Television critics did not see the evening of broadcasts dedicated to broadcasting a real event but rather provincial. Presumably after the disaster they took their words back.
The launch on channel 1. From watching the television coverage, one would have thought that nothing had fallen
We are all Ilan Ramon
Is launching an Israeli astronaut into space an important event?
It doesn't matter at all
Hanoch Daum, Ma'ariv
O Ilan Ramon, O my beloved Colombia, the pride of my people, who will put fire in your loins. Auf Ramon, cut the sky, and when you are up, look at the Gentiles with the whites of your eyes and call out in a loud voice: The people of Israel live. The people of Israel now see me on television. The people of Israel went crazy.
Is a blue screen with a white spot in the center a television spectacle that anyone finds truly fascinating?
Does the scientific experiment of the nerds from the science class in Ort excite the navel of the people living in Zion? Does the question of how Ramon will defecate in the coming days justify a public discussion with a special team from the Weizmann Institute? After a five-year foreplay couldn't a little more be expected from the moment of ejection? As soon as Yaakov Eilon, Yonit Levy, and David Weitzum began broadcasting the event live, these questions became irrelevant.
This is the absurd power of the medium, which controls the masses by stealth: the combination of a live, multi-channel broadcast and a countdown of something (doesn't matter if it's a countdown to the launch of Ilan Ramon or a countdown to the presentation of candidates from a junction list to the Knesset. The main thing is that it be nine, eight, seven, six) Brings a country full of troubles like ours into the groove.
Is launching an Israeli astronaut into space an important event? It doesn't matter at all: less than an important event broadcast live on all channels, an event broadcast live on all channels is an important event. It is the total control of television in our lives that last night turned the hideous space shuttle into our aesthetic daughter, and Ilan Ramon into the charming uncle we never had. Five minutes ago we didn't know what a ferry was. In another five minutes we will not distinguish between NASA and CSKA. Now we are all Ilan Ramon.
Symbolic hitchhiker for the galaxy
By Rogel Alper, Haaretz
Coverage of the "Columbia" shuttle launch
Launching a shuttle into space is routine, not news. Ilan Ramon did not fly the shuttle. His missions in space require skill, but not that of a fighter pilot. The days of the astronaut's aura as a virtuous individual who exudes the "right stuff" - as the name of Tom Wolfe's book, which documented the early years of the American space program and was made into a film - are long gone. Astronauts have not been cultural heroes in America for decades. Like scientists, they do their work in anonymity. Many of them are not pilots at all. Ramon joined this flight as a hitchhiker. He is not an astronaut in the sense that Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin, from Apollo 11, were astronauts. Many Israelis could be trained to conduct the experiments he is entrusted with.
The 113th Space Shuttle launch was not a heroic or unique event. In any case, the Israeli space program recorded greater and more Israeli achievements, such as launching a blue-and-white satellite. Ilan Ramon's role in this story is only symbolic. Patriotic symbol, role model, cultural hero - the first Israeli in space. The operation of the live broadcasts for the afternoon hours on all broadcast channels was disproportionate, heated and inflated. Channel 10 saw fit to place from this morning, in the upper left corner of the screen, a clock that displayed the countdown to the "launch". get ready
In the last half hour we discussed everything about Ramon's participation in the bombing of the reactor in Iraq. Even the Holocaust was mixed into the conversation. The context is automatic: an Israeli in space is a demonstration of Israeli and Jewish power, something to unite around and be proud of, a national holiday. Another link: the attempt to build the air force in the public mind as a space force that operates against the enemies of the state even outside the atmosphere, to inspire the best of the youth to volunteer for the mission, to illustrate the cooperation with America, to instill in the viewers a belief that the Ramon flight improves Israel's strategic situation.
A gifted boy who was interviewed by Yaron London on Channel 10 expressed his opinion that from now on, after the launch, the countries of the world will stop visiting Israel and will accept it as an honorary member of the family of nations. No one bothered to fix it, but his mistake is understandable. Space flight is the pinnacle of human technology and ambition, and watching the television coverage you would think nothing has fallen. Ramon flies into space, Ramon symbolizes the whole of Israel, meaning the nation of Israel flies into space. The channels created the distorted impression that an entire country was holding its breath for the launch and bursting into roars of joy during it. People are sitting in their homes beaten and bruised, aware of terrorist attacks and fear, recession and unemployment, cuts and IDF masks, and are asked to raise their heads, raise morale, get excited, in the face of an event that is disconnected from their lives and does not affect them. Television mobilized to convince them that Ramon's symbolic biography runs a straight line from the bombing of the reactor in Baghdad, and even from the establishment of the state after the Holocaust, to his departure by ferry. In simple words, this is another military and national victory for Israel. A small step for Ramon, a huge setback for the Jewish people.
This fiction, the media farce, would have been avoided if the channels had maintained a standard and treated the launch as a small step for the country. But then the story would have gone on as well. Without the broad symbolic context - the fighter pilot, the space force, the reactor in Iraq, the special relations with the world power, etc. - this is important news, not a "story". History will bring everything back into proportion. In 10 years, the question "Who was the first Israeli in space?" will be asked. in TV trivia shows, and most of the contestants will shrug their shoulders and guess: "Chaim Ramon?"
