All Israelis to be sent to bomb shelters in civil defense drill

Noam Sheizaf By Noam Sheizaf May 9, 2011 | Edit

Israeli papers ran instructions for the event of missile attack; army’s TV commercials that contained alarm sounds caused panic and were taken of the air

The IDF is about to conduct a national civil defense drill during the month of June. Two alarms will be sound–one in the morning and one in the evenings–and all citizens will be ordered to go to the “security zones” and bomb shelters in their homes or work places. A similar drill was conducted last year, but on a smaller scale.

Last Thursday, All Israeli Hebrew newspapers (but Haaretz) ran full-page ads with instructions on what to do in the event of a missile attack on Israeli cities. The ads were part of a recent campaign, launched by the army’s Civil Command.

The army’s ads ran as the front pages of the papers Maariv, Israel Hayom and a daily section of Yedioth Ahronoth. They also appeared in the Hassidic papers Hamodia and Yated Ne’eman. The walla.co.il website estimated that the army paid the paper around NIS 400,000 for these ads.

For the past several days, the army has also been running a TV spot that encourages Israeli citizens to prepare themselves for the event of a missile attack. The spot included the sound of an alarm, and as a result, TV station received complaints over the panic it caused, especially in southern cities. Last week, the authority for commercial broadcasting ordered the IDF’s Civil Command to take out the alarm sound from its TV spots.

Here is the original spot:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7rxVsU0gh4&[/youtube]

Noam Sheizaf

Noam Sheizaf is an independent journalist and editor. He was the founding executive director and editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine. Prior to joining +972, he worked for Tel Aviv’s Ha-ir local paper, Ynet, and the Maariv daily, where his last position was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. He is currently working on a number of documentary films.

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