OPINION: Media obsession with Gaza fuels backlash against Jews
As atrocities in Syria and Sudan are overlooked, distorted coverage intensifies anti-Israel sentiment, echoing the darkest chapters of history
Alex Brummer is a Jewish News columnist and the City Editor, Daily Mail
The last 15 months have sent a relentless bombardment of media coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and latterly Beirut. The fate of Israel’s suffering hostages has barely registered and the atrocities of 7 October 2023 have been all but forgotten. The consequences of the media onslaught supported often by the words of supposedly independent UN and human rights watchers has been devastating.
Syria, its dictatorship, the brutality of its displaced leader Bashar al-Assad (now in Moscow) and an Islamist takeover may currently be in the headlines. But for how long? Sudan barely registers.
Israel has been unnecessarily demonised and across the globe boycott activities have intensified. The world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, controlled by Norway, decided this month (DEC) to disinvest from telecoms group Bezeq cutting West Bank settlements and Palestinians off from reliable communications.
Violence against Israelis and Jews has become common place with all the echoes of the 1930s. Football supporters beaten to a pulp in Amsterdam and on the other side of the globe, in far off Melbourne, a synagogue with worshippers inside burnt to the ground. In Britain many universities, including Oxford, are no longer safe spaces.
The backlash against Israel and Jews has been extraordinary even though their enemy is the enemy of democracy in the shape of Iranian backed terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis.
It is only since Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon signed a ceasefire deal that the eyes of the world and the BBC – from which most people in the UK glean their news – have shifted (at least temporarily) away from Gaza. There seems to be a mistaken belief that the war there is over: it cannot be while the fate of the hostages, many feared dead or maimed, has been determined.
Violence against Israelis and Jews has become common place with all the echoes of the 1930s
Amid this unfinished horror the media and the eyes of the UN and humanitarian groups have shifted to two ongoing wars in nearby neighbourhoods. It has been until now as if the Syrian war, never fully resolved, never happened.
The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, commenting in recent days on the amazing advance of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on deposed President Bashar al-Assad’s blood-stained regime in Syria acknowledged the terrible human tragedy that has taken place in that country.
Parts of Aleppo, he remembered, had been reduced to rubble by Russian backed Syrian forces. The worst destruction ever seen in his years of overseas reporting. Hundreds if not thousands of people have been dying every month in Syria, but who has known and who has reported on the tragedy of a regime held in office by Iran and Russia. Until the victorious occupation of Damascus by HTS forces media access has been denied.
Western journalists may complain that they have been excluded from reporting from Gaza. But the flow of social media pictures and broadcasts from Al Jazeera affiliates there has been a relentless drumbeat. The consequences in terms of public opinion could not be greater. The voices of UN monitors, UNWRA and the like have been a devastating echo chamber for Israel’s alleged savagery.
The International Rescue Committee reports that in the ongoing civil war in Sudan eight million people have been displaced and half of the country’s 14 million children are starving to death
It is not just the Syrian conflict and the death and mayhem there which has been missing from global reporting. While charges of genocide, starvation tactics and other humanitarian horrors have been made against Israel, and its Jewish supporters in the Western democracies, Sudan barely has received attention. All humanitarian crises are to be deplored and starvation, death, homelessness wherever it is Gaza, Syria or Sudan is distressing. But the reality is that the numbers suffering, and this should never be a numbers game, in Sudan are so big that everything else shrinks in comparison.
The International Rescue Committee reports that in the ongoing civil war in Sudan eight million people have been displaced and half of the country’s 14 million children are starving to death.
The killing toll from the warring factions and attacks by Islamist militias on other populations is vast and ongoing. Yet it was only in recent weeks that a BBC crew, accompanied by the admirable and brave Lyse Doucet, reported from the region. Sudan and Syria, now temporarily in the spotlight, have largely been largely blotted out because of the intense focus on every incident in Gaza.
As a veteran reporter, former foreign correspondent (for more than a decade) and foreign editor for the Guardian, I am acutely aware of the herd instinct which sends reporters into hotspots. This is especially true in Israel with its open communications, small geographies and excellent access to information.
The intense, distorted and untrustworthy focus on one conflict above all others has unleashed a backlash against Israel, a pro-Palestinian narrative and a siege mentality for Jews everywhere. It is a harm which will leave indelible scars, even if peace does eventually come.
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