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.