Review of the Israefi Press; an attempted bombing in the market place

Citation

Levinson, D.J. (1999), "Review of the Israefi Press; an attempted bombing in the market place", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308aab.001

Review of the Israefi Press; an attempted bombing in the market place

Review of the Israefi Press: an attempted bombing in the market place

At 9:44 on the morning of Friday, 6 November 1998 a red Fiat-127 loaded with explosives and gas cylinders exploded on Jaffa Road, a main Jerusalem thorough-fare bordering on the Machane Yehudah market place. The two persons in the car, later determined to be members of the Islamic Jihad, were killed instantly. More than 20 people in the area were injured. Investigation showed that the bomb had gone off prematurely, averting what would have been a very large disaster.

Israeli television and radio gave several hours of extensive non-stop coverage of the event, because of both its humanitarian value and its political consequences in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This coverage included the broadcasting of close-up tele-vision footage of the car wreckage and interviews with psychologically shaken witnesses. The following day, Saturday, Israeli newspapers are not published. Following is a review of the Sunday morning Israeli press.

On Sunday a breaking story of a bungled spy mission dominated the front page of Yediot Aharonot, the country's most widely distributed tabloid. The market place bombing was given secondary coverage at the bottom of the front page where sub-headlines summarized the event and directed readers to 11 pages of stories inside the newspaper. After dedicating several pages to political reaction and commentary, a description of the incident with map was printed on page 12. The Fiat had traveled from the Center City, made a U-turn on Jaffa Road into the lanes restricted to public transportation, started to smoke, then exploded. A large picture on the following page showed police examining remains of the vehicle. Side bars explained the size of the bomb and a history of bombings in the area. The centerfold of the newspaper provided a series of color photos depicting the car as it was burning after the explosion and a woman in distress aided by the police. This was followed by two pages with the stories of eye witnesses.

The competing tabloid, Maariv, provided similar front page coverage under a headline highlighting the possibility of Israeli-Arab involvement rather than a purely Palestinian operation. The front page headline was further developed on the inside of the paper under the general title, "Miracle in machane yehudah" (as opposed to the more secular "Terrorist strike in the market" in Yediot). Pictures of the bombers' parents holding photographs of their sons contained one caption designed to catch attention and raise emotions, "I am proud of my son"; the quotation was not mentioned in the body of the article. On page 7 the same woman featured in Yediot was shown as she was being helped by a policeman. Again, there were several pages of political statements and analysis followed by a centerfold with color pictures and an article explaining how a much larger disaster could have taken place.

Ha'aretz, a large independent daily, dedicated a major segment of its front page to a less-dramatic picture of the bombing scene and two stories about the political implications of the incident. In four additional pages of coverage only one story dealt with the 28 Israelis wounded by the bombing. Political commentary and quotations dominated the rest of the articles. This approach was again picked up on the editorial page. In the eight-page English edition of Ha'aretz (sold together with the Israeli edition of the International Herald Tribune), coverage was limited to the front page where relative importance assigned to the story was similar to the Hebrew version of the paper. As to the IHT, although distributed in Israel only on Sunday, the paper is in fact the Saturday-Sunday edition as published around the world. The lead front page article was about the bombing. There can be no doubt as to the paper's evaluation of the incident. The headline reads, "Blast in Jerusalem stalls peace process"; in smaller print a second headline uses the word "also" in an interesting manner, "Suicide bombing also injures 25"[1]. Only at the end of the article, carried over to page 4, was there clarification of what exactly had happened.

The Jerusalem Post stressed the bombing with three articles and a picture on the front page. It was the only major newspaper to look into the disaster response aspects of the incident, burying one small paragraph on the subject into a general article on page 3. That same article also discussed the influence of the bomb on prices in the market on that day and the role of income tax officials in damage assessment. All papers, including the Post, cited the numerous bombings in Machane Yehudah in previous years. Those bombings were generally covered with stories identifying the victims; that aspect was missing in all of the newspapers this time, perhaps because there were no Israeli deaths. This fact raises the obvious question about the attraction of the media and the public to what one might facetiously call a paradoxical romance with tragedy, which both appalls and fascinates many people.

Yated Ne'eman, an ultra-religious daily, showed its orientation by its headline, "A Great Miracle in Jerusalem..." A description of factual events took the foreground, and political implications were generally placed on the inner pages of the newspaper. Yated did have one title highlighting the ambulance, rescue and Burial Society response (even though there fortunately were no Israelis to be buried); the latter two groups, though noted in the headline, were never mentioned in the accompanying article. Most of the Yated issue was dedicated to religious news and the upcoming Israeli municipal elections.

Ha-Modia, the daily newspaper of the ultra-orthodox Agudas Yisrael Party, put the bombing as its lead story and relegated the bungled spy mission to page 2. The summary article mentioned that police investigators were sifting through the wrecked car for two hours, though the exact purpose of the search was not addressed. The newspaper mentioned that the car remains were eventually taken away (obviously, but no mention was made as to where) and that the bodies of the terrorists were taken to the Institute for Forensic Medicine (again, standard procedure).

The German language Israel Nachrichten, closed before the spy story broke, devoted its first two pages to routine coverage to the bombing. A history of previous bombings in Machaneh Yehudah filled a major portion of the front page space.

Taking an overall look at the coverage, several broad points can be made in summary:

• •

  It is clear that aspects of disaster response were of virtually no interest to the press, except when a speciali-interest newspaper was able to highlight its own interest group.

• •

  Summary coverage shows that by Sunday morning readers had "gotten the news" from other sources. The newspapers took over the role of analysis rather than presenting bare facts.

• •

  Life goes on.

By Sunday morning the bungled spy story took prominence in almost all of the papers.

Dr Jay Levinson

Note

1. 1.

   Reports used different numbers regarding the actual number of injured people. There are several explanations. The difference between those evacuated by ambulance and those registered in hospital is often explained by those arriving by private transportation (usually the less severely wounded). Hospitals also stress medical condition in their records rather than place of the incident. In any event, numbers ranged from 21 to 28, most not seriously wounded.