As protests hit TV, Israelis can no longer look away from plight of Gaza

Almost two years after Hamas's onslaught, the story has begun to move from the hostages to starving Palestinians

- Isabel Coles

The Israeli TV hosts were live on air for the Big Brother season finale last weekend, urging viewers to call in with their votes when several activists burst onto the stage shouting "Israel is starving Gaza!"

As security guards tackled the protesters, the presenters did their best to smooth over the disturbance, but it was too late: reality had intruded on reality TV.

"While the hostages are abandoned to their deaths and children are starving just an hour's drive away from the Big Brother studios, the media is not telling the nation what is going on in Gaza and broadcasts to the citizens that everything is going on as usual," read a statement from the Standing Together activist movement that was behind the protest.

For nearly two years of war, Israeli media broadcasts have focused almost entirely on Israeli victims of the conflict, from the hostages and their families to fallen soldiers.

In recent weeks, however, a small but increasingly assertive minority of Israelis have been pushing Palestinian suffering into the picture as opposition to the war grows. Their aim: to break through a wall of indifference critics say has been enabled by the Israeli media's failure to cover Gaza's plight.

"If you think of the Israeli public as being isolated behind a dome that prevents them from knowing what's going on, there have been cracks in the dome," said Oren Persico, a staff writer for The Seventh Eye, an independent Israeli website devoted to journalism and freedom of the press.

At protests calling for an end to the war, which have long focused mainly on the plight of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, photographs of Palestinian victims are more visible than before. Prominent artists and academics have signed petitions condemning the violence being perpetrated in their name. Some mainstream media have addressed starvation in the territory.