We live, supposedly, in a place and time where most of the information that is relevant to our lives is open and accessible. Media outlets in Israel are free to report (with the exception of specific censorship restrictions), everyone can connect to the internet and the government does not restrict access to social media.
Nevertheless, there seems to be an enormous gap in information, and therefore also in awareness, between Israelis and the rest of the world when it comes to the war in the Middle East. A recent example of this is the Israel Defense Forces airstrike Monday near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. While internet users around the world were exposed to horrific videos of the fire that the attack set off in a tent camp for people displaced by the war, in Israel, it is likely that even now only a few people are aware of the incident.
According to the reports, at least four people were killed, including a woman and a child, and at least 43 were wounded in the incident. Relative to the unreasonable level of pain and blood we experience every day, this is not an "exceptional" event. Still, it triggered a relatively harsh response from the U.S. government, which even registered an explicit protest to Israel. It is not certain that many Israelis heard about the protest, either, but those who did must have struggled to understand it.
The explanation for the unusual condemnation lies in the videos themselves, which show – there is no delicate way to put this, nor should there be – people being burned alive. "The images and video of what appear to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike are deeply disturbing," a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council said in a statement Monday night.
Most people who are faced with such images, regardless of their political views, will struggle to accept statements about a "precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center" as justification. The cold explanations in the style of "c'est la guerre" are unsatisfactory as well.
Without reading or hearing at least a verbal description of the videos, then, it is difficult to comprehend the international reaction to this incident and the prevailing position regarding the war. But even though there was no official restriction on the media or social media that blocked Israelis' exposure to the incident, the coverage of it amounted to a few laconic reports on news websites, focusing mainly on the U.S. reaction.
The easiest thing to do in this regard is to blame the Israeli media for failing to do its job. In an op-ed, Ido David Cohen concludes that the victims in Gaza have become invisible, most Israeli reporters are mouthpieces for the military, the conversation is dominated by extremism and Arabs and Palestinians are excluded from the radio and TV studios.
Israeli tanks take position at the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, on Tuesday.Credit: Amir Cohen/ REUTERS
This isn't new, but as in other areas of life this trend has become more extreme. So have self-censorship for "patriotic" reasons and commercial censorship, the latter in order not to lose viewers and advertisers.
Last week, the Israeli investigative journalist Ilana Dayan said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour that aired on CNN October 3 that the Israeli media "are not covering enough" the "tragedy in Gaza." She is right. The right attacks her aggressively for this, in a reprehensible manner, but the question must also be asked: Ilana, what's stopping you from covering it?
The Israeli media's self-censorship is not the only explanation. Not only are Israelis emotionally immersed first of all in their own anxieties and enormous challenges, but there are also the algorithms of social media, which silo everyone's world so that they are only exposed to what the algorithm determines in advance that they will "like."
In a world that is supposedly more open than ever, we are trapped in closed bubbles as never before. And just as the current erosion of democratic values is being done not by tanks in the streets but rather by leaders who were elected, the disconnection from the information pipeline and the control of awareness is not necessarily done by means of official censorship but rather by voluntary and invisible forces.