Article

The Wallkeepers: Monitoring the Israeli-Arab Conflict

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Abstract

The chapter describes the way in which the mass media have handled the occupation. It suggests that Israel has concentrated on building an "Information Wall" that separates between the Arab and the Israeli societies, blocking information on what is happening in Palestinian society in particular-and thus perpetuating reciprocal stereotypes. The "Information Wall" grew higher as the physical distance between the rival populations decreased, remaining stable and effective after occupation of the territories. The Wallkeepers are developing immanent interests in perpetuating the "Information Wall" which is far more difficult to topple than a physical wall.

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... We can now say a few general words on the function of the media, which are among the major channels for disseminating the narratives that support the conflict through their themes, as in the Israeli Jewish case (see, for example, Caspi & Rubinstein, 2013;Neiger & Rimmer-Tsory, 2013;Sharvit & Bar-Tal, 2007;Yadgar, 2004). ...
... Through the years of the long conflict, the media has used unacceptable practices such as propaganda (Dor, 2005;Weimann, 2003), self-censorship (see, for example, Liebes, 1997, Ch. 4), manipulation (Elbaz, 2014), disinformation (Peri, 1998), and deception and lies (Dor, 2004) in order to mobilize Israeli society to support the governmental policies of conflict. Among the reasons for the acceptance of this particular role of media in Israel are reliance on official sources by the military elite (Caspi & Rubinstein, 2013;Peri, 2007bPeri, , 2008Sheffer & Barak, 2013) and marginalization of the opposition's criticism of the conflict (Levy, 2010). As a result, media agents supporting governmental policies and military operations enhance support within Israeli society for violence and continuation of conflicts, including the two wars that are studied in this paper. ...
... However, it is still far from being free and independent. First, in general most of the media channels are still committed to the official core narrative regarding the conflict, and during violent encounters almost all of them mobilize themselves to support the government (Caspi & Rubinstein, 2013;Sharvit & Bar-Tal, 2007). In addition, commercial media outlets are controlled by tycoons with private economic interests, which do not necessarily coincide with the public interest (Limor, 2003;Negbi, 2011). ...
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Societies involved in intractable conflicts develop cultures of conflict because of experiences that have lasting effects on every aspect of collective life. One product of these cultures is conflict-supporting narratives that provide illumination, justification, and explanation of the conflict reality. These narratives are selective, biased, and distortive, but play an important role in satisfying the basic sociopsychological needs of the society members involved. In these societies, journalists often serve as agents in the formulation and dissemination of these conflict-supporting narratives. The present study analyzes the presentations of narratives of the culture of conflict among Jewish Israeli journalists during Israeli wars in Lebanon. It elucidates the dominant themes of the narratives by content analysis of the news published in newspapers and broadcast on television. In addition, in order to reveal the practices used by journalists in obtaining, selecting, and publishing the news, in-depth interviews with journalists and politicians have been conducted.
... Targeted analysis of specific events renders it difficult to discern and evaluate extended processes. As the circumstances of the events vary, an event-based study enables assessment of the media's concrete attitude towards the circumstances but conceals the spirit of extended coverage and its most outstanding patterns, as well as the covert function of the information wall mentioned earlier [Caspi and Rubinstein, 2013]. To overcome this lacuna, the present study examines key conflict coverage patterns in leading newspapers and television channels over the designated seven-year period, determining the most salient conflictrelated issues raised and how they were framed in headlines and body text. ...
... Finally, content analysis cannot determine the reasons for a journalist's choice of one kind of coverage or another, although some hints are evident in this respect: massive reliance on establishment sources, as well as adoption of official framing and use of military and governmental terminology (reflected, for example, in media use of official definitions of events such as "war" or "operation," adoption of officially designated names of operations, use of terms such as "Israeli gestures" and the like) all attest that the Israeli media act under the inspiration of the political-defense elite and promote its views [Elbaz, 2014]. As Caspi and Rubinstein (2013) claim, the media create an "information wall" that serves the interests of the military-political establishment. ...
... It has been argued that the media in Israel are themselves hesitant to take on the responsibility that comes with eliminating censorship (Nossek & Limor, 2001). Newspaper editors and television & radio news editors have internalized the burden of military censorship, even when such censorship has not been called for (Liebes, 1997), because they did not want to be held responsible for publishing something that might damage Israel's security interests (Caspi & Rubinstein, 2013;Segal, 1996). In very simple terms, as noted, self-censoring of news information indicates that individuals informally control and regulate the flow of information (Bar-Tal, 2017). ...
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