By Brigitte L. Nacos
The following is the lead in today’s
article by Rachel Shabi published in The Guardian:
“Israel believes its has won broad international support in the media for its actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message to the world's press.” Shabi reports furthermore, that “Israeli officials have also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes.”
If true, such a PR victory would be a remarkable change from the experience during the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. But a less than cursory review of some media content does not reveal the most important coverage patterns and characteristics and their likely impact on audiences.
For a week now, newspaper headlines and broadcast leads refer typically to Israel’s “assault” or “attack” on Gaza—not to rockets launched from Gaza against Israeli targets as the cause of renewed hostilities. But neither headlines nor the explanations that Israeli officials give in the international broadcast media match the dominance of mass-mediated images of Palestinian children and women killed and injured by Israeli airstrikes. Take today’s online slideshow in the New York Times titled “Seventh Day of Gaza Attack,” eight of the 11 images depict scenes in Gaza, 3 show damage in Israel caused by rockets launched by Hamas. A Washington Post report from Beersheba titled “On Both Sides of the Border, Wounded Bodies and Minds,” is accompanied by the heartbreaking picture of a wounded Palestinian boy being carried into Shifa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. A comprehensive slide show on the Post’s web site includes several photographs of sites in Israel hit by Hamas rockets and Israelis mourning victims of such attacks but most and the most shocking visuals are of Palestinian victims and their loved-ones.
I mention the Times and Post as examples here because there is no reason to suspect that these newspapers would wittingly slant their headlines, articles, and visuals of this conflict against Israel and in favor of Hamas. It is in the nature of asymmetrical warfare that more harm is inflicted on the weaker side and that this is reflected in the news. More so than in the past, today’s instant and 24/7 global reporting of such conflicts plays into the hands to terrorists, insurgents—the weaker side.
This, then, is the reality: Terrorism may be the weapon of the weak. But when relatively weak organizations receive massive support in form of military hardware from state sponsors and challenge militarily strong states in asymmetric warfare, they tend have several advantages. First, as Hezbollah demonstrated in the 34-day conflict with Israel, the weaker party in such cases has enough fire power to inflict physical and emotional damage on state opponent that have formidable military forces. Second and more importantly, since there tend to be far more fatalities, casualties, and damages on the part of the weaker party, the mass-mediated images of death and suffering and destruction result in a publicity bonanza for the weaker side. That advantage is obvious during the current violent clash between Israel and Hamas. Who would not be shocked and moved by the many pictures of Palestinian victims? These images fuel the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel demonstrations around the globe. Third, the statistics of victims alone work in favor of the weaker and against the stronger side. News reports keep count. Right now there are 400 killed Palestinians versus "only" 4 killed Israelis. Although numbers do not reveal anything about the complexities of these sorts of conflicts, they contribute to the perception that the strong side is the offender and the weak side the defender and victim.
To overcome these odds and to win the PR battle takes more than an advantage in terms of broadcast minutes by officials making the case for the stronger side.
Does Israel have the equivalent of our General David Petraeus and his team of "warrior intellectuals"?
Posted by: Eric Chen | January 11, 2009 at 01:18 PM
Eric: Indeed, if the stronger side acts in order to defend itself,if the war it wages is a just one--media coverage should not interfere.
Unfortunately, government and public opinion around the world are influenced by these lopsided news accounts. As a result, there are far more sympathies for the typically greater suffering of those populations that are used as shields and endangered by the weaker actors--whether terrorists or insurgents.
That's what we saw in the 2006 IDF clash with Hezbollah and now with Hamas.
And by the way, in this case I do agree with President Bush's criticism of Hamas for causing this conflict and the terrible costs that Palestinians in Gaza once again pay. Given the president-elect's statement during last year's visit in Israel, I assume, that he sticks to what he said then.
Posted by: Brigitte | January 05, 2009 at 10:55 AM
One of my favorite quotes about Operation Iraqi Freedom is relevant for Israel's current campaign: http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2008/02/revisiting-tom-junods-case-for-george-w.html
"... war is undertaken at the risk of the national soul. The moral certainty that makes war possible is certain only to unleash moral havoc, and moral havoc becomes something the nation has to rise above. We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied—pristine. Anyway, we are well beyond that now. The question is not, and has never been, whether we can fight a war without perpetrating outrages of our own. The question is whether the rightness of the American cause is sufficient not only to justify war but to withstand war's inevitable outrages. The question is whether—if the cause is right—we are strong enough to make it remain right in the foggy moral battleground of war."
- Tom Junod
As we've learned - and needed to learn - in Iraq, for modern liberal Western nations, of which Israel is one, it's insufficient to defeat the enemy on the battlefield and declare victory. In modern liberal Western politics, and for the media that deliberately frames our politics, the perception (fair or not) of being the victimizer is politically debilitating and victims are granted political power. That's good and right in principle, but also exploitable by those who do not share our principles. Therefore, for the stronger side, when that side is a modern liberal Western nation, victory requires not only defeating the enemy, but establishing a tangible long-term better state in the defeated enemy's domain. The non-liberal 'weaker' enemy - whether Hamas or the Iraq insurgents - understands this as a vulnerability they do not share and the more they can promote suffering among the people, and use the media to blame their liberal enemy for the suffering, the stronger they are.
