Israeli media shifts to the right

"When a country is in crisis, journalists need to be attuned to the expectations of their readers and viewers and listeners, and if it's unpalatable, even if it's the truth, they have to consider that," says Cohen.

Even at Haaretz, many columnists have veered toward the right and entertained debates such as whether Israel should assassinate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom they directly blame for the violence.

Therein, say some editors, lies what has changed so fundamentally. Although the 1993 Oslo Accords always had opponents, the Israeli government had begun to sell the mainstream on peace - and Mr. Arafat as a peacemaker.

But that has changed. "In the past year, the country has come to a conclusion that Yasser Arafat doesn't want to make peace with Israel," says David Horovitz, the editor and publisher of The Jerusalem Report, an English-language magazine that traditionally has had a progressive slant.

"Israelis have read that there was a lot of territory up for relinquishing [last summer], and Arafat chose violence, and therefore the country and its media have come to a conclusion that Arafat is not a peacemaker," adds Mr. Horovitz. "The stress right now is on protecting the country."

Horovitz says another reason the Israeli media have shifted to stories of only Israeli victims is the perception that international coverage is now biased in the Palestinians' favor.

"There's this tremendous sense of outrage and this feeling that Israel's side is not being told, and the facts are being distorted," says Horovitz.

He cites reports that the Israeli army attacked Palestinians, without mentioning that Palestinians fired first. That has Israel feeling that "this conflict is not being fairly reported in Western media, particularly in the European media," he says.

And the sense of distortion in the eyes of the public here is only further warped in the Palestinian media, where most television and radio channels and newspapers are under government control.

In Jordan and Egypt, average people asked about the conflict believed Israeli tanks and guns were slaying Palestinians armed only with stones - an anachronism since the police forces of the Palestinian Authority were armed as part of the Oslo Accords.

While Israel has a comparatively free press, Hass of Haaretz says that the media here are not free from the same tendency - taking their cues from the government. "When the officials were talking about Oslo as a peace process, the Israeli media echoed it, and gave a very positive portrait of some Palestinian figures," she says.

"I don't think that the Israeli press is very independent from the official version of things ... so it is standing out now that much more. I wouldn't say it's a whole shift to the right, but in practice it's the same, because the media have done very little to question the official version of events."

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