The Israel-Palestinian stories that just do not matter
The international media has whole categories of Israel-Palestinian stories that do not matter. Here is a guide on how to spot them.
Behind the blazing headlines and shocking photos, newspapers have a secret they do not want you to know. Most news stories do not matter. When it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, there are whole categories of such stories.
The unimportant story is an underappreciated tool in the mainstream media’s anti-Israel arsenal. While the Israel-Palestinian conflict generates more column inches than any other global news story - much of it flawed, biased, and designed to besmirch the Jewish state - most are stories that sound dramatic but are irrelevant.
A good approach to identifying whether a story matters is to see whether it involves key actors and decision makers. The primary parties are Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, and Iran. These are the actors whose words and deeds matter. Next in line is the US, as Israel's most important ally and a superpower.
Stories that do not involve the actors on this small list do not matter. The only question is whether they matter a little, or not at all.
Let us begin with editorials, or “leaders” as journalists call them. This is where a newspaper states its position, which is the title's formal or official position. Editorials are often pompous and say things such as “this newspaper believes…” as though a newspaper can have beliefs. A newspaper’s editor decides the leader topic and the paper’s position, so “this newspaper” is just the editor saying “I reckon”.
It is often not even the editor who writes them. Major newspapers have dedicated "leader writers" who will spend all day, or all week, getting that editorial word perfect to the editor’s satisfaction. It is a fun job, but also challenging as sometimes you must argue for positions with which you do not agree.
While leader writing carries some prestige in the arcane world of journalistic reputation, these editorials are utterly unimportant. Do Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas Gaza terror leader Yahya Sinwar care what the editor of the Minnesota’s Star Tribune, The Adelaide Advertiser, or Calgary Herald think? Have they even heard of these newspapers? Should they have? Nope.
Closely related are newspaper columnists or people invited to write in the opinion pages. Does anyone care what the psychopathic Norman Finkelstein, the racist Candice Owen, the insufferable Thomas Friedman, or the intellectual bantamweight Piers Morgan think? Such people's opinions just do not matter.
Then there are articles about people who have main character syndrome. Politicians have a congenital desire to be in the news. Consider Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who compared Israel's defensive war in Gaza to the Holocaust. He has no sway over Israeli or Palestinian leaders, so what he says is meaningless. His comments were just a headline-grabbing exercise for domestic political consumption. They do not matter.
Stories about nobodies in the world of Middle East politics, such as Ireland, South Africa, Spain, and Armenia, recognizing a Palestinian state, are just politicians saying “Look at me”. It is performative nonsense from people who did not get enough attention as children. No doubt, they were horrible, whiny kids, too. What they say affects nothing, so these are not important stories.
Even lower down the pecking order are stories about second- and third-tier politicians making comments. Consider Australian Labor Government Senator Fatima Payman, who wrote for Al Jazeera that Australia should recognize a Palestinian state. Besides the fact that an Australian senator writing for the terror-cheering Al Jazeera ought to be a scandal, no one has ever heard of her. What she thinks does not matter. It is not news.
Trade unions, university faculties, public sector associations, and other such bodies making statements that get reported as news are a category unto themselves. These bodies have specific tasks that they are supposed to do - such as labor unions securing better pay and conditions for their workers - and have no business taking positions on foreign wars and no connection to Israel or the Palestinians. It is of zero importance. Such things should not even be reported.
Next up are stories that sound important but are not. This is where most stories about the United Nations (UN) belong. I will spare readers another diatribe on why it is the world's most worthless body. Suffice it to say, the Israel-Palestinian conflict continues regardless of what the feckless UN does. Its posturing is meaningless, and that makes stories about it meaningless, too.
Stories about the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), by contrast, do matter because UNWRA is on the ground facilitating Hamas terror operations. Foreign government funding of it matters, too. Countries that have resumed funding UNWRA - including Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, and Sweden - are directly financing Hamas terror. This is outrageous and would be considered so in all instances where the terror victims are not Jews.
To fund UNWRA is to finance Hamas. According to the lawsuit that October 7 pogrom survivors have filed against UNWRA, Hamas gets $2 million to $4 million in exchange rates fees for every $20 millionit receives in US dollars and converts to New Israeli Shekels. The more the world’s nations give, the more money Hamas makes. This should be major news.