As President Bush's stubborness (which, hopefully, President-elect Obama will inherit) and the Petraeus-led counterinsurgency strategy also has taught us in Iraq, the modern-day guerilla strategy you discuss in this post can be defeated, but it requires more intimate engagement - not less - and a long and patient, intelligent, full-spectrum, and expensive commitment by the occupier to build the liberal peace. These peace-building efforts must endure even when the mission becomes protracted and ugly due to our own entering incompetencies and learning curve, the inevitable circumstances of change on this scale, and the sabotage of a ruthless calculating intelligent enemy. They must endure even when the mission becomes unpopular and misunderstood within the liberal societies of the occupier, and used cynically for political gain by competitive political entities within those societies.
How can Israel win this time? Move beyond 20th century thinking and learn from America's 21st century strategy in the War on Terror. Do more than win on the battlefield. Stay to work for liberal security. Israel must not be cowed by the media-driven protests within the modern liberal West that aid the non-liberal enemy and, therefore, perpetuate the suffering that empowers the enemy. Israel must first decisively defeat and disenfranchise the non-liberal enemy. Then, Israel must not settle for being a realist occupier for the sake of maintaining a security buffer for Israel proper; Israel must be a liberal occupier, as we've been in Iraq, and endure the costs in order to transform the region by building towards a modern liberal peace.
One can hope the media will choose to err on the side of the forces that work for long-term solution through liberal reform rather than continue to synchronize their efforts, deliberately or not, with the non-liberal enemy's open strategy of perpetuating a destructive status quo.
Posted by: Eric Chen | January 03, 2009 at 08:48 PM
One of my favorite quotes about Operation Iraqi Freedom is relevant for Israel's current campaign: http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2008/02/revisiting-tom-junods-case-for-george-w.html
"... war is undertaken at the risk of the national soul. The moral certainty that makes war possible is certain only to unleash moral havoc, and moral havoc becomes something the nation has to rise above. We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied—pristine. Anyway, we are well beyond that now. The question is not, and has never been, whether we can fight a war without perpetrating outrages of our own. The question is whether the rightness of the American cause is sufficient not only to justify war but to withstand war's inevitable outrages. The question is whether—if the cause is right—we are strong enough to make it remain right in the foggy moral battleground of war."
- Tom Junod
As we've learned - and needed to learn - in Iraq, for modern liberal Western nations, of which Israel is one, it's insufficient to defeat the enemy on the battlefield and declare victory. In modern liberal Western politics, and for the media that deliberately frames our politics, the perception (fair or not) of being the victimizer is politically debilitating and victims are granted political power. That's good and right in principle, but also exploitable by those who do not share our principles. Therefore, for the stronger side, when that side is a modern liberal Western nation, victory requires not only defeating the enemy, but establishing a tangible long-term better state in the defeated enemy's domain. The non-liberal 'weaker' enemy - whether Hamas or the Iraq insurgents - understands this as a vulnerability they do not share and the more they can promote suffering among the people, and use the media to blame their liberal enemy for the suffering, the stronger they are.
As President Bush's stubborness (which, hopefully, President-elect Obama will inherit) and the Petraeus-led counterinsurgency strategy also has taught us in Iraq, the modern-day guerilla strategy you discuss in this post can be defeated, but it requires more intimate engagement - not less - and a long and patient, intelligent, full-spectrum, and expensive commitment by the occupier to build the liberal peace. These peace-building efforts must endure even when the mission becomes protracted and ugly due to our own entering incompetencies and learning curve, the inevitable circumstances of change on this scale, and the sabotage of a ruthless calculating intelligent enemy. They must endure even when the mission becomes unpopular and misunderstood within the liberal societies of the occupier, and used cynically for political gain by competitive political entities within those societies.
How can Israel win this time? Move beyond 20th century thinking and learn from America's 21st century strategy in the War on Terror. Do more than win on the battlefield. Stay to work for liberal security. Israel must not be cowed by the media-driven protests within the modern liberal West that aid the non-liberal enemy and, therefore, perpetuate the suffering that empowers the enemy. Israel must first decisively defeat and disenfranchise the non-liberal enemy. Then, Israel must not settle for being a realist occupier for the sake of maintaining a security buffer for Israel proper; Israel must be a liberal occupier, as we've been in Iraq, and endure the costs in order to transform the region by building towards a modern liberal peace.
One can hope the media will choose to err on the side of the forces that work for long-term solution through liberal reform rather than continue to synchronize their efforts, deliberately or not, with the non-liberal enemy's open strategy of perpetuating a destructive status quo.
Posted by: Eric Chen | January 03, 2009 at 08:43 PM