Danny Seaman On Journalists And Disinformation About Israel

Here is an excerpt of an interview that Danny Seaman, the outgoing head of Israel's Government Press Office, gave to the Jerusalem Post. One of the issues he touched upon is the misinformation that goes around and is picked up by journalists who do not have the facts.

In part, Seaman blames the Israeli media for this.

Seaman: Unfortunately, the Israeli media is to a large degree responsible for a political indoctrination that represents only a small percentage of the Israeli public’s opinion.

Jerusalem Post: The Israeli media is the original skewer of the conception of Israel, and the foreign media then plays into that?

Seaman: Absolutely. An example: During the war in Lebanon [in 2006], I was up North, among the journalists. In the evenings I saw the interaction between Israeli media and the foreign media. Some of the Israeli journalists were sitting there and making the most atrocious statements about the State of Israel. They had been p***ed off about a lot of things, unhappy with the way [the war was] being conducted. In some cases there was a political tone to what they were saying. That’s good and legitimate for the internal debate. But somebody from the outside doesn’t understand the basis for this or that argument. Yet [the Israeli journalists] are more than happy to convey their opinions to somebody from the outside, not understanding how somebody from outside perceives this. They’re legitimizing the delegitimization of the State of Israel.

This is perhaps the greatest threat that we have been facing over the past decade: It’s no longer a case of Israel versus the Palestinians. It’s a deliberate, concerted effort to delegitimize Israel’s existence. [Our enemies] tried to beat us on the battlefield. They tried defeating us on the low-intensity battlefield. When they lost on these two levels, they suddenly understood that the only way to fight us today is to delegitimize our right to exist...


Part of my problem with the foreign press – and I’ve been accused of being combative and feisty in fighting them – is that you have journalists coming in here not having the faintest idea of what is going on.

They live off what they get from their colleagues; they meet certain people who come from the same social-economic background; they live off of one newspaper, Haaretz. They don’t make an effort. When you have a conversation with them, you find that they have a complete lack of knowledge of the elementary issues.

This didn’t used to be the case.

Journalists from the ’70s, ’80s, who were here during the beginning of the ’90s, were very knowledgeable, very experienced. This is a different generation.

The narrative has shifted. They’ll adopt the Palestinian narrative. That has become the bon ton. They’ll talk about “the Palestinian right of return.” There is no such thing. They talk about what the Palestinians call “Israel’s violations of Oslo.” What exactly are they talking about? They have no knowledge about the facts.

Today, if you bring in, say, an expert on international law [to hold a briefing for foreign journalists], they delegitimize the person based on what they perceive to be his political opinions. This is unacceptable, especially for a journalist. We the people, in a democratic society, rely on them to provide us with the information for us to make an educated decision on a particular issue. In this case, many journalists are failing in their duty. The media outfits that employ them are giving them automatic backing. And when the media doesn’t exercise its checks and balances, they’re failing in their job.

This began with the year 2000.

People call it “the Oslo war” – the Palestinian violence which erupted at that point. I’ve been working for Israeli public relations for 27 years, and there were certain “truths” that we were told: That if we adopt UN resolutions, there’ll be peace. If we recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination, there’ll be peace. If we remove settlements, there’ll be peace. And over the past 25 years, there’s been a progression in the Israeli position: Israel recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people; relinquished territory; removed settlements.

Regarding Lebanon, Israel fulfilled all the UN resolutions.

Yet the end result was not the peace that we were promised. In no way am I criticizing the efforts for peace. Peace is a strategic necessity for the State of Israel. But here, in this case, these “truths” that we were promised never came about. On the contrary, it only increased violence, increased extremism. Yet there was a failure by a lot of the media to be intellectually honest, to say “maybe we need to reevaluate,” to say “maybe we shouldn’t always be taking the Palestinians’ side because they’re the underdog.”

So in the year 2000, with the violence, with the bombs exploding here, [the foreign media’s] political positions couldn’t be [justified]. Yet every time there was a bomb here, directed against civilians, instead of an automatic expression of disgust at an assault on civilians, there were always conditions: “Well, we have to understand why [the bombers are acting].” Why do we have to understand it? But morally, you can’t make that “logic” [stand up], so they went to this other “logic,” and that was the numbers: “Look how many Palestinians were killed. If there are 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis, therefore the Palestinians must be victims.”

