Israeli Media and Threats to Israeli Press Freedoms

With Alan Abbey, MS ‘77, Shalom Hartman Institute

In this episode Alan Abbey, Director of Internet and Media at the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem, is interviewed by two University of Oregon students, Levi Gittleman and Morgan Krakow,
who are both from the UNESCO Crossings Institute, which launched at the University of Oregon in 2013.

The institute promotes conflict sensitive reporting and intercultural dialogue, and is designed to
broaden students awareness of these issues. In that spirit, Alan Abbey's talk from November 2017, on
Israeli media and threats to Israeli press freedoms, seems like a great opportunity for me to step out of
the way and at the students take over.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
0:45
I'm Levi Gittleman
MORGAN KRAKOW
0:46
And I'm Morgan Krakow
LEVI GITTLEMAN
0:47
And we're here with Alan Abbey to ask him some questions about his trip to Oregon for the first time
since what was it?
ALAN ABBEY
0:53
1978
LEVI GITTLEMAN
0:55
Great. So could you briefly tell us a little bit about your talk yesterday?
ALAN ABBEY
0:59
Sure. I gave a lecture to J100, about Israeli media. And I started actually, in the 1890s, because I wanted
to give the context and background of how today's media in Israel developed, which is very different
from the media in the United States.
ALAN ABBEY
1:15
And I gave some history of the pre-state Israel and Palestine in the early 20th century and try to get up
to today. I think I spent more time on the past and the present. But next time, we'll take it from there, I
suppose.
MORGAN KRAKOW
1:30
Nice. Why do you think that context was important for the students who you're talking to?
ALAN ABBEY
1:34
So that's a, that's a good question. The Israeli media are different from American media. Obviously, they
put out newspapers daily, and there are news websites and radio stations and TV stations. And on the
surface, they will look pretty much the same to the way American media look.

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ALAN ABBEY
1:51
The TV networks have reality shows and cop shows and sitcoms, but the context of Israeli media is very
different. There's no first amendment in Israel, there's no tradition of really, completely free speech.
And even to this day, there are some laws on the books, although they're not always enforced that
permit and require censorship, in ways I think that are unknown or unimaginable in the United States.
MORGAN KRAKOW
2:19
What do you think American journalists could learn from Israeli journalists?
ALAN ABBEY
2:23
Oh, that's a really good question, too. I think American journalists could learn speed. I don't think they
can learn accuracy. Unfortunately, Israeli media are not as rigorous in their fact checking as Americans.
But I will say that when there's news from outside Israel, I often get it first on Israeli media. Before I see
it on even the New York Times, the BBC websites and Israeli media are attuned to really fast turnaround
of information.
ALAN ABBEY
2:52
Now, that sometimes leads to sloppiness and errors, but that's probably the greatest strength of Israeli
media. Plus, they're quite dogged about following a story, following an individual almost to the point of
harassment, unfortunately, but there are few stories that stay hidden in Israel. And the media are really
good about getting at those stories.
ALAN ABBEY
3:15
And the final thing I guess they can learn is his competitiveness. Israeli media are intensely competitive.
Sometimes, again, that goes to excess, but I think competition is very important. And in media.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
3:29
Yesterday, you talked about the astronaut, who, what like when he came back, and it was a huge ordeal
that the story hadn't come out in time. And then you say that there's a quick turnaround in news media.
So that shift at that certain point when you realize that on shabot there was no news coming out, was
there a shift there?
ALAN ABBEY
3:45
Yeah, I told that story on myself. It's probably a dark moment. In my own personal journalism career. In
fact, if you know of the magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, they had a column called "Darts and
Laurels." Laurels are, they would no good journalistic events or stories over the past few months and
darts were the ones where the media may screwed up. And I have to say the only time I ever made it
into Columbia Journalism Review is as a dart, because our website, The Jerusalem Post's website did not
have any news about the crash of the space shuttle that included an Israeli astronaut for several hours.
ALAN ABBEY
4:19
So, we certainly learned a lesson about that, that even though the Jewish Sabbath is the day of rest in
Israel on Saturday, that news media needed to be on top of stories 24/7. And I don't know if I would
trace all of the Israeli media's instantaneous journalism to that event. But I think it was one of those
game changers in the current era of internet journalism that that proved that you have to be on all the
time.
LEVI GITTLEMAN

