Israel Reactions

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

As a foreign reporter, I’ve always been fascinated by comparisons of how a country is portrayed in the media versus what it’s like to actually visit the place. One measure of how well we’re doing our jobs as journalists is the breadth of the gap between the two. Are the things that are called to our attention by the media the same things that stand out on a first visit?

For instance, when I first visited Liberia during the last days of Charles Taylor in 2003, what I knew to expect from its portrayal in the media was vibrant greenery, gun-pocked buildings and child soldiers in wigs in dresses. Much to my surprise, that turned out to be a pretty accurate portrayal; I saw all of those in the first trip I took out of the city center. In contrast, most portrayals of Turkey include pictures of women wearing headscarves. But while many Turkish women do wear scarves, many don’t. And there’s so much more going on in that country that scarves really aren’t very high on the first things you notice. It’s more like photographer shorthand for: “We’re in a Muslim country.”

So now that I’m in Israel for the first time, on a reporting trip, here are my first quick reactions.

• The National Language: I knew intellectually that people here spoke Hebrew, a language the creators of the Israeli state basically brought back from the dead. But I guess I didn’t have a gut feeling for how diffuse it would be. I’m not sure what I’ve found so surprising about it (perhaps I suspected that like the Dutch most people here would have a complementary mastery of English), but I’ve found it to be a striking expression of Israel’s incredible nation-building effort.
• The Settlements: Much as with the language, I didn’t expect them to be so omnipresent. I suppose that when I’ve read about the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, I pictured lonely outposts, each one far from the others and far from Israel proper. Instead, they’re all over the place. Now admittedly, the area through which I traveled—from Jerusalem towards Ramallah and down into the Jordan Valley north of Jericho—has some of the highest density of settlements, but it’s striking to what extent they literally dominate the landscape.  
• The Women: I’ve been struck by how beautiful the women here are, but then again I’m not sure I remember visiting a country where that wasn’t the case.