On what must have been a slow news day, David Millward of the Daily Telegraph ran a story concerning a 19-year old Israeli girl jailed for refusing to do her national service. The story was attributed to The Independent.
However, Millward chose to cherry pick from The Independent’s original, removing all of the nuance until the story becomes solely concerned with what appears to be the cruel incarceration of an Israeli teenager.
The original story as written by The Independent’s Middle East correspondent Bethan McKernan amounts to 31 paragraphs, Millward edited his down to eleven.
So what got missed out?
At least McKernan included comments from Gur Golan’s family that brought some semblance of nuance to the issue. For example:
“All three women are keen to stress that Noa loves her country and is happy to serve it.”
“It is highly unusual for Israelis to refuse to do their compulsory military service on non-religious grounds. Iris says Noa’s decision was a “huge shock” – no one in the family or anyone else Noa knew had ever done it before.”
“Iris says it is hard to understand the role the IDF plays in the country if you are not Israeli.
“We grow up with the IDF, it is part of the education we get in Israel. It keeps us safe and service is a part of the fabric of our lives,” she says.”
“Noa, for her part, says she does not “look away from the complicated reality in which we live – the terror attacks and the wars” and does not “blame any soldier or any person who sees life differently than I do.””
McKernan also asks Yehuda Shaul of Breaking the Silence, who states that refusing the draft “is found only within circles on the hard left.”
Breaking the Silence is itself a highly politicized organization that collects anonymous testimonies of Israeli soldiers of alleged and most often unsubstantiated misdemeanors or “war crimes” that it presents to a mainly foreign audience as a means of fighting Israel’s “occupation.”
BtS is regarded as a fringe organization within Israel so for Shaul to acknowledge that refusing the draft is a fringe phenomenon is significant in itself.
The publication of a story featuring Noa Gur Golan’s refusal to serve is most likely a product of a negative attitude towards the IDF and sees such draft dodging as heroic.
Granted it is rare for non-Orthodox Jewish Israelis to refuse to do their lawfully mandated service in the IDF, particularly as the majority of females do not take on active combat roles. Indeed, it is difficult for non-Israelis to understand or relate to the central role that IDF service plays in Israeli society on multiple levels, bringing soldiers of different socioeconomic backgrounds together and helping absorb new immigrants.
For many Israeli teens, army service is a rite of passage and serving in the IDF is not necessarily an indicator of militarism or inherent aggression. For the majority of Israelis, the IDF fulfills a vital role in defending their state and contributing to this is a responsibility that comes with citizenship.
While McKernan’s story might not do this justice, absolutely none of this comes across in Millward’s version of the story, where the parts of the text that focus on one side only are included while the points above that made it into The Independent are scrubbed from the Telegraph’s version.
Millward’s bio on the Telegraph website states:
“David Millward is now a member of The Telegraph’s US reporting team, following a lengthy stint covering Transport. During more than 30 years with the paper he has been thrown out of Yugoslavia and followed football hooligans around Europe.”
This lends credence that Millward has very little insight into Israeli life and society. That he also believed that taking another journalist’s “exclusive” non-story that paints Israel in a less than flattering light and making it worse says something about his own journalist ethics and attitude towards Israel.
We’ve contacted Telegraph editors asking them to compare and contrast the two versions of the story. You can add your voice by sending an email to [email protected]
