Israel's media
Photo: Rafi Ben Hakun
No king in Israel
Israeli media is not fulfilling its role and rather deals with personal annoying rituals
Four-year-old Oren drew a picture of a brain: round and colored with happy colors, with a blessing for Ariel Sharon, written by his father.
Oren came from Herzeliya to Jerusalem to visit the prime minister and to wish him a speedy recovery. He had no fear of the cameras stuck in
Ofer Shelah
Ofer Shelah
Whoever inherits Sharon's mantle must be more convincing than his predecessor
Infantilism, that's what Ofer Shelah called it: Public infantilism that translates into yearning for a tough leader, a father figure, a comforting presence that gives rise to hope. When this presence is unconscious and on life-supporter, what is the media supposed to do? Is its job during these times to serve as a faithful mirror for infantilism, or should it act like a responsible adult?
During Sharon's first night in hospital, the media did away with any shard of responsibility it once had. Appropriate empathy was shown until the next morning, and the public's concern about the prime minister's health came across nicely on measured and restrained broadcasts.
But Thursday morning to Sunday, on the cusp of history, TV and radio producers became court spokesmen for the sick king.
No media illness
After that first night, reality simply refused to comply with broadcast timeframes or with the ratings war over every neurological front. If there was any serious, measured adult left, it was Hadassah hospital director Prof. Shlomo Mor Yosef, who gently explained that medicine doesn't work with a stop watch and cannot be expected to work according to the pace of 21st century media. But the media failed to internalize these simple and wise words.
What did we see? "If" eulogies, for a man who was (and is still, at least as of this writing) still alive; "if" summaries of an era, but that failed to show the difficulties of the period. No, that wouldn't be nice, while the king is unconscious and on life-support, we won't harass him (or ourselves) with actual footage of reality. Isn't that right? We'll make due with legends, with glorifying his name, for his inner welfare.
Worrying echo
The special broadcasts, almost too tense for citizens of a democracy to watch, brought about a worrying echo of the long, insane days following the Rabin assassination. The folks who then hated the attempts to portray Rabin as holy could not have done anything but watched in amazement at what went on his screen this weekend.
With this amazement came also disgust. Three channels competed in a "who can be more sentimental" with the "almost" eulogies they put on the screen.
As if we needed proof, we proved that the most dangerous censorship is self-censorship. N glowing colors, they painted the image of a prime minister who was pursed by controversy until his very last day in office.
This attempt, which walks a fine line between proto-fascistic individual worship and complete stupidity – or, even more serious, the honest belief that the people are stupid - stems from complete confusion surrounding Israeli culture between the private sector and public life.
'After death everyone is a saint'
In the weekend summation reports, the media treated the prime minister as a private citizen who was being eulogized before his time, while remembering to wish him the polite phrase, "after death everyone is a saint."
That phrase is appropriate for family members and loved ones of the deceased, who send his soul on its way knowing that this is not the right time to dissect his complicated character. It would simply be distasteful, and it would cause suffering for the family.
And so, we got many glances into the "private Sharon." His incomparable manners, the terrific father, his deep love for combat soldiers, his commitment to Lili, his strong love for the view from his ranch.
But the prime minister's hobbies, his courage in battle and his relationship with his sons have nothing to do with a public role – it must be remembered – in which he did not rule due to the mercy of God, but rather filled a position thanks to the voters.
And in that sphere, Sharon conducted himself with controversy until his very last day in office. But in the public sphere there is a reality that does not translate well into the celebratory – mourning studios, with Aviv Gefen lamenting the end of an era and with other illusion reporting.
Responsible wrap-up
The responsible public wrap-up, if we are already doing this, has simply not been done. Amongst other things, Sharon leaves us with shocking poverty, Qassams, heavy suspicions about inappropriate connections between money and power, one of his sons has been convicted of perjury on behalf of his father, and another has temporarily escaped paying the price for his father's deeds by the skin of his teeth.
The final proof to this is that Sharon established an autocratic party in which all authority simply rested with him, and only with him.
The most interesting item to be broadcast this weekend, far from the pink mourning broadcasts, was a report about the state of the Kadima Party constitution, which currently imposes silence on party members: Every official party document says that Sharon will serve as the party's navigator, leader, and that he will make fateful decisions by himself. No member of Kadima will address the possibility that this may not actually be possible.
Sober observations
For years, we have claimed that Israel has a pluralistic media, free and multi-colored. This weekend, this appeared to be untrue. If it was, someone would have blinked first and said, " we can't go on like this, and if we are already summing up an era before the next neurological report, then we've got to sum up all his public activities, including his contributions to poverty and Qassams, and go back to the Lebanon War and the Mitla Pass. We must carefully consider each of these, even if the unconscious man in question is the king.
If we take a Bible in hand, not only to recite one more chapter of Psalms for the prime minister's recovery but also for a history lesson from the books of Kings and Chronicles, we find that every period of kingship in Judea and Israel was burdened with crises and hardship, both domestic and foreign, and are summed up in very unflattering terms for both the king and his rule.
The Bible knew how to preserve the essential cultural gap between public and private, and to place responsibility on the right shoulders, even those who ruled with the authority vested by God himself.
We can't know, and don't bother – and we contribute much to public infantilization spinning out of control around the prime minister.
Ariel Sharon is not dead; therefore, I also send wishes for a speedy recovery, and I wish him many long, pleasant years to enjoy the best that private life has to offer,
Media teams the world over will testify that they gathered at the hospital like ravens in order to compete for the role of messenger, to be the first ones to report. Neurologists warned it would be a long process and that 50 minutes of drama (less time for commercials) wouldn't cut it. But they ignored them.
If we really had true competition here between responsible media outlets, and if they understood the border between public and private, we would have seen fewer embarrassing reports about Sharon's latest urine test and more analysis about the state of Israeli democracy. Then, we would have learned that it is a lot stronger than it appears, and we would have seen that there is no gap between sentimental grief and the state of authority in Israel.
And now that there is no king in Israel, the media can begin some real soul searching about the manner in which it chose to present the image of the prime minister this past weekend, and about how far it is from fulfilling its mandate to put the truth on the screen.
