It's Tuesday morning in Israel.
The day before, the main food security and nutrition analysis tool (Integrated Phase Classification, in which UN organizations participate) has revealed that half of the 2.3 million Gazans suffer from extreme lack of access to food and that famine in the north is “imminent.”
In the rest of the world, the news receives notable attention.
Here, the numerous news programs and current events, which take place from morning to late in the day, almost completely ignore it.
Instead of images of desperate Palestinians queuing for food, Israelis receive advice on how to deal with
emotional hunger
, where to buy the best Haman's ears - a typical sweet during the Jewish holiday of Purim - or advertisements for MasterChef.
As in most countries, television is the main source of information in Israel.
Almost half of the population chooses it, according to official statistics.
In times of war, like this, audiences skyrocket (it is difficult to describe the national attachment to current events and Telegram groups with news) and programs add the flag and special messages.
“Israel at war,” says Channel 12;
“Strong together” (Channel 13);
“With God's help, together we will win” (Channel 14).
A random day has been chosen to watch 10 consecutive hours of news and talk shows on the main Hebrew channels: the public one (Kaan, 11) and the private ones 12, 13 and 14. 12 is the clear audience leader in news, while that 14 (the right-wing favorite) and 13 compete for second position (6.9% and 6.5%, respectively).
Kaan, the one that gives the most space to images of Gaza recorded by Palestinians, is in last place (4.8%), according to the latest data, released this Thursday.
Some of its journalists publish valuable exclusives on national politics and diplomacy, and closely monitor the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the general tone in times like this – and particularly after the trauma of the October 7 attack – has three common elements: Palestinians are ignored or dehumanized, the army is sacrosanct, and Israel lives surrounded by countries that hate it or do not like it. they understand.
These are trends that already existed and are now being taken to the extreme.
“Anti-Semitic criticism”
On channel 12, the most watched, a group of experts and commentators comment on the statement the day before by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, that Israel uses hunger in Gaza as a “weapon of war.”
“It is an almost anti-Semitic position,” says one commentator.
“Totally,” responds the presenter.
“We must explain to Borrell and [UN Secretary General António] Guterres that they understand nothing, that the one who uses hunger as a weapon of war is Hamas,” argues Harel Horev, historian and researcher of Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Center. Dayan.
The discussion reviews how television stations around the world are reporting on the raid on the Al Shifa hospital, in the capital of Gaza.
To analyze it, they bring in Jonathan Conricus, today an investigator and a few weeks ago the army spokesperson who accompanied the media to the hospital after the first raid, last November.
He assures that the international media are in a “campaign against Israel” and the journalists in Gaza, dominated by Hamas.
They then give way to Alon Mizrahi, a volunteer hairdresser who cut the hair of a soldier who died in the Strip, to remember his last meeting.
“It is frustrating how we do not convince the Western world of what differentiates us from a terrorist organization that uses health means and the population as a human shield,” laments the presenter of a talk show on public television.
One commentator explains the problem: “We explain things rationally to Europe, but there are a lot of emotions because they see the Palestinians as the weak party.”
Marko Moreno, a former military man who appeared hours earlier on another channel, insists on that idea: “We don't speak Arabic.”
“There are millions of refugees in Syria or Iraq, but only where Jews are involved do [Joe] Biden, [Antony] Blinken [US Secretary of State] and the Falusi talk about humanitarianism,” says former Minister Bar- On, in reference to Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, mispronouncing her name.
In Hebrew, both p and f and o and u are written with the same letter.
When talking about Al Shifa there is only one version and some images: those disseminated by the Israeli army spokesperson.
All those “eliminated” are “terrorists” and the debate revolves more around the success of communication that is being assumed with respect to the previous raid or whether to demolish the building.
You hardly see any Palestinians who are not armed, hooded, identified by the army as members of armed organizations or waving flags en masse.
Channel 14 proudly shows them detained blindfolded and with their hands tied behind them.
It is, they point out, the fruit of obtaining intelligence information.
The bombings are usually illustrated with the aseptic aerial shots – without blood or bodies – provided by the Armed Forces.
The televisions connect with soldiers deployed on the ground, who provide the human touch when greeting their families.
“How wonderful it is to see our soldiers on the front in this cold,” says a presenter when she sees the snow in the background on the Golan Heights.
them or us
The subtext is a widespread idea in Israel, especially since Hamas killed more than 1,200 people (mostly civilians) and took more than 240 hostages on October 7.
It is “them” or “us”.
The they is often unclear or refers to all Palestinians.
Moshe Pesel, deputy of Likud, Netanyahu's party, expresses it in a connection from the Knesset, the national Parliament: “History repeats itself.
All Zionist parties face a situation in which they try to exterminate the Jewish people, like 70 years ago.
It is our history, generation after generation,” he points out.
Or, as Tratman laments: “The elimination of the Jewish people is in their DNA, it cannot be changed.”
