Gaza: censorship's vain battles

The Gaza crisis has shown propaganda at work on all sides. But it has also demonstrated that censorship is not working.
The Israeli government in a major departure from what should be expected from a democracy (it is not the first unfortunately. Remember the U.S. in Iraq….) has banned the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza. The pretext is “to protect the safety of journalists in an obviously very risky urban warfare context. However, this decision, as Aidan White (general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists) stated, should be left to assignment editors and not to the state of Israel.
The reality is that Tsahal does not want journalists to witness the way it makes war. The pattern of violation of international humanitarian law is bound to increase world opinion anger, to create problems of conscience in a country that is convinced that its army behaves more ethically than its enemies, and to boost the support for Hamas.
The Israelis have increased that impression that free press is the enemy by bombing media installations in Gaza, a new example in a list of shooting and bombing “incidents” that have led some media organizations to suggest that the Israeli army voluntarily “targets” journalists.

Inefficient PR
On Monday the Spanish paper El Pais described with a lot of irony the Israeli public relations machine.on the outskirts of Gaza. The tone of the article clearly indicated that the foreign correspondents did not swallow their minders’ arguments.
The Israeli government is out of sync with the new realities of global media. It tries to trigger feelings of loyalty, guilt or fear on the part of journalists much more than to provide facts and rational explanations. However this attempt is ruined by the images and testimonies than come from Gaza despite the closure and the war. Indeed Israel has not been able to stop the flow of negatives stories and dramatic pictures on the impact of its attacks. Although Israeli PR experts have moved to YouTube and Twitter the Israeli minders appear not to know the existence of Al-Jazeera or the “blogging and SMS revolution”. The technology of communications has won over the technology of war.
Even if Israel would be able (it is trying in fact) to stop all hostile communications from Gaza the news blockade would create an exponential wave of furor. The illusion of imposing silence was demonstrated during the Kosovo war: as French diplomat and bestselling author Jean-Christophe Rufin wrote at the time, the absence of images from Kosovo dramatized the situation and led to exaggerated assumptions on the levels of Serb brutality against the trapped Kosovars. This in turn increased the support for the Nato intervention against the Belgrade army.
Although the current PR campaign seems to show that Israel is anxious to present its case in the best of light the attitude of its army on the ground sends the message that a free press is not welcome where it is operating. That opens up a wide space for Hamas propaganda and leads most journalists to sharpen their mistrust of official Israeli statements.
The best argued denunciation of Israeli censorship comes indeed from Establishment news organizations, from the New York Times to the Committee to Protect Journalists, that cannot be accused of being biased in favour of Hamas.