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4:51
So more about being Jewish and being a journalist, I saw that you wrote an article called "Jewish media
journalists prefer their own judgment to ethical codes." And I thought that was really interesting, and
how the Jewish religion can provide ethical codes to journalists.
ALAN ABBEY
5:04
You've done your homework.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
5:05
A little bit.
ALAN ABBEY
5:06
I appreciate that. Yes, I did a research study a few years ago or surveyed more than 100 journalists who
worked in Jewish media in the US and Canada. And I've also done research separately and
independently on ethical codes and journalism ethics. And what I found was a little disappointing and
that the journalists in the Jewish world are not so educated about media ethics. And certainly were not
aware of what you are probably learning or will be learning in journalism school, they come to
journalism in the smaller Jewish media from very different backgrounds.
ALAN ABBEY
5:44
So they relied on their own gut instincts for making ethical decisions on difficult stories whether to
pursue or not to pursue a story. And what came out of it to me was that there needed to be more
education and awareness within this particular sub group of journalists. And separately, and again, in
parallel, I did research into kind of Jewish values and history. And there are many ways in which Jewish
values classical traditional Jewish values can inform a journalist and inform the work he or she does, in
an ethical sense.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
6:20
Good.
MORGAN KRAKOW
6:21
Can you talk a little bit more specifically about what those sort of Jewish ethics do to inform Jewish
journalists?
ALAN ABBEY
6:28
Sure, the there's a classic comment in the in the, five books of Moses and the Torah, where it says, Do
not be a tale bearer among your people. And if you're not a tale bearer, you cannot be a journalist.
There is a great Jewish thinker of the early 19th century, who believed that even telling true stories
about someone if they could harm their reputation was not something you should do.
ALAN ABBEY
6:54
So if you follow those two strictures, very literally, you're, it's almost impossible to be journalist. And this
was long after in American tradition, the truth became a defense against libel. So if you were to follow
the path of this, the extreme position, you would be be very hard pressed to be a journalist.
ALAN ABBEY
7:18
But one of the great things about Jewish law and history and values is that you can find many paths to
the same goal. And that includes being an honest broker within your people. And it's exposing, I

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wouldn't say necessarily is the right word, but dealing with challenging issues. And one of the things I
said recently, and it's only partially joke is that if the book of Genesis were written today, by leaders of
the Jewish community or the political world, it would be very brief because every single major player in
that book from Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, they come up pretty bad.
ALAN ABBEY
7:34
But these are warts and all stories that are told about these great patriarchs and matriarchs of our
tradition. And if those people were living today, they would put pressure on their local papers not to
write the stories that are reported in the most important text of the Jewish tradition.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
8:15
So me and Morgan are both Jewish and we've both been Israel before and we're curious about your
transition from the United States to Israel, and why exactly, you made that move?
ALAN ABBEY
8:26
Another good question, a tough question to answer. Probably better answered over a beer or two in a
pub. But since we're sitting in the studio, we'll have to skip that for now. It was a complicated thing for
me the way it is for most people who move to Israel. It's a very interesting background. Let me zoom out
for a second for some context.
ALAN ABBEY
8:46
Most of the immigrants to Israel from other countries, and there are more than 100 countries that have
people who have moved to Israel from came because they had no other choice, whether it was Russian
Jews who were thrown in jail or oppressed for their tradition, or Jews from Arab and North African
countries who were pushed out or encouraged to leave after the formation of the State of Israel in
1948.
ALAN ABBEY
9:11
The immigration to Israel from the primarily English speaking countries, the US, the UK, Australia, South
Africa is kind of separate, is more voluntary. And it's more based on personal goals and ideologies.
Because certainly American Jews are deeply embedded in this society and are not facing in spite of some
recent blip as it were not facing constant political, financial, social and pressure in countries that are
unfriendly to them.
ALAN ABBEY
9:39
So any American in a sense who moves to Israel does so because he or she has some kind of inner drive
that sends them there. And I'm, at the same time, I'm also unlike some of that, because many of the
people I know from America have moved to Israel did so, I got a friend who had it written in his wedding
vows that they would move to Israel at some point when they got married in the United States.
ALAN ABBEY
10:03
So we, my wife, and I were not like that we were very embedded and happy in our community. We live
in Albany, New York. But we decided to spend a little time in Israel. And we were there initially for six
months sabbatical. And at the end of six months, we felt that six months wasn't enough to get a sense of
what the country is really like. So I had to resign my job I couldn't, I sabbatical was only six months. So
we throw ourselves into the economy, and I found a job. And then we said, well, we'll see how to be
after a year. And after year, we said, well, we want one more year. And by the end of two years, we
were really there.