Then we have the man-bites-dog stories. As the old news saying goes, a dog biting a man is not news, but it is if a man bites a dog. In essence, unexpected or unusual things are newsworthy. A good example was a few Israeli troops in Israel’s north building a trebuchet to launch fireballs at Hezbollah. Presumably, this was to burn shrubbery before a land war. Such a weapon has not been used in centuries. Israel Defense Force officials said it was a “local initiative”. Simply put, it is an interesting story because it is so unusual and unrepresentative, but it is of no importance.
A common category of story is those that are important, but not in the way they are presented. This is where stories about anti-Israel protests sit. These stories matter because they are part of the global surge in anti-Semitism, Jihadism’s infiltration of the West, and the rise of the Far Left. However, they matter only to the countries in which the protests happen, such as the US or Britain. Neither Hamas nor Israel is going to change its war position because agents of woke idiocy have taken over universities and town squares.
Another category is single-event stories. These are events that get reported on a standalone basis when they should be part of a larger story. Israel’s strike against Hamas terrorists that sparked a secondary explosion from a Hamas munitions truck, tragically killing civilians in a humanitarian corridor, is an example. The strike was just one of tens of thousands of strikes in an eight-month war. It had no impact on the war’s direction. Its main impact was the generation of news headlines.
Single-event stories can be important, such as who has won an election, but rarely so in something as complex as the Israel-Hamas War. Such stories offer a masterclass in hypocrisy because they do the opposite of what we are always told is critically important, which is to view things "in context". Focusing on a single event in a long-running, complex, and multifaceted story is a technique designed specifically to denude a story of its context.
Finally, there are stories that are meaningless but appear important because crucial information is left out. Stories about Canada, France or Britain restricting or reducing arms exports to Israel because of the war in Gaza are prime examples. These sound significant but left out is that Israel does not import significant amounts of military equipment from these countries. Israel’s big three weapons suppliers are the US and Germany, with Italy a distant third. In other words, countries that barely sell arms to Israel will reduce what little they do sell. That is not a story that matters.
Once you realize that most stories on the Israel-Palestinian conflict do not matter, you cannot un-see it. After discounting these categories of unimportant stories, we are left with the actual news, which these days are slim pickings.
You are right about the worth of these stories, even if it is irritating to watch or read them. However, some are disconcerting for they indicate how much Jew hatred is gaining in strength throughout the western world. I read recently how the United States, pursuant to a Biden executive order, is now quizzing Israelis who apply for visas about their military service in great detail and rejecting their applications. This will not affect the way Israel pursues the war, but it gets me very angry to see the depth of American duplicity when it comes to Israel. I also read today a story about how the Canadian government has named an anti-Semite to the post of chair of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Again, this will not change the outcome of the coming war in Lebanon, but it will lead me to consider moving even quicker to Israel. Ditto with the Canadian Foreign Minister's sanctioning of Israeli individuals and organizations living and working in Judea and Samaria. Of course, Canada is a third-rate power when it comes to any significant foreign policy initiatives, but the story does more than rankle. So did a story I read about students taking up the cause of Hamas in Chile, leading to attacks on Jewish and pro-Israeli professors, one of whom is taking early retirement as a result. These stories should enrage Jews everywhere and lead them to aggressive action against the governments of countries where they live that tolerate such behaviour. There is also another effect they have, which the idiots who purvey them and endorse them do not see, namely the hardening of Jewish attitudes toward the Muslim populations that attack Israel and support those attacks. I will not shed a tear when Beirut is bombed into oblivion, but I will hold the Canadian government in part responsible for that eventuality. And when I see the fake news report a lachrymose story about suffering in Gaza I remain unmoved, knowing it is one more lie from a tv anchor. Thus does the world sink into a horror show called humanity.
Agree for the most part Nachum. In this article I wrote on UK Labour, I similarly commented on the unbelievable situation where the comments of local officials in an opposition party in Britain on Gaza is newsworthy or relevant: https://open.substack.com/pub/danielclarkeserret/p/the-descent-of-politics?r=2bk821&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
However just one quibble. It is perfectly acceptable - and important - to hear the opinions of minor players if they add something to the debate. Otherwise you and me are out of a job....