Wednesday, November 28, 2001 Kislev 13, 5762 Israel Time: 17:34 (GMT+2)
Israel's news media and public at large: Making their peace with terrorism?
By Rogel Alpher, Ha'aretz Correspondent
Had the Tuesday terrorist attack in Afula killed 20 and not two, or had it occurred in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center instead of a hinterland town, it would naturally have turned into a major news story.
As it was, however, the routinized, nearly offhand coverage made it clear that the term "terror attack" has become too broad and inclusive to describe the range of terrorist operations being executed against the citizens of Israel.
The goings-on in the various news media outlets are illustrative of the mood of the public. It is possible that we are dealing here with a process of maturation. Perhaps one of making one's peace with it. Habituation. Fatigue, maybe. Apathy. Normalization of the abnormal. It's possible that the sight of the collapse of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center - seared into the consciousness as the mother of all terrorist attacks - forever altered the scale. Had Tuesday's attack in Afula lacked any deaths at all, it would have been considered a terror "attackette" - no more than a mosquito bite on the flesh of the nation.
Two terrorists armed with AK-47 assault rifles entered the Afula bus station late Tuesday morning and began firing indiscriminately at anything and everything. Two people were killed and dozens wounded, some of them seriously. A dramatic pursuit ensued, with a gun battle in the open market. Not something to be taken lightly.
Had this taken place against a background of general calm, during a period of tranquility, the entire prime-time broadcast schedule would have been erased. Israel Channel One would have devoted all of its "Seven Thirty" news program to it, including extended interviews with eyewitnesses, survivors and relatives, up-to-the-minute dispatches from the hospital emergency room and conversations with cabinet ministers and Knesset members. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi would have been pressed for a response, and would rate a cool, even hostile reception from the anchors. The Israeli pop music program "Made in Israel" would be cancelled, and "Seven Thirty" be appended to the centerpiece "Mabat" nightly news broadcast, for two continuous hours of obsessive, repetitive and annoying treatment of the story.
However, "Made in Israel" was broadcast as usual Tuesday night. The Afula attack was given 10 minutes on "Seven Thirty," at least half of which was an interview with Border Police commander Major-General Ya'acov Ganot, dealing mostly with the problems of policing the Green Line, Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank, and not with the attempt to carry out a mass slaughter in Afula.
At the end of an update on the arrival of new U.S. envoy and retired Marine general Anthony Zinni, the news broadcast freed itself for a prolonged discussion of the development of the Negev.
At the same time, Channel Two's news division refrained from canceling "World Order," its program of foreign news. The channel's main 8 P.M. news broadcast carried two reports of three minutes each - a summary of the incident and a color sidebar from the hospital - six minutes in all. And after the news, as planned, the station broadcast its glitzy quiz show "Hakasefet" (The Money Vault).
No hysteria. No bellowing. No loss of composure or perspective. Correspondent Aharon Barnea was not dispatched to stand, grief-stricken, outside the house of one of the bereaved families. At times the detached, businesslike tone was so surprising that it seemed as though the subject in question was a great drama transpiring far from here, perhaps a terrorist attack by Zapatists in Mexico City.
The main television news broadcasts moved on to other items after the Afula attack. The television schedule returned to normal broadcasting. The television index is more reliable than any poll for measuring the public's attitude to Palestinian terror - the Afula events hardly left an imprint.
The frequency of terror has made it a banal fact of life. Like a monsoon in India or a hurricane in Florida, it is a natural disaster that is part of the climate, part of the deal of living in the region. After all, news means things that have not happened before.
The banal attack now has a status of a serious traffic accident. It is accepted with dulled emotions, with a nod of the head, with condolences. That is precisely what appeared on the screen Tuesday night: a shrug. |
