The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy [Hardcover]

Stephanie Gutmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1893554945 | ISBN-13: 978-1893554948

Since its founding, Israel has become legendary for winning wars waged against it by much larger armies. But those were "conventional" conflicts where uniformed soldiers fought on clearly delineated fronts, using tanks, aircraft and artillery. Israel has not fared so well in the new wars of the twenty-first century, where key battles are fought on editorial pages and television screens, and especially on the internet, where photos from the combat zone can ricochet around the world minutes after being snapped. To understand why Israel has floundered on this new battlefield, Stephanie Gutmann, who lived in the Middle East as a teenager, returned to Jerusalem and the West Bank during the second intifada to observe modern news-gathering up close. In THE OTHER WAR she documents how regional political and military realities are dependent on a constantly shifting cast of international journalists on the prowl for "good pictures" (their motto: "if it bleeds, it leads") or career-making scoops, and sometimes guided by hardened anti-Israel ideology. In the midst of suicide bombings and armed response, Gutmann watched as the region and its people — Israeli and Palestinian alike — became cardboard cutouts in dramas predetermined by ratings-obsessed editors continents away. Gutmann introduces us to key players in the daily battles for headline supremacy: the mercenary freelance photographers who hawk their bloodiest pictures to the highest bidder; the TV "parachuters" who drop in on the unfolding Mideast tragedy to get their "face time" before flying off to the next international hotspot; the Palestinian Authority spinmeisters; the politically connected, media-savvy "fixers" whose translation services are not typically neutral. We also meet some of those in the trenches, people like Daniel Seaman, beleaguered director of Israel's Government Press Office; and Palestinian reporter Khaled Abu Toameh, who endeavors to do comprehensive reporting about a regime, the Palestinian Authority, that often silences critics brutally. Traveling into the disputed territories herself, Gutmann reconstructs the battle for Jenin, the death of the teenage martyr Mohammed al-Dura, and other climactic moments in the struggle for the world's hearts and minds. We learn! from her absorbing insider's account that there is a reality in this region never touched by the international press corps, and that as in other wars, truth is indeed the first casualty.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this meticulously researched and readable volume, journalist Gutmann focuses on media coverage of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, known as the second intifada. How, she asks, did Israel come to be so uniformly vilified in the press? Israel's lack of media savvy is partially to blame. But Gutmann believes the larger issue lies with news outlets' desire to oversimplify and argues it's a misconception that news outlets "can tell you what you need to know about this conflict, or indeed about any serious, complex event." She cites an Associated Press photograph that allegedly depicted an Israeli soldier brutalizing a Palestinian on the Temple Mount, but was actually of an American Jew who had been attacked, and the "soldier" was an Israeli police officer coming to his aid. The subsequent correction got very little attention, and Gutmann compares it to "a Freudian slip that revealed something deeper: the prejudice and assumptions that governed most editors' thinking about the conflict." Gutmann doesn't offer easy answers, insisting news consumers start questioning what they're told to get a more accurate representation of the conflict's complexities. While Gutmann's tone can be self-righteous, her deconstructions of photos and video clips are admirably detailed. The book will be an eye-opener for those wishing to delve deeper into media representation of some of the most visible news events of our time.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"...Gutmann's arguments are sharp and her investigative reporting is excellent." -- Tikkun, 2006

"In sharply observant prose that is often quite funny ...[Gutmann] documents case after case of events being distorted..." -- Hillel Halkin, Commentary, February 2006

"The phenomena described in this book is a compound of self-righteousness, stupidity, and group-think, completely characteristic of modern times" -- David Pryce-Jones, the New York Sun, September 19, 2005

"This book is AWESOME!!! It should be distributed to every journalist and editorial board in the country." -- Steven Emerson, author, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

an "insightful book on how organs like CNN, the BBC...and others give a grossly distorted picture of [the conflict.]" -- The Jerusalem Post, November 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 287 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (September 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554945
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554948
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A serious discussion of violations of journalistic standards, October 4, 2005

By 

Jill Malter ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy (Hardcover)

This book is about the media war between the Arabs and Israel. It deals with journalistic sensationalism and lack of ethics. I am not surprised that Israel is not faring well in this war. The other side is cheating. And the referees aren't taking them to task for it. Still, Israel has no choice but to maintain its standards and value truth. Meanwhile, I think that many Arabs have drifted into a culture of destruction in this war. And maybe this culture is reflected to some extent in the media war. As Stephanie Gutmann shows, the anti-Zionists are making a mockery of journalistic standards. They are destroyers, not creators. In the short term, they may appear to be winning, but they are not achieving anything positive.

Like many other people, including myself, Gutmann was surprised at the extent to which many people "were ready to drop the skepticism they showed in most other areas of their lives and believe everything the New York Times and CNN told them about the conflict and then develop such great passions about a relatively small affair, in a land very far away." Many people are doubtful that Israel even wants peace, even though almost all humans, including Israelis, would rather be rich, free, and alive than poor, enslaved, and dead.

The author tells about the Mohammed al-Dura case in some detail. This was a 12-year old who probably died in September, 2000, during the Arab aggression against Israel. If he died, he was probably killed (intentionally or unintentionally) by Arabs. But there isn't enough evidence to tell for certain what happened. Still, the case points out the huge number of staged events (look at the cover of the book for a typical example) and the amount of media misinformation. As Gutmann says, "there is one clear bad guy in `al-Dura' and that is the international media."

In another chapter, the author tells us of another case of journalistic malpractice, exposed by the apologies by Italian TV to Arab thugs for filming the some of the lynching of two Israeli soldiers.