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ALAN ABBEY
10:40
And we just felt that that was where we needed to be where we want it to be. There's the parable of the
frog in the pot, right? And I don't think it's actually true, but I use it anyway. If you put a frog in a pot of
boiling water, he will jump out if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn it on until the
water's boiling, you have cooked frog. So I don't know if that's really true. But I consider myself a cooked
frog.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
11:05
I'm really curious about that desire to want to see Israel and to want to know more about Israel and
wanting to eventually live there. Why? Where did that come from? To just want to experience Israel for
what it is?
ALAN ABBEY
11:15
It came actually from being there. One could have dreams and fantasies about Israel from afar. And I
think if we're, you know, delving into the Jewish subject a little bit, I would say that for most American
Jews who have an interest in Israel, it's, it's interesting, it's far. And it's kind of viewed in some ways as a
Jewish Disneyland, Alison in Wonderland, fantasy land where you can see things that you couldn't see.
And unfortunately, on the Israeli side, Israelis tend to view Americans as the mr moneybags of
monopoly, who are there primarily to spend their money. They don't really want them in a sense there.
ALAN ABBEY
11:51
That's a bit of an exaggeration. But there's an element of truth in that. But once we were there and met
people and saw the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs. It was a very
special place that we felt we could have a role in shaping. I mean, it's a small country, right? I said
yesterday, my talk, we're up to about 9 million people. And it's 9 million people. But in a sense,
everybody feels like they're related.
ALAN ABBEY
12:20
Everybody feels empowered to be your aunt or uncle. We used to have people stop my wife on the
street and insist they put a hat on our baby when he was in a stroller and then down the street, see,
another person would stop and say he must take the hat off the baby cuz they're too hot. So
everybody's in everybody else's face, which you can find either annoying, or you can find charming and
sense that everybody is part of one large family. And then that was obviously something without
obviously, that was something that drew, help draw us into the country.
MORGAN KRAKOW
12:53
So you were in Israel, kind of when you started to switch from the analog to the digital. Can you talk
about what it was like to be in Israel in the Middle East watching sort of the whole media landscape
shift? As you're involved in it?
ALAN ABBEY
13:10
Yeah. Again, that's a very good question. Not only was I there at that shift, I had a small part in it. And it
was a time when the news actually heated up significantly. I got to Israel in 1999. That was only a few
years after the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first wave of the Arab, the Israeli Palestinian Peace Accords
that were at that point on track towards some kind of resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
ALAN ABBEY
13:39

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And however, about a year after we got there, that changed, the Second Intifada broke out, and there
was a for two and a half to three year period of intense violence on a daily basis. And this was
happening as the media was shifting to digital from analog, it's a very good way to put it.
ALAN ABBEY
14:02
The largest news website now in Israel got launched in 2001. All the newspapers and media in Israel
launched news websites. And so they were thrown into this at a point when every single minute of the
day there was some kind of intense breaking news. And I remember those people in Israel who observe
the Sabbath and cut themselves out of media, and certainly online media. They may read your
newspaper, but online media and television for 25 hour period from sundown Friday till sundown on, on
Saturday, everybody would turn on their TV, radio or computer right after the Sabbath ended.
ALAN ABBEY
14:47
And the internet would crash essentially, almost every Saturday because people wanted to know, they
knew in that 25 hour period, something had happened. And so the news media had to gear up
extremely quickly to a 24/7 news cycle. And I don't even say 24/7 , I say 24/7 second news cycle. And
they were forced by the occurrences of what was going on to be on top of the news every minute of the
day. And that was a trial by fire as it were. And I think for the most part, better media in Israel have
weathered that well and continue to be on top of the news. And as I said, a few minutes ago, in fact,
faster than most even other digital media.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
15:33
For that's really, really interesting, especially as we're in this new age, and media is currently still
evolving. So that's really, really interesting. My next question for you is if you could just tell us a little bit
about the Hartman Institute where you're now I think, the official title is the director of internet and
media at the Shalom Hartman Institute. If you could just tell us a little bit about the institute, and what
you do there, that'd be really helpful.
ALAN ABBEY
15:51
Sure, the Hartman Institute is a think tank and educational center. And we research issues of Jewish
pluralism, and history and values and teach and run programs throughout Israel and throughout North
America. In fact, I just learned yesterday that the Hillel director here at the U of O is going to be joining
our program, a one or two year program, we run with American Hillel directors.
ALAN ABBEY
16:18
And we are not a political institution. We do not do what in Israel was called Hospira, which is either
roughly translated as PR or explanation or spin. But we try and educate people about Jewish values and
Jewish tradition without a perspective that you must be observant. And that is in a way that is true, we
believe we hope to the actual Jewish tradition of a conversation being the law.
ALAN ABBEY
16:50
I mean, there are many people you may know or whatever you may or may not know about Jewish law,
this you can eat this, you cannot do this light, you cannot turn on this, this path you cannot walk. And
and I think there is certainly that within the tradition. But there is more importantly, at least for us, you
can find many ways to the path of knowledge and Jewish values. And that's what we do we work with.
ALAN ABBEY
17:19

