Toufic Haddad, The Electronic Intifada, 20 February 2009
"If there is controversy about who won the recent war in Gaza, there is no question that Ramattan News Agency of Gaza City won the war to broadcast it.
It was Ramattan's images that beamed Israel's 22-day "Operation Cast Lead" into millions of households across the globe, capturing the indelible visual moments of the war: the aftermath of Israeli shells that hit a UN school compound killing 46 refugees; the streams of incendiary white phosphorus raining down upon civilian neighborhoods; the family members who desperately dug out the corpses of their relatives beneath the layers of collapsed homes. Ramattan's images were broadcast uncensored around the clock and only stopped on the few occasions the staff had to evacuate the studios fearing the 11-story building was about to be bombed.
Recently in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, journalist Gideon Levy described the effect these images had:
"The whole world saw the images. They shocked every human being who saw them, even if they left most Israelis cold. The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law. The investigations are on their way."
Ramattan's feeds were broadcast on hundreds of satellite stations around the world, including CNN, NBC, CBS, and FOX in the United States, and the BBC, TV2 Denmark, NOS Netherlands, Quatro Spain, Rai Uno Italy, ITN UK and TFI France in Europe.
Its cornering of the image market however came about by sheer default. Israel prevented international journalists access to Gaza during the war, and made it near impossible to get in for months before. Many international news agencies that did have film crews in Gaza also refrained from dispatching them because they considered the situation too dangerous......."
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