26.11.1987

STORIES YOU WON'T SEE WHEN TV IS OFF -- OR ON -- THE AIR

These are some of the things that television, even if it were on the air, would probably not be able to report.

An exposition of the non-violent philosophies of a Palestinian-American intellectual, with an explanation of why the tactics of Ghandi, Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. are much more effective than terrorism when used as the underdog's strategy in an ostensibly democratic society.

An expose of how the doctor's slowdown in Kupat Holim hospitals is part and parcel of a much larger struggle between the populist Likud and the conservative Labour Party.

An analysis of Israeli interests in the Gulf War. A report on the unprecedented victory of the moderate Arab world over the extremist Arab world in Amman. or the story of a NIS20 million investment in the West Bank road used by barely 100 (Jewish) cars a day.

A report on why Likud strategists are worried by a potential split. An in-depth account of how Labour and Likud are gearing up for election year and an analysis of how democracy is threatened by both parties' strategy to go on the war-path against each other while at the same time promising to continue the national unity government.

A report on the Avraham Shapira monopoly on rugs. A story on which members of Knesset-or their relatives or friends-have got rich since becoming members of Knesset. An investigative series on how Shas, even out of government, still controls the Interior Ministry. And a series on why the United Kibbutz Movement is unable to clear up its debts.

A report explaining how a journalists' strike at TV House closes down the entire system because, a few years ago, electronic media journalists in Jerusalem, wanting to take over the local union branch, allowed technicians, tape librarians and practically anyone else they could think of to become card-carrying members of the union.

Of course, these are not all the things that Israel Television would not be able to report, in depth or otherwise.

Thomas Jefferson once said that if any nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.

There was no TV or radio in his day; and no doubt, if there had been, the TV news personalities of Jefferson's day would say what the TV journalists of today say-look elsewhere for serious education about the issues of the day. Look to newspapers and periodicals, look to political or cultural figures, look even to spiritual, if not religious leaders.

In the last few days of the 48-day-old broadcasting strike, it has suddenly become fashionable to complain about the shallowness of Israeli democracy. The public apathy about being deprived of the news, say the worriers, is a sign of the lack of a local "culture of democracy", which is almost as ambiguous a phrase as "the Jewish State".

But Israeli democracy has already been eroded. Some say it was eroded in the days of Little Isser Harel; others say it began when it became clear that Israel wanted to keep, as well as eat, the cake baked during the Six Day War.

Some say the erosion began with the TV-shaped ballot boxes posted by former finance minister Yoram Aridor, and others say the erosion finally became serious when, three years ago, the current government did away with the Knesset by creating a national unity government.

So now the broadcasting strike is evidence of the erosion of democracy.

Democracy won't come to an end in Israel with tanks circling the Knesset, The Prime Minister's Office or even the Chief Rabbinate. There are too many generals, and not only in the army, for that.

But it could come to an end without anyone noticing. Indeed it may already have ended, without anyone - not even those politicians who encourage the public's apathy - even noticing.

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