The embeds are a great idea!
Posted on 05/18/2004 8:59:51 PM PDT by yonif
Israel learned lessons from its military campaign in Jenin in 2002 and decided to embed a handful of Israeli and foreign reporters with the IDF to cover the current fighting in Rafah.
One of the mistakes made in Jenin, said Gideon Meir, the Foreign Ministry's deputy director-general for public affairs, was to keep reporters away.
The result, he said, was that it seemed Israel was trying to hide its actions, when it wasn't. It also led to the publication of wild tales about large-scale massacres.
Meir said he hopes the foreign press, which in many cases reported rumor as truth from Jenin, will also learn lessons from that experience. "In Jenin, the press massacred the truth and its professionalism," he said.
He said that he is not overly encouraged so far from the coverage of the events in Rafah.
"They are reporting the destruction of hundreds of houses, but that is not taking place," Meir said. "They are reporting about the results of the IDF's actions, but not about what led up to these actions."
Foreign Ministry officials are bracing for the public relations damage that will be caused by the broadcast of pictures of women and children standing alongside destroyed homes and realize the difficulty of battling those images.
"I don t think we will succeed" in battling these pictures," ministry Director-General Yoav Biran told Israel Radio. "But we have to explain why it is happening."
Ministry officials said they realize the importance of getting pictures of the arms smuggling tunnels out to the world to help explain the IDF s actions.
The ministry recently instructed its representatives abroad to go on the offensive and not leave the playing field to the televised pictures of displaced refugees.
In addition to meeting with government and political leaders, they have been directed to initiate media appearances and conduct an all-out media blitz.
Among the points to be stressed are:
Rafah represents the "terror gate" to the Gaza Strip.
The objective of the IDF action is to bring about an end to the smuggling of weapons that is meant to turn Gaza into a base for missiles and rockets that can reach deep into Israel.
The IDF uncovered eight arms-smuggling tunnels last month, 11 since the beginning of the year, and some 90 since the outbreak of the violence in September 2000.
If Israel does not carry out these actions, it will find itself dealing more and more with rockets and missiles being launched from Gaza into Israeli cities.
The PA is doing nothing to curb the terror, instead it is encouraging it. Had the PA carried out its road map commitments to take action against the terror organizations, the current IDF actions would be unnecessary.
The actions are aimed at the tunnels and are not in response to the killing of the 13 soldiers in Gaza last week.
Although the media is reporting the destruction of hundreds of homes, there is no such "wholesale" destruction, and the only homes being destroyed are those hiding tunnels or which have been used by gunmen to fire on IDF soldiers.
Ping.
The embeds are a great idea!
Yonif that is good idea I don't think CNN going take Israel offer to be embed
I don't know I might be wrong I could imagine Fox news or SKY news be embed they live for that
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