Gaza Coverage Offers Many Questions, Few Answers

The week of the great Gaza disengagement is over -- and what did we learn?

We learned that even a right-wing government in Israel is capable of taking initiatives for peace as well as for war, and that its army and police can act in a disciplined and non-violent manner despite a history of complaints of excessive force and human rights abuses.

We learned that Israel is as divided as the United States, fragmented along many political and religious fault lines.

We learned that not all Israelis are believers in American democratic values, nor are they the legendary pioneers and Kibbutzniks who made the desert bloom. Many are true believers in messianic missions that put biblical beliefs above international law.

We learned that there are Jewish fanatics (who some in the Israeli Defense Force called "lunatics") who are driven by as much hatred and fundamentalist dogma as anyone on the "other side." And many of them are not natural born "Sabras" either -- but hostile transplants from Brooklyn with all the self-righteousness of born-again Israelis.

We learned that Jews also commit violent acts of terror, as in the unprovoked killing of Palestinian workers, or the assaults on soldiers with acid.

We learned that the TV media can occasionally cover events outside the United States, that don't just affect Americans, with some depth -- for more than a sound bite -- even when Michael Jackson or Madonna aren't around.

Note the emphasis on "some depth," because the coverage was deeply flawed and all too characteristic of the simplistic way TV news covers politics.

TV Thrives on Conflict

Conflict, drama and the plight of "sympathetic" victims are the mainstays of television narratives. Initially the settlers played that role, in what was pictured as a tragic dilemma that forced good people to lose their homes and faith in their leaders.

CNN compared their protests to the passive resistance of the American civil rights movement, with many stories featuring crying women and beleaguered men of God. Israel itself was pictured sympathetically as a country that was doing the right thing, against its own interests.

As it became clear that many of the resisters were not settlers at all, they were turned into vague "sympathizers" or "activists" standing up for their country and religion. Only later, when some turned violent, did the news frame change, making it clear that many had aggressive agendas.

Even as the Israeli media branded them "infiltrators" and right-wing extremists, CNN offered up images with little historic context or background. One "BREAKING NEWS" title said "Protesters Throw Things."

We never really learned who "they" were, what they believed, or who was funding them.

Or, for that matter, who is funding the billion-dollar disengagement, which rewarded most of the families who did go willingly from their state-sanctioned, subsidized communities with $400,000 apiece, presumably to be paid, eventually, by US taxpayers.

Why? The Unasked Question

Most importantly, we never really learned why this was happening, and how Ariel Sharon -- once called the "King of the Jews" by some, and the "Butcher of Beirut" by others, for the atrocities committed in 1982 Lebanon under his watch -- suddenly turned into a peace activist. All he would say is, "The changing reality in this country, in this region, and in the world required another reassessment and changing of positions."

Israeli writer Hillel Schenker was mystified. "So why is he doing this?," he asked in the Nation. The bestselling book Boomerang by journalists Ofer Shelah and Raviv Druker claims that he wanted to divert attention from corruption scandals involving himself and his sons -- something that Sharon categorically denies.

His senior adviser, lawyer Dov Weisglass, lists a number of reasons: concern when senior pilots and officers in elite combat units became refuseniks, declaring that they could no longer serve in growing "immoral occupations."