After watching the 25-minute article on Zvi Yehezkeli's motorcycle, a question arose: "Who cares?"

We have become accustomed to the fact that there is no longer a difference between essence and treatise, news and gossip, essence and anecdote.

As part of this journalistic vertigo, we have long known that there are journalists who have forgotten that they are not the story.

And yet, there seems to be no greater proof of the necessity of shortening editions than of this waste of time.

Nadav Menuhin

02/01/2022

Sunday, 02 January 2022, 07:37 Updated: 07:40

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Dear viewers, the troubles in the world are over.

There is no poverty, the climate is a bomb, our relations with the Palestinians are rotating, and even in hospitals it is boring.

Everything is so cool, that the Saturday edition of Channel 13, supposedly a flagship program of the news company, decided to dedicate an article of almost 25 minutes (!) To the longings of the company's commentator, Zvi Yehezkeli, for riding motorcycles.

True, we've already seen it all in the new editions and we are not innocent.

We have become accustomed to the fact that there is no longer a difference between essence and treatment, news and gossip, essence and anecdote.

As part of this journalistic vertigo, we have long known that there are journalists who have forgotten that they are not the story.

And yet, there seems to be no greater proof of the necessary need to shorten editions than this demonstrable waste of time, which deals with such a worthless subject that there is no way to respond to it except in the pair of words "Who cares?".

More on Walla!

"Because of my voice, I was abused as a child, thrown in the trash, beaten. For years I did not take a rudder."

To the full article

Waste of time.

Yehezkeli (Photo: Screenshot, Network 13)

We’ve seen all sorts of journalists go on photo shoots in all sorts of styles, but there’s usually some faint excuse - extraordinary natural phenomena, let’s say - that covers like a fig leaf, even minimally, the value box to the public. There is no excuse here, neither an event nor an experience: this is an article by Zvi Yehezkeli about Zvi Yehezkeli, which is mainly about things that happened to Zvi Yehezkeli and the thoughts of Zvi Yehezkeli. To be honest, the title was "Deer, God and the Motorcycle." In the Shabbat edition, they did not even bother to include another journalist who would accompany and interview him, and would allow a necessary separation between the reporter and the item. In general, no one argues with Ezekiel or challenges his positions, and no other eye presents him in a different light. The whole essence, as the hat-bearers once sang, I and I and I and I.

Ezekiel, then, is both the journalist and the story, but the story is confused.

Seemingly everything is rather simple: after years of not riding SUVs, in a process that coincided with his conversion, the veteran reporter returns to his old love from a more complete place, in honor of a competition held near his home in the settlements.

But on the way there he passes through a stream of consciousness, which includes an unfocused night of religious and political messages and matters not really related to the subject, such as reports from terrorist scenes, his first trip to Uman, meetings with Zechariah Zabeidi, and thoughts on the Jewish story.

No one could sharpen it?

Reflections.

Zvika (Photo: Screenshot, Network 13)

The article begins with a baptism in Ma'ayan (why?), And then continues with a conversation about raising Ezekiel's memories on a hill with photographer Shai Pony, letters he made together over the years ("How much coffee we filmed"). There, for long minutes, Ezekiel issues a variety of confused monologues about the spirituality of riding a motorcycle, the process of strengthening, his Jewish identity and more, and along the way spices up his words with all sorts of superficial slogans (e.g .: "If you want to be on fire you must start frozen"; "He who rides hard on motorcycles, he who wants rhythmics, he who walks to the end - in the end meets God"; "Riding is quite similar to the life of worship of God"; "The greatest motorcyclist in the world - Rabbi Nachman"; Received, 333: "Three and three more and three more it will always be nine, because you will always lack 1 for being perfect. You can not be perfect alone, that is the whole mind in this world").

After about a quarter of an hour he finally arrives at the competition, and here too - as if an editor's hand had never gone over the material, which includes extensive documentation of Ezekiel saying hello to all kinds of people we do not know and no reason to know, and telling them what he has already told us.

Then there's some riding and some more rites - and it's over.

The volume - almost a third of the plan, as if there is really nothing to engage in.

So true, good magazine articles can enrich viewers with so much extensive and in-depth information on complicated issues, and provide colors and scents that get lost in the news sequence.

Even a New Journalist self-occupation can be fascinating, as it is part of a look at a foreign environment.

There is no such thing here: there is no story, there are really no more people, there is no public value of principle - just long and strange documentation, on a ridiculous subject, which is unusual even in the already dismal standards of Israeli television.

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