The dramatic return-to-Homesh story occupied the national press on Wednesday - but mainly in terms of whether the activists and soldiers coming to remove them would clash violently. The historic and political significance of the return - and of the destruction 20 months ago that led to it - was all but ignored.
In the months following the Disengagement of the summer of 2005, and even before it, some well-known media personalities admitted that the media had erred in supporting Ariel Sharon and his plan. Television and radio show host Ilana Dayan, for instance, said that the media had not asked hard questions of Sharon and the others promoting his plan.
Respected Israeli journalist Nachum Barnea, in the March 2005 edition of the monthly media publication "The Seventh Eye," admitted that most of the Israeli media had acted more like the "guard dog" of the Disengagement plan than that of democracy. 
The only solution is to create competition - not only in newspapers and internet, but also in radio and television.
In May 2005, Army Radio's political affairs correspondent Kaveh Shafran similarly confessed that the media had turned a blind eye in allowing/encouraging the disengagement at the price of democracy. "I have failed. We have failed," he wrote in an article for the Israeli Institute for Democracy. "As a diplomatic correspondent, I was among those who were supposed to, in the past year, tell the public exactly what is the Disengagement plan, why it was created, how it will be implemented, and to discuss its various aspects... [Instead,] the media's conspiracy of silence protected
Today's news coverage on Homesh appeared to be reverting to the same mistakes. A Channel Two television morning report spent several minutes discussing the tensions, or lack thereof, between the soldiers and the activists, and the anchor-woman asked the reporter in the field about the prospects for violence. At no point, however, did they discuss whether there might be some justification for returning to Homesh at this time.
Nor did either of them muse over whether the stated purpose had been served in destroying the Jewish community there in the first place, or discuss the large minority that supports allowing Jews to return to Homesh.
The same occurred on Voice of Israel's main news program, the noontime "Midday" show. Yesha Affairs correspondent Guy Kotev talked for over five minutes from the field about the ease with which the soldiers removed the activists and the future plans of the latter to return. He said nothing, however, about the "larger picture," including the security dangers involved in Israel's giving up its civilian presence on a towering hilltop that gives future rocket-launchers commanding control of Israeli cities to the east and west, including the greater Netanya area.
Nor did Kotev discuss the environmental dangers he must have noticed along the way to Homesh in the form of unsupervised Arab garbage dumps newly formed along the roadside.
At the Jerusalem Conference earlier this month, the editor of the weekly B'Sheva newspaper, Emanuel Shilo, said that the media "has not repented." There have been journalists "here and there," he said, "who have confessed to making mistakes during the Disengagement... But often this is just so that they can continue to commit the same sins again afterwards... For instance, respected journalist Akiva Eldar of Haaretz openly wrote recently that he is willing to offer Olmert a general pardon for all the offenses of which he is charged, in exchange for further withdrawals and concessions to the Palestinian Authority..."
"In short," Shilo concluded, "I see no change in the Israeli media, and the only solution is to create competition - not only in newspapers and internet, but also in radio and television."