From Laura Rozen's WAR and PIECE blog: Censorship @ Ha'aretz?

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I obsessively read Ha'aretz, one of the best English language sources on national security news coming out of the Middle East, as you no doubt can tell from this site. But since a few days into the war in Lebanon, I've noticed a distinct change, a kind of clamping down, and a closedness there, a more reserved tone, and lack of treatment of certain issues you would expect to see there. I am wondering, is there an element of censorship? Self-censorship? Am I only imagining such a change? I'm not talking about opinion or critiques of the war, but for instance, one would expect them to have something perhaps more definitive on what happened at the UN base. They do have this. But I do wonder, even as an official investigation proceeds, if the Israeli military doesn't already have a pretty good idea of what happened there already. To date, we've heard a lot from the UN side, but almost nothing from IDF, even a kind of preliminary account. Almost all the statements are coming from political leaders and diplomatic officials. The message from Israeli ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman on a conference call today on this issue was interesting. Investigation is thorough and ongoing, and its findings will be made public. Statement by Annan was "unfortunate, premature, hasty, deplorable and appalling." In general, UNIFIL has historically allowed Hezbollah to operate freely far too closely -- "inches" -- from it. And that may have been the case a couple days ago. And that UNIFIL, whose third initial, he reminded listeners, stands for "interim," has been around for 28 years, and is "impotent, inefficient and counterproductive." Update: A colleague writes that there is military censorship.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004654.html

[leveymg]

1. The Israeli media is where ours was in March 2003.

They had ought to break those bounds pretty quickly. Israel's media is headed into the same notoriety and loss of international credibility that the American MSM has "earned" since 2001.

The fact remains, if you want to learn the facts in wartime, read the foreign press.