Suspended government spokesman Eylon Levy will continue fighting the media war, whether or not he is reinstated.Levy made the statement on Wednesday night at the Begin Center where he and Gil Hoffman, the executive director of Honest Reporting and a media columnist for The Jerusalem Post shared some of their experiences in combating anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in traditional and social media.While Israel is much faster than in bygone days in responding to fake news, it still takes relatively a long time for it to respond, because facts need to be checked before an accurate response can be made.
But neither Levy nor Hoffman are prepared to throw in the towel in a battle in which Israel is seldom the victor. Each of them said that they would keep on fighting and not give in, and urged the audience not to cancel their subscriptions to The New York Times but to read the paper carefully and to write letters to the editor when they find incorrect information that is harmful to Israel and the Jewish people.They also urged people to subscribe to additional social media platforms in the effort to get Israel’s message across to an ever growing public.
Television channel bias towards Israelis or Palestinians
Among the television channels that appear to be anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, Hoffman and Levy concurred on CNN and Britain’s Channel 4, but Hoffman singled out CNN’s Anderson Cooper as “a mensch.”Cooper, when interviewing the parents of hijacked and wounded hostage Hersh Goldberg, could have had a sensational story, which out of respect for the parents, he did not pursue.
After the interview it transpired that he had footage of Hersh that the Goldbergs had not seen. If he had shown it to them during the interview, viewers would have seen their raw reactions. Cooper spared them this invasion into their privacy.Levy explained the difficulty of being interviewed on Channel 4, because the interviewers have pre-determined the line they want to take and don’t allow the interviewee to finish a sentence. Rather, they tend to jump in with another question, ignoring the interviewee’s protest that they have not finished answering the previous question.Neither Hoffman nor Levy was willing to take full credit for any of their achievements since October 7. It was all a matter of teamwork, they insisted. They could not do what they have been doing alone.Levy rattled off a long list of contributors that included not only people in the Directorate for Public Diplomacy, but also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, the Army Spokesman’s Office, the Police Spokesman’s Office, and many others.Israel is currently doing a much better job in putting out information than during any previous war, said Levy.Even so, he conceded, “It’s a war of David and Goliath. It’s not an easy war.”In the early days of the conflict, Levy recalled, the BBC, Fox and Sky News interrupted regular broadcasts to cover Israeli press conferences. That is seldom the case today.Among the difficulties that have confronted Hoffman and Levy are proving that statements emanating from UNRWA, the World Health Organization and even from the Red Cross, are misleading.The most common of these erroneous statements is that Israel is not complying with the conditions set by the International Court of Justice with regard to humanitarian aid.When such allegations are made by people whose business card attests to their membership in an agency of the United Nations, people are inclined to believe them, said Levy, declaring that UNRWA is a Hamas front organization.Everyone took it for granted that Hamas was protecting the humanitarian aid that reached Gazans, he continued, when in fact Hamas was stealing that aid.Responding to a question about why the issue of the hostages is now barely mentioned in international media, Levy said that the hostages who have so much to say about the circumstances of their captivity, cannot be seen or heard, whereas the Hamas propaganda machine keeps feeding the media with images of destruction: starving children, displaced, homeless people, plus fake news about the size of the population in Gaza and the number of casualties. In particular, they continuously emphasize the number of women and children who have been killed.Hoffman was proud of the fact that through its monitoring of the news, Honest Reporting was able to gather sufficient evidence to successfully push for the assignment, suspension, or dismissal of 10 print and electronic media journalists who had made pro-Hitler or pro-Hamas comments.The international media does not allow Israel to appear as the victim, said Hoffman. “The New York Times did not allow us to be the victim for one minute.”He warned that too many people peddling false information are ignorant or malicious.Levy added that Israelis are often blamed for things that Hamas has done, and the international media amplifies this before Israel, which is checking the facts, can put out a statement.The issue of the effect of the statement made by British Oscars winner Jonathan Glazer at the Academy Awards ceremony was raised by someone from the audience, who said that it had sickened them. Reaction throughout the auditorium indicated similar sentiments, to which Levy replied that “it is sad when Jews try to gain acceptance by throwing the Jewish collective under the bus.”