Kick-off

Here we go... I decided to join the blog-trend. Actually, what moved me into trying it was an article in Haaretz about people using blogs in the process of writing books. It appeared to be a great way to share your thoughts and get some feedbacks. At the same time, i have all those ideas and thoughts during the day, which i sometimes think would be interesting to share with others or simply to write down. Maybe this would be a good medium to organize the thoughts.

So, I am, trying out a new toy...

I have to admit in advance that it would be difficult for me to promise stable and constant update of the blog, but I am willing to give it a try. I even have no idea if anyone ever going to read it....

Anyway, today I wanted to start with few observations on television… I am starting the blog on August the 15th, a supposed to be historical date for Israel - disengagement from Gaza. I don’t want to talk abut the act itself, but rather about the media event it has become.

I don’t know if any of the readers live in Israel, but if you not it is important to understand that for the last few months it has been the main issue on public agenda. About a week ago started a promotion of disengagement to come – every newspaper, news website, TV station, etc. showed off with an army of reporters to be allocated all over the Gaza strip. From the early morning today two major private TV stations entered a news mode. This means that a crew was sent practically to every possible point of “action”. What meant by “action” is violent clashes of police with settlers.

Before we continue, another point for non Israeli readers about the flow of the disengagement itself: people were offered to leave their homes in Gaza strip quite a while ago and there is a vast scheme of support and compensations for those who are leaving. Again, without getting into ideological debate, some people left, others decided to stay and there were also those who came in purpose to the strip in order to disturb the process. So, today and tomorrow, the army is going around the settlements giving people official orders to move out and starting from Wednesday, the pullout will be made by force.

However, the media couldn’t wait and as I said, already today at the morning they started translated from all over the place. Unfortunately for them, nothing really happened… It looked like a badly organized reality show… For at least two hours at the morning they were showing praying settlers. Since it was an absolutely not newsworthy item, the reporters were trying to make the future item to be… “Here settlers are getting information by SMS (technological wonder!!!) about the army moves” … “Here, look at these faces, they will give a fight to the military forces” … “This is a spot where we expect to be the greatest violence” …

It looked like the reporters were really looking for blood, but it simply wasn’t there… They even run out of speculations and were simply telling what is that they are seeing… When I was a kid, whenever we went out of the city, I tended to sing songs about whatever I saw: “Here is standing a caw on green grass; and the sky is blue above a green forest; here is a yellow car bypassed us” and more… This is what the reports looked like: “Here are the settlers, they are praying, these are the words of this prayer, the one in orange shirt turned left, the kid near him set down, I wonder when the action will begin, I want to see blood…”

However, as it was also expected, nothing really happened, except for some arguments between the settlers and the solders, who came to give out the orders. Till the evening, those meetings were over-dramatized and shown as a short clip per settlement. And again the search for violence, which wasn’t really there was so evident that you couldn’t escape noticing it… So, the evening news blocks were ‘fun’… we could see the vide clips , which practically showed the same and the commentators promising us more violence in the future… The most amazing thing was that as 21:00 approached, both channels without hesitation turned on the floor to “The star is being born” and to the soccer/football game between Israeli and Ukrainian teams. This is of course after promoting the programs in the last items of “so shocking” news blocks of this historical day (BTW, both programs are broadcasted live, as well as this entire day of translations from Gaza – can we mark this day as a “live TV day”?). After 21:00, the life got back to normal and the tragedy was given a break…. Till tomorrow morning, don’t worry, we are promised a lot of violence in the coming days…

Here I have to notice the behavior of the Russian Israeli channel 9. They really wanted to be there, to cover the history. But the thing is, they have less resources compared to the other channels. So, although they changed the programs schedule, all they could present is a battery of right wing politicians, who one by one were interviewed by Yossef Shagal, who kindly allowed them to express their political agenda instead of dealing with his questions. Thus for example PM Yuli Stern, when asked about economical aspects of keeping the settlements vs. disassembling them, talked about how terrible it is to take people out of their houses. What is the connection? I don’t know. Why asking PM and not a professional about economics? I don’t know… I only wonder, if this political alley was arranged due to lack of resources to create their own disengagement-reality-show or there is something else? The channel’s reporter in Gaza was interviewed by Shagal about what do other media say about us, Israelis. Well, given the shortage of resources and the cost of such a transmission, it is a very logical thing to do… The true answer is at the end – apparently, at the first press conference after closing the gate to Gaza, Israel 9’s reporter was the first one to ask the commander a question. Shagal is happy: “This means we won”… Hooray!

That would be it for a starter…. Let see what comes out of this idea…