Israel: the Land without the Censorship
The rise of new media and digital technologies has provided opportunity to the citizens worldwide to expand and elaborate their knowledge as regards subjects and debates of urgent global and local matters.
Thus, the introduction of digital media and social media platforms to the contemporary societies has enabled the formation of forum for free public expression concerning various socio-economic and political issues and has provided valuable content of information in relation to the different civil perspectives and standpoints. In this sense, Israel can be given as an example of a land with strong and united position as regards its national and international polities but which standpoint has not been fairly covered by the global media.
Israel is highly developed country with great cultural and strong identity values. The country is located in the Middle East region and has had formal military conflicts with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
This past makes Israel frequently described as violent and fierce land[1] but what intrigues me more is that modern Israel still keeps this image due to the media coverage of the state`s present conflict with Palestine.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has started as a communal conflict between the Jews and Palestinians who live in British ruled Palestine and has evolved into interstate conflict between Israel and the Arab states during the War in 1948–1949. The occupation of West Bank and Gaza Strip has emerged in 1967 and since then the conflict is still on focus.
Presently, the media is highly involved in the conflict by covering the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks mostly as an endless process which depends more on external negotiations between geo-political super powers rather than the directly involved states. Such media reflection does not seem to encourage potential positive outcomes as regards the topic but seems to initiate more contradictions among the public.
As result, the Israeli-Palestinian peace has become recognizable by the audience as temporary extended case in which Israel is repeatedly represented as state in need of conflict and Palestine as the next victim of this need.
Matter of Peace or Matter of Gaining News Coverage?
In August 2016, UNHCR has released its Progress Report mid-2016 concerning the UN Global Strategy of ending the detention of asylum-seekers and refugees for the period 2014–2019. In this report, Israel demonstrates willingness to support asylum-seekers and refugees,without matter of their nationality, by introducing a maximum time limit on detention in law, providing technical knowledge and accelerating the process of acceptance the asylum claims of children.
Moreover, only in the first half of 2016, Israel has delivered nearly 89 000 trucks of goods in southern Gaza. It is also a fact that the country has never stopped the humanitarian deliveries to Gaza despite the attacks of Hamas against the Israeli citizens. Information that remains accessible for the international organizations and visible only in the local newspapers.
[1] Bar-Tal, D. & Salomon, G. (2006), Israeli-Jewish Narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Evolvement, Functions and Consequences. In R.I. Rotberg (Ed.). Israeli and Palestinian narratives of conflict: History`s Double Helix. Bloonington: Indiana University Press, p. 4
