No subject

Israeli news "farteiched und farbessered"

To read the English internet version of Haaretz of January 4th, you
wouldn't know that some ten thousand marchers had protested their
government's policy and attack on Gaza the night before in Tel Aviv or
that earlier that day, many tens of thousands (some estimates have
quoted 70 to 100 thousand), Jews and Palestinian Arab citizens of
Israel, marched their protest through the Arab town of Sakhnin in the
Galilee. They're not part of the reality constructed by Haaretz's
English website. On January 4th, one headline=97topping an item picked
up from Associated Press read: "Protesters across Europe urge Israel
to end attacks on Gaza Strip" with no mention of domestic protests.
Haaretz, mind you, is the newspaper often cited as a central example
of Israel's relatively critical and truthful media.

Though the Hebrew website published items on both the above protests
above, Haaretz's report on the Tel Aviv march was headlined: "Hundreds
demonstrated throughout the country in protest =85". The article
actually says that, "thousands participated in a protest march =85 in
Tel Aviv" and that "tens of thousands of demonstraters" protested in
Sakhnin (my translation), but the dismissive "hundreds" of the
headline might well convince you to skip such insignificant details.
Today, one day later, as I'm writing this analysis, the Hebrew website
of Haaretz no longer features even this headline; it can only be
accessed via the archive and the item itself is only available for
purchase.

A powerful "die-in" staged on Friday, January 3rd, by about 20
activists, at the entrance to an air force base situated in the posh
northern Tel Aviv quarter known as "Tochnit Lamed" (see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DWpeC7P-2LfU), hasn't been reported on
to date by Haaretz in English, though the English version of Ynet
carried an item on it
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3649206,00.html). In
Monday's print version in Hebrew Haaretz included a "box" briefly
reporting on this action, which is absent from both the Hebrew and
English websites.

This is just a quick and superficial survey of how reality is
filtered, "farteiched und farbessered" (abridged and improved, as a
Yiddish adapter is reputed to have claimed of his rendering of
Shakespeare) by Israeli media, in translation to English.