Gutmann confirms that Israel is treated as a Very Important nation. And a Dangerous one. She says that the coverage of the war against it sometimes seems to be only of Israel, as if the Arabs were some sort of undefined "amoebic force." And she tells of the American Colony Hotel, which is a sort of propaganda headquarters for what I consider the War Against Human Rights. In this war, the media have, as the author points out, gone from being observers to participants. And I think the majority of them are fighting against human rights.

There is a fine chapter on the ghastly misreporting of the Jenin battle of April, 2002. And there is a discussion of the reaction to the confinement of Arafat to Ramallah. By the way, in my opinion, the failure of the international community to bring a thug like Arafat to justice is a great crime against humanity. But the adoration of Arafat that the media showed is even more sickening and surreal. Gutmann considers Arafat to have been "a masterful media manipulator." I very strongly disagree, and I find it hard to imagine what the world would be like if Arafat had possessed even average, let alone above average talent in this or in any other regard.

One dramatic example of venomous journalistic malpractice that I won't forget is of the reaction to an inciteful sermon given by an Arab sheik in Gaza. Almost every sentence of the speech was out of line. The author tells us parts of it, where the sheik calls the Jews terrorists, butchers of Arab children, and desecrators of holy places who must be butchered and killed. And where he tells his listeners to "have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country," and to fight and "kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them." But how did William Orme of the New York Times report this? He looked through the sermon for just one tame line that he could quote out of context. And he found one! It was, "whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews." That is the only line he permitted his readers to see from the sermon! I consider such a vicious misrepresentation of Israeli concerns about incitement to be a serious attack on journalistic standards, truth, and human rights. Gutmann needs to be praised for pointing it out to us.

Gutmann quotes an Arab who explains that the Oslo agreement of 1993 was merely a contract between Arafat (and ten thousand or so of his supporters) and Israel. I agree. And it does seem to me as stupid as not realizing the difference between America's people (represented by our government) and the Mafia, and making a deal with the wrong one.

Gutmann tells of the bad guys, such as the infamous Peter Jennings of ABC News, Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian, Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post, and Gillian Findlay of ABC News. And she also tells us of the good guys. I'm not surprised that there are people who do fight back to support truth and standards. They include CAMERA, Honestreporting.com, littlegreeenfootballs.com, and a variety of other media-monitoring websites. I'd include books such as this one as making a positive impact.

58 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Israel has been losing this one ..., October 1, 2005

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy (Hardcover)

This highly readable book takes one behind the media scenes and agendas of the conflict in the Holy Land. In a most engaging fashion, the author explains how journalism works in practice whilst exposing the gross bias against the Israeli side. She names the worst culprits, both individuals and organisations. The latter include the BBC, National Public Radio, The Guardian, The Independent, CNN, Associated Press and that old grey harlot, The New York Times.

Using examples like the death of the 12 year old Palestinian boy Mohammed Ad-Dura, the gruesome lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah and the so-called Jenin Massacre that was later debunked by a United Nations investigation, Gutmann provides plenty of detail on how the anti-Israel propagandists operate. Truth be told, some of the blame rests on the Israeli side where the media war was not handled correctly. For example, Israeli spokespeople have not always received adequate resources or been proficient enough in English. This situation is now being improved.

One of the most glaring examples of media hypocrisy is the way in which Israel's security fence has been portrayed, with false analogies to the Berlin Wall. This while the EU intends to erect a barrier on its eastern borders and there are similar fences or walls between Turkey and Syria, and between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, to mention just a few. Gutmann reports that the situation is improving but I think much damage has already been done if one considers recent opinion polls conducted in several countries of Old Europe where alarming percentages of the population see Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Then again, this might just be a resurgence of the old European Anti-Semitism now surfacing again under the guise of Anti-Zionism. In this regard, I refer the reader to Bat Ye'or's magisterial work Eurabia. There are also brave Arab reporters, like the Israeli citizen Khalid Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post. A whole chapter looks at his work, a refreshing example of objective journalism. Gutmann's revelations are indeed disturbing because not all news consumers are willing to think for themselves, let alone investigate other angles.

It seems that the real roots of the Anti-Israel bias derive from Israel's victory in the 1967 war when the old Soviet propaganda apparatus started the demonization campaign. It gained further momentum during the First and Second Intifadas. Now Israel is routinely scapegoated by the leftist media and by dominant sectors in academia. This ideologically based bias has reached alarming proportions in Europe and only a few principled voices are reacting against it, like Oriana Fallaci in her books The Rage And The Pride, and The Force Of Reason.

The Other War is a brilliantly researched book, full of verifiable facts and expert analyses, and at the same time a gripping read. Highly recommended for those who are interested in the Middle East conflict or who would like to get an inside look at how the media function. I also recommend Israel: Life In The Shadow Of Terror by Nechemia Coopersmith, Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz and The New Antisemitism by Phyllis Chesler.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real page turner, November 30, 2005

By 

Deep Reader (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy (Hardcover)

I couldn't put this down. It is about famous massacres that did not happen. The author has a literate yet contemporary voice and a sense of humor. She takes you to the exotic hangout of journalists at the American Colony hotel; inside Palestinian offices, families, and funerals; into the Israel Defense Forces; and into house-to-house combat. She is not only gutsy but also persistent. Not content to reveal ~ in evenhanded assessments ~ how unsound the reporting from the Middle East has been, she presses on and asks "Why?" She shows how reporters arrive in Jerusalem prepared to do battle, and how coercive and controlled their environment becomes. She even takes you into the Associated Press and Reuters ~ into their very inner workings. Every chapter is like the unravelling of a terrific mystery. It is a real page turner. Hats off to Gutmann for a terrific, exciting, courageous, and important book.