Noah Beck
IPT, July 2, 2024
“There are essentially two parallel universes concerning Israel: 98% of the global media, which is totally indifferent or actively hostile to Israel, and the Israeli and Jewish media, which cover Israeli victims and heroes, while highlighting Israeli humanity when fighting forces of diabolical cruelty, and all while maintaining enough reporting independence to expose government corruption, military abuses, and other problems.”
You can’t empathize with what you don’t know” – that simple psychological truth explains how Israel, the only democracy fighting for its very survival against Jihadi barbarism, can be so easily demonized into an international pariah. When the global media stubbornly ignores Israel’s humanizing stories and downplays the evil of its enemies, while amplifying every anti-Israel allegation and/or narrative, the resulting global isolation can existentially threaten a tiny country surrounded by bloodthirsty hostility and dependent on international trade for its military and economic survival.
On June 8th, a mere 13 hours after the New York Times sent its news alert about four Israeli hostages being rescued by the IDF, it sent a second news alert about hundreds of Palestinians killed in the rescue operation, as if Israel – rather than the hostage-takers – should be blamed for those deaths and as if they were more newsworthy, even though civilian deaths in war happen every day while successful hostage rescues are exceedingly rare.
There was no NYT story to spotlight the heroism of Arnon Zmora, 36, from the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit, who was killed by incoming fire while leading the hostage-rescue team. Instead, in this 882-word article about the operation, the paper stripped away all humanizing details when tersely mentioning him for the first time in the third paragraph: “One special forces police officer died.” In a similar, but longer version of the article, only after 1,015 words (out of 1,333) did the paper give him a name (but nothing else): “Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, was seriously wounded in combat and later died of his injuries, an Israeli police spokesman said.”… [To read the full article, click here]