It’s nonsense. It’s morally repugnant. It’s intellectually unacceptable to make that kind of equation.

But the media repeated this. Not only in one-to-one discussions.

Reuters, AP, AFP would end their articles saying, In the recent violence, 4,000 Palestinians died compared to 1,000 Israelis. They were doing this deliberately, to create the impression that the one side that is suffering more must be justified. They were using small journalistic techniques to create an impression that put Israel in a negative light.

I noticed it most during the Lebanon War. Israel being singled out for criticism. The terminology used for Israel: Israel is always aggressive.

Israel is always active. Other things just “happen.” Missiles “rain down” on Israel. But where Israel is concerned, and I’m quoting from some media reports, they even adopt Nazi terminology: “Israel's blitzkrieg.”

Always using negatives and very aggressive terms.

By contrast, the suffering Israel endures is always caused by some obscure [force]. It’s never quite clear what’s happening, and who is responsible. The number of ways that Israel is depicted negatively is, astoundingly, much greater than with Hizbullah. Hizbullah is a terrorist organization! It is considered so by every country in the world, including the United Nations. [Yet I found foreign media] to be taking their word, their narrative as fact.

Jerusalem Post: And the same in Gaza in 2008?

Seaman: It became second nature, so it’s only natural that Gaza was just an extension. For too many in the media today, it becomes a feeding frenzy. For the war in Gaza about 400 additional reporters showed up here. They seem to have no knowledge of what is going on. They don’t understand what they’re seeing.

They don’t understand urban warfare. They’ll see some phosphorus or they’ll see some smoke, and they’ll immediately adapt [what they’re told about it] without understanding from the military perspective why it’s being done. [In Gaza, they were fed] misinformation, and they gave credibility to sources who time and time again have been disproved, sources who are very credible in the Western world, such as doctors.

In the Western world doctors are given a very particular [credibility].

But that same attitude was given to Palestinian doctors, and more than once they deliberately misled and lied to the journalists. And instead of the journalists saying, “Ok, once, twice. The third time they’re not going to be lying to me anymore,” they keep turning to these sources.

Some journalists did the job they were supposed to be doing, and went to objective experts and asked them about false claims [that Israel was using illegal weaponry, or had weaponry that purportedly melted the skin, or that Israeli weaponry was causing] these kinds of injuries. [One specific reporter] did the legitimate thing. He went and he asked an expert. And he was told, “What you’re talking about is science fiction.

These weapons don’t exist.” So, in this case, the story should have been over. But no, he reports [the false allegation and the firm dismissal], giving legitimacy to the actual accusation.

You want to compare that to something? Go back to the old blood libel.

Imagine the Jews are being accused now of using blood to make matza.

Some of the foreign media would “go to the experts,” maybe one of these cooking shows on television, who’d dismiss the idea, of course.

But the very report itself would give legitimacy to this absurd kind of accusation. Some people watching would say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire, so there must be some truth to it.” [The foreign media] would not do this to any other country.

They tried pulling some of this stuff with the United States in Iraq, but very quickly ceased doing it.

With Israel they continue to allow it...

Journalists kept accusing Israel of using illegal phosphorus weapons.

It’s not illegal! And Israel used them legally. Many countries do. But when they’re caught in an argument that is proven to be wrong, the journalists don’t issue a correction, saying, “We’re sorry.” No, they then say, “Oh, it may not be illegal, but it’s immoral.” Immoral? Isn’t war immoral? We didn’t start this war.

Lebanon is the prime example of everything we’ve been unfairly accused of. Israel had fulfilled UN resolutions.

Israel was not occupying a centimeter of Lebanese territory.

Israel was attacked. Not only were its soldiers abducted, but journalists ignore the fact that there was an allout assault on Israel’s northern communities on that first day.

Yet despite all that, after a few days, you have it for the first time: “Disproportionate use of force.”

Ever since the enemies of Israel understood that it could not be defeated militarily, because of its strength, their goal has been denying us the right to use that strength. And here, unfortunately, the media sometimes are politically cooperating with this, and other times are being duped into it.

They don’t understand that they are being used by those elements who are abusing freedom of the press, abusing freedom of speech, abusing all these civil rights in Western society. We represent Western civilization in this area. These extremists who are assaulting Israel, it’s a prelude to what can be expected in Western societies. If it’s not stopped on Israel’s borders, the rest of Western civilization will end up facing the same kind of thing.

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