The world as we want to see it: Spinning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict every which way

The Israeli-Palestine conflict rages on the ground and online. Dozens of new media vehicles, including independent news sources, organizational Web sites, pesonal blogs, SMS alert services and e-mail lists have sprung up since the outbreak of violence nearly three years ago. A few are making a go of it as businesses, but most are the passionate products of people and organizations on both sides of the conflict.

With partisan agendas that reflect the extremely polarized conflict, many of the new digital services have been successful in mobilizing supporters and providing instantaneous means of communication within their communities. They are tools for spin control by all sides in the conflict, and are increasingly watched and cited by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, traditional media struggle with varying degrees of success to retain their prominence as the first stop for news consumers.

The intifada broke out in late 2000, just after the Nasdaq stock market crash and Internet news organizations, particularly in Israel, were beginning to feel the impact of reduced capital for growth and expansion. Yet the intensity of the conflict pushed demand for news to record highs. The Jerusalem Post’s Web site, one of the first newspaper Web sites to launch in 1995, saw traffic double and triple in a matter of months from mid-2000 to early 2001.

Competition quickly jumped into the game, as Ha’aretz, Israel’s up-market daily newspaper, launched an aggressive challenge with its own English-language Web site, featuring translated content from the Hebrew-language print edition and Web site, as well as original content in English.

These sites saw the international interest in the conflict benefit them, as they were able to extend their brand and influence quickly with a wide-ranging audience. Chief among the audiences these sites reach are the global media, the diplomatic and political communities and the crucial Jewish market in the U.S., which is a great source of financial, moral and political support for Israel. The bad news has also been good for business. Both sites are successfully drawing numerous advertisers.

The Post, which is on the right politically, and Ha’aretz, which is on the left, provide supporters of each side with ample ammunition to defend their viewpoints. Dozens of email lists and blogs link to stories from each site when it supports their viewpoints. Many Web sites that provide lists of "related links" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict list both papers, but there are quite a few that list only one or the other, depending on their political orientation.

Thinly funded competitors such as virtualjerusalem.com and its partner news site Israel Wire (now defunct), despite growth in audience traffic, were unable to keep up both with the volume of news demanded, and the resources needed to keep the sites going.

But the pressures of keeping Web sites up to date when news was happening on a 24/7 basis did not stop others, primarily those with some agenda, from starting Web sites. Groups supporting both right-wing settlers in the disputed territories and those supporting Palestinians’ efforts have built Web sites to present the news as they see it.

Arab-oriented news sites publishing in English such as albawaba.com, based in Amman, Jordan, and The Daily Star of Beirut, Lebanon are well-funded organizations that provide a different perspective from outside Israel on the same stories as the Israeli sites. A more extreme Arab presentation of breaking news is available on International Middle East Media Center.

Albawaba editor Hani Jabsheh tells me his site "reports the news and information from its own perspective – which is the Arab one. We are very careful not to fall into the same trap as mainstream Arab media, which fail to highlight the misinformation, while making things seem very rosy. We report the good with the bad, which is why we have been able to attract both a Western and Arab audience, as well as Israeli."

The official Palestinian Authority position is available on the Web site of its news agency WAFA, but it’s rarely up to date. The Arab Media Internet Network presents a broader spectrum of opinion from the Arab perspective than the mainstream Palestinian press, which has been generally supportive (either out of conviction or coercion, depending on whom you ask) of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel Insider presents itself as a "daily newsmagazine," and offers a large number of columnists; most are on the right politically. Debka File has won a following for its "insider’s perspective" and "exclusive" intelligence reports that often run counter to conventional media wisdom. The joke about Debka, justified to my perspective, is that it is right about half of the time, but it is impossible to tell which half. Debka uses its Web site primarily as a teaser to its paid subscription email. Actual figures are difficult to get, but the site’s founder, Giora Shamis, has told me he has thousands of subscribers. Ariga, started in 1995, is a resource for those on the Israeli left. Arutz 7, a news service based in the West Bank, whose principals were recently convicted of running a pirate radio station, is the voice of the Israeli right, and particularly the settlers.

For sophisticated readers with background and context, even these sites are valuable, but you have to be able to read between the lines and to counter their content with that from mainstream news sources.

This article deals primarily with English-language sites, but the proliferation of Web sites and blogs in Hebrew and Arabic mimics that of the English sites. Major commercial media in Israel and the Arab world operate on a virtual 24/7 basis, as well. One Israeli site, Fresh – Hebrew), gathers headlines from every major Israeli news source in a queue that automatically updates and posts hundreds of items a day. It's one of the premier sites for news-obsessed Israelis, who are known to stop business meetings and turn on the radio on the hour to hear news bulletins.

What the Internet brings to the table is its immediacy. When the media criticism site Honest Reporting sees what it believes is anti-Israel bias in the media, it posts email to its 60,000 members urging them to write and complain. CNN executives have told me that Honest Reporting’s email campaigns have ground the news network’s email servers to a halt.

On the Palestinian side, Palestine Media Watch, which does not appear to be as well-funded and staffed as Honest Reporting, provides its audience with similar analyses and calls for action.

E-mail newsletters are also important. The Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations sends out a news digest prepared for it by the center-right think tank the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that is a must-read for thousands of pro-Israel activists.

The activists themselves on both sides of the debate make the most of the medium.

"For the three years of intifada, for example, the Internet was pretty much the only way to get out word about anti-war demonstrations," says Robert Rosenberg, the founder of Ariga and a veteran journalist in Israel. He said groups such as Machsom Watch (Hebrew for barricade or checkpoint) and Gush Shalom (Peace bloc) – provide information for people who want to do things like send food to besieged villages, "as the Israeli press turned so jingoistic."

In the last two years, individual and group blogs have begun making their impact felt, as well. Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian group blog whose writers have included American Jewish refugee field workers, European leftists, and Palestinian expatriates, has seen work by its writers appear in mainstream publications. Last year EI even created a spin-off site, Electronic Iraq that has been critical of the U.S. effort in Iraq.

On the pro-Israeli side, the US-based blog Little Green Footballs, which is not Jewish or Israeli, has become a first read for many. Its posts, which regularly draw hundreds of comments, and the many smaller sites linking to it, indicate its broad reach.

There are far fewer Palestinian blogs than Israeli blogs in English, and, in fact, a search of "Palestinian blog" on Google offers up few useful finds. But Israeli bloggers fill the political spectrum from left to right. Tal G. is on the right, while Aron’s Israel Peace Blog represents the left. Blogs such as This Normal Life and The View From Here present stories and rants about life in Israel in a time of terrorism without being overtly political.

Of course, journalists have their problems with the blogosphere. As Jabsheh put it to me: "The only problem is, how do you find the information that is correct, and how do you know that what you are reading is actually correct?"