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We work with Israelis, we work with Americans, we work with Muslims and Christians, we work with
secular and religious men and women, young and old. And we have a very large footprint in many
camps. And unfortunately, I guess there are very few institutions in Israel that have such a broad
footprint with so many diverse populations.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
17:40
I'm also curious about you were before working with Armand student, a journalist for over 30 years in
the United States, correct?
ALAN ABBEY
17:46
Correct.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
17:47
So what was that transition like from being a journalist, the United States, now almost doing PR for the
Hartman Institute? And why was that transition?
ALAN ABBEY
17:55
Very good questions. These are good questions. I love being a journalist journalism was all I ever wanted
to do. And if you again, as I, you saw in my lecture yesterday, I was really only half kidding or a quarter
kidding when I showed a video of Clark Kent in the original TV series, because that is, in fact, what got
me going. And that's the kind of journalism I always wanted to do. I never wanted to do anything else.
So when I did that, I did that in America worked in newspapers, and I worked at news institutions. And I,
that's all I did as well ever wanted to do.
ALAN ABBEY
18:25
When I moved to Israel. I needed partially to reinvent myself because I was in a new country without
any contacts or connections, and nobody knew who I was. And certainly my clips from the Albany Times
Union didn't really mean much. So I found my first job at a news website, a fledgling news website, and
learned the internet, internet news from the ground up kind of on my own, because it really, really was
no guide to that.
ALAN ABBEY
18:56
And the challenge for me was working in a country where the primary language was not my mother
tongue, as we say, in Israel. And to this day, frankly, I could not do news, certainly at the pace of which
news is done in Israel in Hebrew. So I was limited to niche journalism in English, which America was
aimed at an overseas audience. So that's not, that closed off a lot of doors for me. At the same time, the
global use of English on the internet has opened many doors. And I was able to work in news websites in
Israel in English that had a strong audience, although primarily overseas, and that was an engine and
extension of my journalism career.
ALAN ABBEY
19:42
I faced issues of values and traditions and ethics that were alien to me, as I tried to get out of my talk
yesterday, Israeli media have different values and ethics than American journalism. And I was tested in
challenge and I class with people over those kinds of questions. And then the transition out of
journalism was very difficult for me.
ALAN ABBEY
20:02

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I love journalism to this day, and I feel it's where I belong and belonged. But the reality of life, gotten a
little older, you were very, you mentioned 30 years and plus many in Israel. So it adds up to a lot. Nice,
you get it. I'm not gonna tell you how old I am. But you can kind of get a sense of that. So I've been
doing it for a long time.
ALAN ABBEY
20:24
And it was very difficult, especially with the pace at which news happened in Israel. And when I was
running news websites, even though they were in English, and we were needed to be on news 24/7, and
as the director of a news website at the largest Hebrew news website in Israel, I was in that game, and it
was in Tel Aviv, which is about it can be a two hour commute from Jerusalem where I live. And it was a
very difficult to sustain.
ALAN ABBEY
20:54
So I was recruited to join the Hartman Institute when they were building their first online presence. And
I went to it with a sense of loss of leaving journalism, but also a sense of opportunity to learn new skills
and to bring an important institution to the world in a new fashion. So I, to this day, and maybe it's my
own internal fantasy, I don't consider myself a PR person, I consider myself in the sense of translator,
not from language to language, but to bring the ideas and values of our academics in our ivory tower to
translate our ivory tower to the world of the media through op eds, and shorter articles and interviews
and presence in the media. And to help the media get a sense of what we do.
ALAN ABBEY
21:39
So I'm not a salesman, I work in our marketing department, but I'm a terrible marketer, in that sense, I
shouldn't really say that. But I'm not a PR guy. I, again, maybe this is my own fantasy or my own internal
way of dealing with it. But I view myself as a creator of interesting content that I think has value and that
people would read.
ALAN ABBEY
22:02
So, some of what I do most, a lot of what I do is only on our website, it's not all about PR, I have some
live video programs that we put on our website, and I've tried to bring our institute to the modern
world, and to help them translate the really heavy duty serious philosophical thinking they do in a way
that doesn't dumb it down, but is more digestible in in the in the media world today.
MORGAN KRAKOW
22:27
Well, I think that's about all of our time.
ALAN ABBEY
22:30
Thank you very much. If you give me 30 more seconds, I want to say that my time at the University of
Oregon was as graduate student, and so I didn't have a full undergraduate experience here. But the
values and the ethics and the history and the skills I learned here, I truly mean this, I use them every day
in my career, and it was a tremendous opportunity. And I'm really glad to be back with you today.
MORGAN KRAKOW
22:51
Thank you so much for stopping by. I'm Morgan again.
LEVI GITTLEMAN
22:55
I'm Levi Gittleman Thanks so much.