PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES - ISRAEL

Gaza: a war behind closed doors

While the Israeli Army keeps the doors to Gaza firmly shut in the faces of enquiring journalists, the pro-Palestinian press has images of corpses on a loop, a Molotov cocktail of information.

Issued on: 05/01/2009 - 19:00Modified: 06/10/2010 - 10:12

4 min

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Image : The Electronic Intifada

While the Israeli Army keeps the doors to Gaza firmly shut in the faces of enquiring journalists, the pro-Palestinian press has images of corpses on a loop, a Molotov cocktail of information.

The international press is somewhat lacking in images from Gaza. The Israeli Army only issues footage of successfully targeted bombings, and the war zone is off-limits to journalists — even though the IDF promised to let eight reporters across the border. Now that the Internet has been cut off in Gaza, very few amateur images are making it out of the area. So the media rely almost entirely on their correspondents in the field to find out what's going on. On the pro-Palestine side, TV networks settle for broadcasting endless photos of body parts and children's corpses.

In response to this information starvation, the Web is becoming a battleground between Palestine and Israel supporters. As comments get fiercer, hackers become more inventive.

Our Observers from Jerusalem to Gaza City comment from the middle of this information war. You can ask them questions on their profile pages.

"On the first day of the attacks I received a phone call from the IDF"

Husam El-Nounou is a cofounder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, an non-governmental organisation which deals with "victims of organised violence". Husam is in the Telhawa district of Gaza City, four kilometres from where the Israeli army is situated.

On the first day of the attacks I received a phone call from the IDF (a recorded message of course) explaining that they were launching the operation. Then last night I got two or three more saying "to stay away from terrorists", etc. We're getting our information from the local radio stations, Al Quds and Al Sha'eb mainly, which seem to be operating from underground or from mobile transmitters, because the buildings themselves have been bombed, I believe. I heard they've bombed the network antennas too, so even if we got our electricity back we wouldn't be able to use our mobile phones, which had run out of battery. Using a land line is our only communication with the world."

Hamas TV pirated

According to the Israeli TV station Channel 10, Hamas's Al Aqsa television station was hacked on Sunday and for a short time replaced with headshots of the Hamas leaders followed by the message: "Your time is up."

"The Israeli channels [...] only show the aerial-view shots of bombings taken by the army"

Lisa Goldman is a journalist and blogger from Tel Aviv.

I watch both Arabic channels (like Al Jazeera and Al Arabia) and Israeli channels. The difference is huge. The Arabic channels have really horrific images on a loop: bodies torn to pieces, corpses of children, etc., while the Israeli channels never show them. They only show the aerial-view shots of bombings taken by the army. And sometimes victims' accounts, but they're not illustrated. For example, we don't see the pictures of the hospitals in Gaza. So there's no real moral debate about the war here. People watch just to see if their army is efficient.

I'm appalled by this indifference. Yesterday I was talking to a friend. I told her that the daughter of a journalist friend of mine in Gaza, a six-year-old girl, was in such a state of shock that she couldn't even walk. She replied: "Her dad shouldn't have voted for Hamas." Afterwards, she corrected herself and insisted that she didn't wish any harm on civilians. But her initial reaction told a different story."

"We have a Palestinian freelancer in Gaza"

Matan Drori is foreign news editor for Israel's second biggest newspaper, Maariv, based in Tel Aviv.

Israeli TV stations never show any shocking images of anyone. First of all, out of respect for the dead, secondly because we don't want to show those gory things (when children could be watching, for example) and thirdly because they push emotional buttons — it's irresponsible. Even at the height of the intifada, when bombs were set off in buses and restaurants, heads were disconnected from bodies, yes, we saw those images, but we didn't pass them on to our audiences. It doesn't matter whether it's an Arab or an Israeli.

For information, from inside Gaza we have a Palestinian freelancer there. He's a nationalist — you can't operate in Gaza unless you're pro-Hamas and anti-Israel. But he's also professional. It's not easy, but we cooperate well together. And I wish the Palestinians would do the same thing by showing the Israeli perspective. The Palestinians, including Hamas, are happy to talk to the Israeli press, but they're not happy to listen.

We're criticised from both sides within Israel. But we can't be objective, we're Israelis; of course we'll report an Israeli family getting hurt before a Palestinian one."

"We ask people to look for headlines [...] and add a comment reminding people about the eight years of rockets we've had"

Niv Calderon, from Tel Aviv, has devoted his social-media Web site, nivcalderon.com, to the media battle over the Gaza conflict , and also contributes to Help Us Win.

It's not about reporting, it's about conversation. We're fighting for public opinion. You look at the BBC, for example, and it's totally anti-Israeli, totally negative. So one thing we do is ask people to look for headlines like '500 Palestinians killed' and add a comment reminding people about the eight years of rockets we've had in Israel.

There's a huge war going on online — we are fighting a multi-platform, multi-language, cross-cultural, cross-technology battle — and many small battles, too. For example, someone stole my work — photos of the second Lebanese war in 2006 I'd put on Flickr — and wrote over them "defeated' and "losers", and then posted them online. I'm angry, I'm frustrated... that's what woke me up on Saturday and made me think "We're fighting a war", and that I needed to do something. We've got a lot of bullets for people to use."