by David Harris
JERUSALEM, June 5 (Xinhua) -- There were divided opinions in the Israeli
media about U.S. President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo on Thursday. What
all media outlets, including the printed and the electronic, did unitedly
was the blanket coverage given to the address.
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Highlights of Obama's speech at Cairo
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The event was broadcast live on radio and television, and newspaper
websites updated it throughout the hour-long speech.
The prime time news shows gave most of their schedules over to Obama --
with clips from the speech, in-house analyses and interviews with government
ministers.
"If Obama doesn't just make do with words and is actually bound by all
these principles, there's no doubt it's going to be a stormy period between
Israel and the United States," the veteran anchor of the independent Channel 10
news Jacob Eilon summarized.
Always looking for the sensational, the Israeli journalists hyped the
negatives of Obama's speech, as many Israelis would see them.
Obama spoke of a total end to Israel's settlement activity in the West
Bank, the need to cease its stranglehold on the occupied territories and most
worryingly, according to some media pundits, the green light for a civilian
nuclear program in Iran.
"He didn't even try to be balanced," said Eilon from his perch above the
River Nile in the Egyptian capital.
Yet just along Cairo's corniche, a rival reporter from Israel's oldest
independent TV station, Channel 2, was offering a different take.
"There were many potential traps in my opinion and (Omaba) didn't fall into
any of them," said Arad Nir.
The state-owned Channel 1 offered less analysis and more facts -- informing
the public that Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon will be heading
for Washington over the weekend, while U.S. special envoy George Mitchell is
traveling in the opposite direction.
The channel also offered detailed reportage on coverage of the speech in
the Arab world. The station's Arab affairs analyst Oded Granot pointed out that
while most of the Arab world broadcast the speech in real time, Qatar and Syria
chose not to.
The fact that the speech was given in the middle of the working day
guaranteed high ratings for the main TV news shows on Thursday evening, as
viewers wanted to play catch-up. The channels were out to impress offering as
many reporters and analysts from as many locations as possible.
However, in Israel, the newspapers still lead the way in setting the
agenda. Friday is the day the weekend editions are published and Israelis lap up
column inches of political comment.
In its editorial, the high-brow daily Ha'aretz said a historical mistake
will be made if Obama's rhetoric is allowed to be forgotten, "because not only
for the Islamic world and the West,
but also, and perhaps in particular, for Israel, the Palestinians and the
Arabs in general, the chance for a fresh start was laid out in Cairo yesterday."
It was an opportunity that was presented "without threats and without
coercion," the paper continued, "but with a promise of an American commitment to
work like a pillar of fire that will guide, encourage and nurture the diplomatic
process."
Israel and the Palestinian National Authority have no right to ignore the
chance presented to them. If they do the price will not be poor relations with
Washington but rather the loss of human life, the paper warned.
As in many countries, in Israel it is the populist tabloid press that sells
most copies. Israel's leading paper is Yedioth Ahronoth.
In a column entitled "Bibi, wake up" (Bibi is Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname), in-house writer Atilla Somfalvi suggested
Obama's words were nothing less than "a terribly loud bell ringing through the
corridors of Israel's political establishment."
The era in which Israel used trickery and other tactics to gradually annex
the West Bank is over, he wrote. "Ever since Obama's election, officials in
Jerusalem have sought ways to explain, interpret, and circumvent what has been
obvious for a while now. With arrogance and contempt, officials here attempted
to downplay the tension vis-a-vis the Americans, blur the disagreements, and
hide behind various 'natural growth' arguments."
Ben Caspit, a senior writer in Israel's third popular daily, Maariv, titled
his contribution: the negotiator's dream: Bibi's nightmare.
"On Thursday we were treated to the world according to Obama," he wrote,
pointing out that the real world as it stands today is very different from the
vision of the new U.S. president.
It will be fascinating to see which of Obama's dreams comes to fruition and
which disappears in a puff of smoke, Caspit pondered. Given that the dreamer is
none other than the world's most powerful man, perhaps his vision should not be
dismissed too quickly. Netanyahu will soon have to decide whether to say yes or
no to Obama -- either way, he is in for a tough political ride.
Israel's traditional window to the outside world is The Jerusalem Post,
with a tiny readership of its print version but a large international following
of its Internet site. The paper's leader writer pointed to the "disconcerting"
moral equivalency provided by Obama.
The president juxtaposed the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust to that of
the Palestinians since Israel's creation -- something all Israeli Jews find
unacceptable.
"We cringed when he associated the Palestinian struggle with the U.S. civil
rights movement and with the campaign for majority rule in South Africa -- even
if the punch-line of this false analogy was: terrorism is always unjustifiable,"
the paper said.
All of the Israeli coverage sought out what would make for good talking
points at home. One that many picked up on was the way the audience applauded
every time Obama referred to the Koran and Muslim values, or threw in a word in
poorly pronounced Arabic. At the same time the highly-educated gathering did not
clap when Obama urged them to recognize Israel and to reject Holocaust denial.
These are highly sensitive issues in Israel and the opinion formers here
say as a collective the Arab world must address these issues early on if it
expects Israel to rejoin the peace process.
