinian refugees instead). Even the sound clips and images used by our news networks are borrowed from the entertainment industry. We’ve completely lost focus.

I consider myself a moderate free market economist. I'm not against capitalism by any means, but I am starting to wonder if journalism, like the police force, should be something that is not completely ingrained into the capitalist system. Previously, news was in a way democratized, with small regional and local newspapers each pursuing information and reporting it, perhaps still with bias, but maintaining a balance with the fragmented nature of it all and with priorities being influenced by the fact that individual profits were restricted by market share. Restricting individual profits is not good for most business, but journalism should not be like most business. Nowadays it seems that 90% of news Americans receive are ultimately owned by 3 or 4 larger corporations, all publicly held on the stock market. For a finance organization, it's fine and actually logical and effective for it to be on the stock market, where profit is the bottom line. But that was never the intention of the political watchdog, of the 4th branch of government, of our national media.

With competition often in possession of the same parent company, executives being accountable foremost to shareholders instead of the broader public, and the same corporations that own news organizations purchasing film companies and entertainment channels, is it any wonder our news is turning into entertainment?

Like most Americans, I'm weary of Big Brother, and by no means am I suggesting we turn the news over to the public sector and let it be run by the government. Obviously, the democratization of news can be seen on the Internet, but so can the radicalization of news. Either way, the media is still failing us as it is, and we need to start asking why. Private companies that start up can't compete with the overhead of the larger corporations, and when they start to, they are just bought up. Realistically, these news networks are too powerful to really allow any sort of sweeping reform, but theoretically, what would you like to see happen?

As Joseph Pulitzer once said, “Our Republic and its press will rise and fall together.” Our press is falling. Our country is stumbling. Are you still entertained?