Militarism and Israeli Society

4 Intractable Conflict and the Media

95 four Intractable Conflict and the Media Yoram Peri From a Postwar to a Warring Society Growing recognition of media influence in society has led scholars of civil–military relations in Israel, as elsewhere, to pay increasing attention to the way the media interacts with the military, war, or “military affairs,” as the realm of national security has come to be known.1 These scholars are mindful of the rapid changes that have affected the media ecology in Israel since the early 1990s: proliferation and diversification of media outlets, the growing ascendancy of profit considerations, globalization , changes in the modes of action and in the professional culture, and more. Scholars also dwell on the changes that have occurred in the media ’s approach to military affairs. They note the opening of the military to civilian systems and the media’s encroachment on military spheres, which in the past were shielded from civilian eyes, such as elite security organizations, Mossad, the Air Force, and the Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shabak). Even the previously hush-hush nuclear issue has not escaped this opening. Concurrent with this is the reduced standing of military correspondents, hitherto the main channel through which military –media relations were conducted, and above all the media’s everincreasing criticism of the military. Broad consensuses over the transformation notwithstanding, scholars are divided between two fundamental approaches to these changes. One school holds that the media enjoyed considerable empowerment in 96 · yoram peri the late 1990s, largely thanks to the easing of restrictions over its freedom of action (seen in the diluted power of military censorship) and the adoption of a critical approach toward the national defense establishment , even so far as slaughtering the sacred cow of security. All of the above serve to demonstrate the extent to which the traditional role of the military has contracted and the mechanisms of civilian control over it have strengthened.2 Adherents of this school, however, offer a variety of interpretations for the developments described here. Some ascribe them to the media’s structural and functional changes.3 A broader explanation relates these developments to the general decline in statism—of which the military is the ultimate expression—to the rise of civil society, and to processes of individualization in Israeli society, manifested in the citizens’ demand for a larger contribution to determining their fate, including in the national security sphere.4 Proponents of the second school argue that although media–security relations have undergone a change, the basic pattern, in fact, remains unchanged. Even though the Israeli media of the 1990s were more diverse than those of the 1950s, more inquisitive, and more suspicious of the political and military establishment, they did not really act as representatives of the citizens vis-à-vis the apparatus of government: “More than the media represent society vis-à-vis the state; they serve the state vis-à-vis the citizens.”5 Since their establishment, the Israeli media have served the Zionist ideology, continue to disseminate the national narrative ,6 and serve as a socialization agent of the military–political elite. At bottom, the media, like institutions of education and other socialization agents, cause their clients to internalize the centrality of the military and of war, accepting them as inevitable and justified, as a natural part of life, and in this way they construct Israeli militarism.7 The distinction between these two viewpoints on the specific question of media–security relations reflects the general division between the traditional and radical paradigms in social sciences in general and media studies in particular. However, even among those who do not share the critical approach—whether it is neo-Marxist, poststructuralist , or neocolonialist—there are some who believe that the changes in media–security relations barely touch the surface and do not necessarily suggest a substantive transformation. intractable conflict and the media · 97 Which of the two schools more properly describes the profound process occurring in Israeli society? Do the changes, whose existence nobody denies, really reflect a fundamental transformation, or are they just superficial changes that in fact conceal more sophisticated systems of supervision and control that are used to restrict, restrain, and supervise the media, as in the past? A case in point is the increasing use of gag orders by the courts in the present decade, as well as the Attorney General’s invocation of clause 113 of the 1977 penal law, dealing with “severe espionage.” Might...