Do You Like What You See?
I asked my new pal, Chat GPT, to compile a list of “ongoing wars/armed conflicts.” Chat’s list consisted of 10 regions, headed, naturally, by Ukraine and Gaza but also including many terrible conflicts occurring in various places throughout Asia and Africa, some between nations, some within nations.
Then, I asked for an approximate estimate of the total number of people involved in in these conflicts. He reported that approximately 146.8 million people worldwide are suffering due to wars and their consequences. By contrast, Israel’s 9.3 million and Gaza’s 2.1 million residents total just 11.4 million.
If media exposure were the benchmark for human suffering, the war between Hamas and Israel would seem to overshadow nearly every other conflict on Earth, drawing more global attention than all other active conflicts combined. Furthermore, Chat concluded, “Gaza [in comparison to Israel] has received a majority share of humanitarian-focus media attention.”
What are we to make of this? While conceding this “extraordinary imbalance” of sympathetic (“humanitarian-focus”) reporting can be determined by “entrenched media habits,” Chat doesn’t mention that one of those “habits” may well be entrenched antisemitism.
He does however acknowledge that the various anti-Israel boycotts, campus protests, demonstrations and attacks on Jews worldwide, consume a lot of ink, or electrons. In other words, the coverage of conflicts about the conflict tips the balance toward outsized world media treatment.
Despite the ceasefire that has just been declared in Gaza, violent armed fighting continues between Hamas and Gazan clans vying for ascendency. “Collaborators” are being executed in the streets in full view of the population.
Ordinary people trapped in these internecine clashes are still dying, but where are the protestors? Where are Students for Justice in Palestine with their supposed concern for the plight of the poor Gazan people? Why aren’t members of Film Workers for Palestine, all 5000 plus of them, issuing a new pledge to show their righteous support of a still suffering people? Where are the demonstrators who marched in European capitals to demand a Palestinian state? Immediately!!!
Silent, all are silent…
They only cared about Gazans when they could be used to express hatred of Israel.
To all those who screamed “Globalize the intifada,” the intifada you so romanticized is raging in Gaza. Do you like what you see?
