Reporting Palestinian casualties in the Israeli press: the case of Haaretz and the Intifada

Author: Korn Alina  

Publisher: Routledge Ltd

ISSN: 1469-9699

Source: Journalism Studies, Vol.5, Iss.2, 2004-05, pp. : 247-262

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Abstract

This article examines how the Israeli quality daily newspaper Haaretz reported Palestinian casualties during the first year of the Palestinian uprising. While Palestinian casualties received few headlines and were reported on the inner pages, Haaretz did not ignore them and, unlike the other major Hebrew newspapers, reported their numbers consistently and reliably. Palestinian casualties, however, were reported as people killed in the course of armed clashes, although the majority of those injured and killed by military fire were in reality unarmed civilians. The newspaper accepted the dominant assumptions and definitions of reality, according to which the Israeli army was forced to react to the escalation in Palestinian violence, but ignored the causal link between the Israeli reaction and the Palestinian behaviour. The wide use of the phrase "killed in clashes" to describe the Palestinian deaths, along with the emphasis placed on those events in which armed Palestinians were killed, legitimated the high number of civilian casualties and contributed to the construction of the uprising as an armed conflict justifiably oppressed by military means.