“What can we do as a country that wants to remain part of the Western world and continue with our very just war?” asks a presenter.
Pnina Sharvit Baruj, a researcher at the
think-tank
National Institute for Security Studies, responds: “We have to take into account what matters to Americans and show that there is really no starvation [in Gaza], to allow ourselves more freedom to operate.” .
The sanctions on settlers approved by the European Union have a positive side because they “allow them to show that they are doing something without damaging our ability to fight.”
The themes and debates revolve around similar axes: Hamas steals humanitarian aid, but the world blames Israel and that creates an image problem.
“Not only Eurovision, the anti-Israeli campaign continues,” Channel 12 reports to talk about an initiative to expel the country's clubs from UEFA football competitions due to the invasion of Gaza.
A video provided by the army proves that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah uses ambulances for its operations.
In Al Shifa, soldiers found in a safe an envelope with money — “even with blessings,” one commentator is outraged — that ends up being interpreted as financing Hamas, when it is marked in Arabic as a gift from the Islamist movement (which governs the Strip since 2007) to the hospital.
The language is very revealing.
On the public channel they give way to the news of the death in combat of a soldier with the phrase: “The war in Gaza continues to leave victims.”
Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble show the “strength” of the army.
In the dialogue for a second ceasefire taking place in Qatar, the Israelis present “proposals” or resort to negotiating strategies.
Anat Hochberg-Marom, an expert on international security and geopolitical crises, calls the threat of invading Rafah a “tool of pressure” on Channel 12 and defends “military pressure” to “move forward the negotiations.”
Hamas, on the other hand, makes “manipulations.”
“We take our Europeanness and Westernity to try to understand what is going on in his head.
But they are jihadists,” Tratman argues.
“If he kills his people, how are they going to care about the hostages.”
Israel is generally “us” and the soldiers are “our forces.”
The Palestinians, “them.”
“We will continue to accompany our soldiers, heroes and loved ones,” says a Channel 14 presenter to give way to advertising.
Our curtain of a soldier praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, with the phrase: “With God's help, together we will win.”
Only Jewish voices
Except for some isolated cases, only Jews speak.
The criticisms are not usually substantive, but rather about opposition to Netanyahu, pending accounts or electoral strategies.
They focus more on budgets, the relationship with the United States or the day after the war.
Yair Golán, the commanding general in the reserves and former vice minister of Economy for the left-wing pacifist party Meretz who now aspires to lead Labor, supports the invasion of Rafah (which the international community fears will generate a new tragedy) because the “professional” assessment ” ―that is, military― about its necessity is “very clear.”
On Channel 14, a commentator advocates “entering Rafah and destroying the hospitals.”
Simplistic explanations or explanations based on the assumption that Israel seeks peace (but is forced to fight) and the Arabs seek war also prevail, unless they are “dissuaded” by the brutality of the potential response.
That Israel has been favoring an escalation on its border with Lebanon is interpreted as a demonstration of muscle.
An economic commentator, Shmuel Almas, points out on Channel 14 that the “only reason” why Hezbollah does not respond with an open conflict is because the collapsed Lebanese economy could not afford such destruction.
Lawyer Rawyah Handaklo runs an anti-crime program in her Arab-Israeli community and talks about the issue on public radio and television.
There are 41 homicides so far this year.
The presenter asks him about the “responsibility of the Arab population.”
“Sometimes that question bothers me,” Handaklo admits.
Years ago, Jewish-led mafias killed each other in the streets in Israel and no one asked about the “responsibility” of the Jewish majority in the crime.
On channel 14, racism, the feeling of superiority towards the Palestinians and the dehumanizing discourse emerge every now and then in the debates, which contain all the elements of right-wing populism: criticism of political correctness, the left and to feminism.
Also the idea that there is a deep State opposed to the will of the people.
The presenter gives way to images of bombings in Gaza with the phrase: “We are a little encouraged by the explosions and shots.”
The video has in the background a rap-pop by two famous far-right extremists (Subliminal and The Shadow) with phrases like “Good morning, Gaza;
another Nazi dead;
or “I'm not a cowardly little Jew with shaky knees, I'm a Jew with firepower, smoke and words.”
The festival comes with the issue of “nationalistically motivated rape.”
“According to the feminist left, the rapes were due to toxic masculinity, patriarchy or because men do not lower the toilet lid […] And no, here we have not fought for 120 years [the first steps of Zionism] for the situation of the woman,” says the presenter.
Police figures, according to which only nine out of every 500 rapes by Palestinians on Jews have a political element, are false.
The problem is that “Muhammad raped a girl” and this is a “religious war” to which the country has opened its eyes as a result of sexual violence on October 7.
“What anti-Semites in the UN are doing to us now, left-wing organizations did to us before,” argues Alhanan Groner, from the ultranationalist newspaper
Hakol Hayehudí.
The presenter provocatively points out: “There will be people who say: 'What a racist debate!'”
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