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Opinion | Refugee Crisis: In the Struggle for Consciousness, Journalists Are at the Front | Israel today

2022-03-09T08:10:09.152Z


In the face of Putin's silencing of the media in Russia, media outlets that reach every point where refugees are are doing a job that should not be underestimated.


It is easy to underestimate the role of the media in a war.

Her work is sometimes perceived as prying, or as screen time burning, but after an in-depth experience on the Ukrainian border and a closer look at the role played by the world media, the historical importance of her work becomes clear, probably given the obvious comparison to Germany's conduct at World War II.

I boarded a Bezeq flight with an Israeli rescue team that landed on the Ukraine-Poland border.

After long hours on the road we reached the Medica municipality.

We chose this border crossing precisely because we knew that there we would meet the constant stream of refugees and locate the Israelis.

We saw it as our mission to be there for those who fled the inferno and sought a way out, Israelis and Jews first.

When we arrived, we saw a social attack.

In a freezing cold of minus five degrees, we found thousands of women and children who had lost their homes and property crossing the border into the unknown.

We arrived armed with food, winter supplies for distribution and a warm hug (a rare commodity in the forgotten days of the Corona), but for the harsh sights that unfolded before our eyes we were not ready.

During World War II, the media was even poorer and more subject today to state interests.

It is said that the world turned a blind eye to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans and to the refugee crisis of World War II.

The truth is that then it was much harder to know what was going on in the German-controlled territories.

Putin adopts a similar media tactic: through censorship and silencing, and blocking social networks he paralyzes modern means of information transmission and creates a reality of journalistic reliance solely on government sources.

But fortunately the reality has changed a lot since then, and thanks to modern media heroes like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zalansky, we know that Ukrainians are not defeated.

He manages to revive the biblical stories we grew up on, the myth of Masada and King David who defeated the Philistine Goliath in stone.

Just as Zalansky fought the Russian attempt to control the flow of information, so we on the Ukrainian-Polish front brought to the media consciousness the refugee crisis that was brewing before our eyes.

Yes, it's a front, although it does not have a war on arms, but there is still a struggle for life, a struggle of people without shelter or food in the European frost.

Gradually, we saw more and more Israeli and international media outlets coming to cover the refugee crisis.

Infinity of pictures and stories that open the editions and are displayed in the front pages of newspapers around the world with a clear warning that it is a global responsibility to take care of the lives of those who fled the war zones, to provide them with shelter and food.

In this war, journalists play a significant role - the same role that Putin is trying to prevent them from.

They put a spotlight on those in need, and open a humanitarian corridor for them.

The narrative battle continues, alongside the physical battle and will probably continue after it, and in this case the media coverage turns out to be almost as important as the activation of the fire at the front.

Were we wrong?

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-03-09

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