One of the most powerful media moments that has been etched in the consciousness of the Israeli public, from the days of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008, was an especially sympathetic interview by Yonit Levi, the news anchor of Channel 2, with Ahmed Sanur, a welding shop owner in Gaza.
At the ruins of the welding shop, destroyed in the extensive bombings of the Israeli air force, Sanur spoke in an anguished voice about his son who was killed in the same attack. Levi, known for a meticulous and unemotional presenting style, didn’t succeed this time in remaining apathetic. She asked Sanur how he felt after losing his son, and if he had a message for the Israelis. Sanur sobbed and almost begged that the war would stop. At least a million Israelis watched this interview, hundreds of thousands of them, residents of the south, were besieged in shelters while under an unremitting onslaught of rockets and shells from Gaza.