A German-Israeli media debate

 

Israeli and German journalists exchanged views at a conference marking 50 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel.

 

“The German image in Israel is extremely favorable, there is no foreign politician in Israel who is more popular than Angela Merkel,” said Gil Yaron, the Israel and Palestinian territories correspondent for the German newspaper Die Welt, at a conference in Tel Aviv in June. Entitled “Israel and Germany: 50 years of diplomatic relation”, the 4-day conference gathered around 60 journalists from Israel and Germany in order to discuss the special relations between the two nations. It was organized by the International Journalists’ Programmes (IJP) in cooperation with the Herbert Quandt Foundation.

 

The conference opened with a discussion of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany in 1965. Noah Klieger, Auschwitz survivor and the oldest journalist in the Israeli media – now working for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth – said that, at the time, he was against this agreement. Dan Diner, professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Leipzig University in Leipzig, argued that Israel’s existence depended on entering into a relationship with Germany. “There was no other country who gave aid to Israel and the Israeli government had to do it,” he added.

 

“Israel is perceived as a special country for journalists to work in. Where else would you have the chance to meet Holocaust survivors and talk with them and interview them? Sometimes it’s really intense but it also makes it a different country to report from,” said Torsten Teichmann, German radio correspondent for Israel and the Palestinian territories. “I try to tell the story about the people in Israel from different angles and show the diversity here,” he concluded.

 

Turning to the future, Yinnon Miles, news presenter of Channel 10 in Israel argued that the Israeli media can learn from the German press. “Only in the last five years have Israeli media begun to cover the economic situation in Israel,” Miles said. “We have started to talk about internal problems of the people who are living here. I think that Germany is a good example of a country that works better in many ways than Israel and we can learn a lot from that”.