Informant38

Ran HaCohen-Al-Ahram Weekly Manufacturing blindness:
'HaCohen is wrong,' writes Cook, 'to think that Israelis are ignorant of what is being done in their name. They know exactly what happens: their Zionist training simply blinds them to its significance.' Cook insists that 'Any Israeli [...] has ample opportunity to find out what is really happening to Palestinians [...] not from the now mainly compliant Hebrew media but from eyewitnesses to the actual events.'
I am not convinced by Cook's 'theory of knowledge', i.e. that in our society eye-witnesses can compete with the credibility and exposure enjoyed by the mass media. First, there may be fewer eye-witnesses to the actual events than Cook suggests: combatant soldiers are always a minority within the military. Second, a soldier usually sees just his small part of the picture; the overall view (land, water, employment, freedom of movement etc.) may well escape him. Third, no eye-witness can convey his story to more than a few dozen friends and relatives back home; even if the story passes on to more remote audiences, it becomes a rumour. Collective consciousness is therefore shaped by the media much more than by any eye-witness. Not without reason are soldiers not allowed to talk to journalists: eye-witness becomes dangerous once it turns into a media item. And as for the Israeli media, Cook and I would probably agree that its designation as 'mainly compliant' is an understatement.
Nevertheless, I believe I am not the only reader who has found much of Cook's article very convincing, but not really disproving mine; we seem to have stressed two sides of the same coin. Cook has done an impressive work describing the hegemonic Israeli ideology; I never meant to play it down. Ideology shapes not only what we (think we) know, but our blind spots and ignorance as well.'