[Reader-list] APJ letter

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

I find the discussion on what the ex-president and weapons designer  
APJ Abdul Kalam said quite interesting. One of the things being  
remarked upon is his impression that the Indian media highlights  
negativity, as opposed, say to the media in Israel, which is always  
committed to a positive potrayal of what goes on in Israel.

I do not know from where the ex-president got this impression, or  
whether it is part of the current fascination with all things Israeli  
amongst apologists of a strong state, because, from my cursory  
familiarity with the Israeli press and media, segments of it are as  
robustly critical of life in Israel, as anywhere else. So, sorry to  
disappoint those on this list (and APJ Kalam) who think that the  
media in Israel is a flat, uniform delivery mechanism for 'good news'  
arrived at by consensus.

As an example, let me share below a text 'Hear the Other Side' by the  
Israeli journalist Avirama Golan from the mainstream Israeli  
newspaper Ha'aretz (this is from the English online edition) that I  
found particularly striking during the attacks on Gaza earlier this  
year.

-------------------------------
Hear the other side
By Avirama Golan
Tags: gaza, Israel news, Hamas
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057370.html

There's no doubt that the terrible tragedy of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al- 
Aish, who told Israeli television viewers in fluent Hebrew that he  
lost three daughters and a niece to an Israeli tank shell during the  
fighting in Gaza, has managed to finally penetrate the layer of cast  
lead that has sealed the ears of the Israeli public since the Gaza  
operation began. He made the killing suddenly appear tangible, close,  
shocking and threatening.

It's Abu al-Aish's bad luck that he's "one of us" no less than "one  
of them." He's an educated and successful physician who was offered a  
job at a Canadian hospital after he worked and conducted research at  
Israel's Soroka and Sheba medical centers. Moreover, and perhaps more  
importantly, he speaks Hebrew and is proficient in the codes that  
govern Israeli thinking and behavior. At a press conference in which  
he pleaded for an end to the Gaza war - and to war in general - he  
unconsciously appealed to the agitated mix of familial dedication and  
longing for a peaceful life, the enlightened Western format that  
constitutes the Israeli self-image.

Woe to Abu al-Aish; his efforts have come to nothing. While many  
television viewers who had previously followed only what had been  
presented to them as glorious military achievements shed a tear for  
his loss, a woman called Levana Stern - who was apparently granted  
blanket permission to speak abusively because of her status as mother  
of three soldiers - disrupted the press conference by shouting at the  
top of her voice: "I feel your pain, I'm totally with you, but who  
knows what was going on in your house!"
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People standing next to her, who were emboldened by her outburst,  
protested the audacity of the hospital where he spoke to the press  
for giving a platform to a Palestinian while Israeli soldiers were  
fighting in Gaza. One woman even passionately called him a "piece of  
trash." In despair, Abu al-Aish muttered, "They don't want to hear  
the other side."

So much ink has been spilled on academic research about the voice of  
the other in post-colonial society, and so many conferences and  
articles have determined that Israeli society has long ago passed the  
melting-pot stage and is now a multicultural society that makes space  
for the voice of the other. Now Abu al-Aish has inadvertently  
revealed how false that is. The residents of Gaza don't exist at all  
in the Israeli consciousness, failing even to merit the status of  
"other." But because the Gaza doctor works in Israel and has many  
Israeli acquaintances, he was given a chance that thousands of others  
have not had: the chance to speak on prime time (though only after  
the blood of his daughters Bisan, Mayer and Aya was spilled in his  
home).

Abu Al-Aish is not alone. Over the past years, Sderot residents have  
repeatedly been accused of failing to act responsibly when they stay  
there with their young children ("Why don't they evacuate them?"  
people ask). Even many reporters share the unfounded sentiment that  
everyone who could have left Sderot did so long ago, and only the  
unfortunates who have nowhere to go are still there.

True, residents of the periphery are not a hated "other" like the  
Palestinians, but they too are faceless and voiceless. Now the  
residents of Sderot have become the beloved children for whose sake  
the war was waged, but they will pay dearly for that. Some opponents  
of the war see them as extreme right-wingers whose complaints are  
exaggerated, saying that no Israeli child was killed by a rocket  
during the war, while thousands were killed in Gaza. And some of the  
war's supporters refuse to understand that the ongoing suffering of  
Negev residents has made them angry, frustrated and full of hate -  
but that the historic friendly ties they used to have with Gazans and  
the mutual desire for normalization are just as authentic. Those  
supporters also have contempt for the demand of thousands of  
residents of the south, led by the "A Different Voice" group from  
Sderot, who urged the government to do all it can to reach an  
agreement rather than go to war.

The warped logic that prevails on the left as well as the right means  
that whoever has not fled from Gaza to Canada is an impoverished  
laggard at best, and a Hamas supporter at worst, and whoever has not  
moved from Sderot to Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard is an uneducated  
and irresponsible Likud voter who brought this bad situation upon  
himself. This is how the so-called "others" are used to defining the  
Israeli consensus - an opaque and hate-filled consensus that denies  
the complex reality in favor of intensifying frightened entrenchment.


Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net