Roth - How the media hijacked the campaign to free Gilad Shalit

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
20 July '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/07/20-jul-11-how-media-hijacked-campaign.html

New York's Jewish Week today published the op ed below written by one of this blog's authors.

Something awful has happened to the campaign to free Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped more than five years ago.

The liberal Israeli media has transformed what began as a non-partisan consensus effort into a political confrontation. The media goal, alongside the rescue of Gilad, is to achieve the mass release of Palestinian terrorists.

The catch phrase “we must free Shalit at any cost" has come to mean at any cost that involves the release of Palestinian murderers from Israeli prisons. As if no other cost is a valid option.

It is striking that Israel’s mass media, ostensibly bolstering the Shalit family, has not lent support to the family’s recent attempts to save Gilad by the following means: stemming the cash flow from Israel to the Palestinian Authority; canceling Israeli prison perks for Palestinian prisoners; interrupting services (gas, water, electricity) to Gazan residents; and pressuring the United States and Europe to halt their financial assistance to Hamas.

Columnist Alon Idan conceded this politicization in the pages of Haaretz last week when he wrote: "The left is in favor of releasing Shalit, the right is against it and the center says it's in favor but acts against it."

He ignored the fact that the largely liberal media itself is a prime culprit. Its decision to support one exclusive means to rescue Shalit, in exchange for the mass release of prisoners, has profoundly affected the situation.

Any time that the Shalit family has embraced alternative tactics, the media has ignored them. Only the prisoner “swap”, as the lopsided proposed exchange is called, has garnered supportive articles.

The press has presented myriad arguments to boost its position. A favorite has been to ridicule, as Idan does, the “mumbles of objection.” He posits that “the tumult” surrounding this issue is just a way of “dealing with the need to keep prisoners with ‘blood on their hands’ where they belong.”

Why I’m not marching

What does the new Schalit campaign hope to accomplish? Is there anyone in the country who does not already think that Gilad should be freed?


R. Stewart Weiss
Op-Ed/JPost
05 July '10

Yesterday, I received a call from the well-organized and highly-efficient Gilad Schalit March Committee, asking if I would join its parade when it reached our area. Politely and with no little reticence, I said, “No.”

I have marched for any number of causes throughout my life. I marched against the war in Vietnam while a student in the ’60s; I marched in protest at the French embassy during France’s arms boycott of Israel, and screamed, “Poo, Poo, Pompideau!” I marched with 250,000 Jews from around the world in the famous March on Washington for Soviet Jewry in 1987; I marched countless times on behalf of the State of Israel. I have even marched to save the whales and the ecology.

Those marches were pure of purpose and had a solid, sensible goal behind them: To raise public awareness and convince the powers that be to right a terrible wrong.

But what is the raison d’etre of the Schalit campaign? What does it hope to accomplish by this nationwide campaign? Is there a Jew anywhere in the country who does not already think that Gilad should be freed? Is there any decent Jew in this country who is unaware of his plight, or who is apathetic and unsympathetic to it? Clearly, beyond the march being a “happening” and the “thing to do,” this summer, it is meant to place unbearable pressure on the prime minister and members of the Knesset. Noam Schalit has said just that in so many words, “We will march to the Prime Minister’s Residence and will not leave until Gilad is with us!” he exhorts the marchers.

But just what does he want Bibi to do? Hasn’t Netanyahu already leapfrogged over every previous red line and agreed to free 1,000 terrorists and murderers, including many with blood dripping from their hands? Hasn’t he already, under intense pressure, agreed to disregard the expert opinion of both the military – who risked and forfeited countless lives to capture these monsters – and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and let these despicable criminals go? No, the endgame of this march is as obvious as it is ominous: We should allow our archenemy Hamas to set the agenda, list the most outrageous demands and then capitulate to its every sinister wish.

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Will Tying A Yellow Ribbon Bring Gilad Shalit Home?

LatmaTV
02 July '10

The Tribal Update discusses the role of Israeli hostages in selling CDs and newspapers.



For this week's full Tribal Update 57, click here


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The Shalitean movement

Doron Rosenblum
Haaretz
01 July '10

(While not my normal first choice of articles to read, Doron hits a number of points in this piece, about what amounts to a media created circus. Take your choice of whichever seem to best characterize the scene.)

I just have a question. I too am in favor of returning Gilad Shalit at-about-any-price, and I too want to join the mass movement supporting this. But before that, I wanted to find out what it's actually all about. Is this a protest against the government - or in favor of the Hamas position in the negotiations? Is this a support group for the soldier's parents - or just a way of tying on yellow ribbons supplied by the yellow press? Is this ad hoc organizing for something specific - or a form of mass psychosis which effectively undermines its primary purpose? Is it a cult, a religion or what? Or, given the style of the protest, is this some sort of group therapy? Is it defeatist or patriotic - or both?

I would be happy to have this clarified before I pack, tie, cut or whatever.

Joe Naive, Tel Aviv

Hi Joe,

Your questions partly contain the answers. We could easily reply "all of the above," but that would do an injustice to all the well-intentioned folks, who organized from the outset to support this tormented family and to urge (which of the sides? ) to move ahead with a reasonable deal. However, being familiar with the history of religion, we know it often happens that a human activity that derives from particular circumstances loses its original context and takes on new dynamics whose only relation to the original intentions is purely coincidental - and sometimes the opposite. This phenomenon is nicely summed up in the Monty Python film "Life of Brian," which shows how a single torn sandal can give rise to a whole religion.

This should not be construed to mean that a religion has already formed around the cause of one soldier. However, as in the narratives of the established religions, it appears that some of the movement's rituals have already assumed a life of their own and have become the goal, while the fate of the captive is only a pretext. But a pretext for what? For the warm feeling generated by gathering around an illusory common denominator, albeit one that is temporary and prosthetic, during a period of political polarization? For the feeling of collective self-victimization, in which the cause of one soldier becomes a kind of national definer of identity, in the absence of true political leadership? Such questions are perhaps best left to the theologians.

In any event, if you join the movement, it's important to see the forest for the trees. And also - indeed, above all - to remember that in the holiest religious places, you always find beggars, brokers, pickpockets and charlatans hanging out.

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