By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
A cross-section of Israeli newspapers in 1949 (photo by Zoltan Kruger via Wikipedia)
In its quest to shape the hearts and minds of Jews both inside and outside the country, Israel’s media has staked out positions across the political spectrum. By turns fascinating, energizing, exhausting and frustrating, Israeli news media is a microcosm of opinion-making within a nation modest in geography yet vast in ideology.
Even limiting one’s attention to English-language editions of newspaper and electronic/broadcast outlets, the stark contrasts between left-and-right of center can landscape be easily gleaned. Add Hebrew-language and social media to the mix, and the landscape becomes exceptionally multilayered.
The ascendancy of digital media means that physical borders have ceased to define the reach of Israel’s news organizations. And just as is the case in the U.S., wealthy owners can bend coverage to align with their self-serving imperatives.
“The lion’s share of Israeli media is actually controlled by a small group of owners, about ten wealthy families of media moguls,” the Center for Media, Data and Society said in a 2020 report.
“Nearly all of the country’s major media assets are privately controlled, often part of larger private corporate structures that, under Israeli law, are not required to publish annual financial statements or make relevant financial disclosures to the government, and fiscal or media regulators,” the CMDS observed. “As a result, investigative journalists, analysts and even advertisers in the media market must rely on information leaks and rough estimates of enterprise value, circulation, revenue and income.”
All this makes it especially vital to parse a given news outlet so that its biases – both explicit and implicit – provide sufficient context to dissect its coverage.
The broader the bias, the more readily it can be appreciated. I remember my first exposure to an undisguised uber-conservative Israeli news source: Arutz Sheva (“Channel 7”), a one-time pirate radio station founded in 1988 by Orthodox Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed.
“It claims to be ‘the only independent national radio station in Israel,’” the UK’s BBC News observed in a Feb. 24, 1999 article, “and says it was ‘established to combat the ‘negative thinking’ and ‘post-Zionist’ attitudes so prevalent in Israel’s liberal-left media.’”
One of the earliest Israeli news outlets to recognize the borderless reach of the internet, Arutz Sheva was – for me, anyway – a revelation of sorts. Never had I encountered so pronounced a right-wing, in-your-face Israeli news entity. Its website, established way back in 1995, was unabashed in its support of settler presence on the West Bank. Arutz Sheva now broadcasts from its home the West Bank settlment of Beit El.
I vividly recall how Arutz Sheva, with as breathless intensity, reported in August 2005 how Israel Defense Forces personnel were removing almost 8,600 Israeli settlers from Gush Katif in southern Gaza. Its constituent settlements, which were summarily demolished as part of Israel’s decision to “disengage” from the Strip, had become an outsized flashpoint. And in the view of Arutz 7, disengagement was an act of catastrophic surrender.
Today, almost 20 years later, the two far-right members of Israeli’s governing coalition – National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – would like nothing more than to reestablish settlements in Gaza. No doubt they have media allies.
Of course, they also have media opponents. None is more vehement in than Haaretz, the Israel daily newspaper that regards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the most threatening political leader in the nation’s short history.
Many media-cognizant American Jews – me included – regard Haaretz’s English language edition as essential daily (make that hourly) reading. Its anti-Bibi stance is unmistakable, often bordering on gleeful.
As I write this on the morning of Thursday, Nov. 21, the paper’s web-front leads with the following headline: The ICC [International Criminal Court] Just Issued Netanyahu’s Arrest Warrant. He’s Counting on Trump to Save Him. Below, under the ongoing “Israel at War” subheading, there’s this piece, labeled “analysis,” by columnist Amos Harel: BibiLeaks Affair Redirects Fire Toward PMO [Prime Minister’s Office], at the expense of Israeli Democracy.
Donald J. Trump’s reelection as president will prompt untold column inches, videos, pixels, podcasts and similar emissions from Israeli media – left, center and right. This multiplicity of viewpoints reflects a healthy public discourse, while acknowledging that authoritarians often pay scant heed to opposition forces. Like we Americans, Israelis must decide if they’ll hold their leaders to proper account or cede democracy to autocracy – creeping at first, then brazen in its embrace of power –debilitating, depleting and ultimately, destructive.
Andrew Adler is the Managing Editor of Community.