The head of My Israel speaks of the battle for consciousness in the media and social networks. A quick response to an event can make the difference in how it will be etched in the mind and whether it will merit a response or be met with dangerous apathy.
The lecture by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen, the head of My Israel, began the second day of the Sovereignty Youth’s Summer Seminar, which focused on the importance of the struggle for perception, where the youth has a decisive role.
Haetzni-Cohen spoke about her movement and her goal to change perceptions in the social networks, emphasizing that since the riots of 2021, special emphasis has been placed on the failures of Israeli governance throughout the Land. Since that time, activists from her movement have been invited by groups of citizens throughout the country, seeking support and guidance in order to become much more active in the area of communication. This comes as a result of understanding the dramatic and practical influence of the world of communications on their lives and life in the State of Israel in general.
As part of this support, people from My Israeli, together with those seeking the guidance, are mapping the challenges that they will have to cope with and ways to do so in the various media outlets.
About the dramatic influence of social networks on practical reality on the ground and on policy, Haetzni-Cohen explained the background of a number of well-known and contemporary examples. One of the examples about the transformation of the story involving a stabbing attack in Jerusalem, when a haredi youth was attacked by an Arab terrorist and two Border Policemen shot at the attacker, killing him. An Arab passerby filmed the event starting from the middle of it and in his film, the killing of the terrorist was shown but not the attack itself. Yariv Oppenheimer hastened to publish the film clip and wrote that there must be an investigation, because fighters should be giving medical aid and not shooting an attacker who does not pose any danger to them, without knowing what had actually happened. Following Oppenheimer’s remarks, another tweet was published defining the event as a sequel to the Elor Azaria affair. Member of Knesset Ofer Kasif was even more harsh, defining the event as an extra-judicial execution and a war crime.
Later on, says Haetzni-Cohen, the security camera was opened, proving that the fighters’ actions were appropriate, but by the time the entire film was published, the partial film had already had its effect and influence on the perception of the entire world. As a result of public pressure caused by the partial film, the fighters were taken for a police investigation and their weapons were taken from them. An investigation showed that similar events did not result in such steps because they were not accompanied by such pressure from the public. “The event was etched in the mind within its first few minutes”, states Haetzni-Cohen.
She presented another example on the other side, from the events in the Ma’ale Hazeitim neighborhood of Jerusalem, where 140 families live a continuous nightmare but the public is not interested. Fireworks, stones, Molotov cocktails, harassment and provocations are all part of the daily routine. During the riots of 2021, Haetzni-Cohen published a post about the events in Acre and was approached by one of the residents of Ma’ale Hazeitim. She requested and received a film of the shootings, uploaded it and by the next day many Members of Knesset were already in the neighborhood and the voices of the residents began to be heard in the media. Among other things, it was decided to establish a media committee for orderly programming in the mainstream media and social networks.
After presenting other examples of the power and influence of the media on policy and the world of practicality, both by Israeli and Arab elements, Haetzni-Cohen focused on the youth’s ability and ways to influence these areas, to shape perception.
She expanded on the advantages of citizens’ media, noting, among other things, the influence on public opinion that it can have by bypassing the mainstream media; the ability to exert pressure on decision-makers, creating a national consciousness, etc. In order to act correctly, the message must be framed in such a way that it will be clear who is the good guy and who is the bad one, what is right and what is not, “the end user has to deal with a tremendous amount of information, and if we shape the information clearly as to who is good and who is bad, things will also be clear to the recipient of the information, who almost never investigates to any depth”.
The job of the youth in the arena of the media struggle, said Haetzni-Cohen, is “to raise public awareness relating to the issue of sovereignty. The notion of two states and withdrawals also sank in with the passage of time”, she emphasized. “To create slogans on the subject of sovereignty and to “drill” from different angles. The steady drip-drip of the matter is the task at hand, creating consciousness is another wheel on the sovereignty bus”. This is among other things, is in response to steps taken by members of Knesset to encourage action in a certain direction and the internalization of the idea of sovereignty as a response to various matters that Israel is dealing with.