From what I can gather this conflict as been going on a long time and the Hamas group has existed for a while too. Why are all the news cycles suddenly focusing on this the past few weeks?
Something like 10,000 civilians dead in the period of a month. Tends to draw the attention
OP has a point. There are other conflicts that have high body counts that don’t drive front page stories. Yemen. The stuff going on in Myanmar. Uyghurs. Even the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.
You’re right that this is a significant conflict, but our news industry doesn’t assign column inches to body count.
Not the volume of deaths, but the continuousness of deaths.
Everyday another ~300 people die on average.
Not to mention media availability, because it’s basically a prison having rockets thrown at it, media can get really good information. They’re not really in a war zone. It’s a one-sided killing field more or less. So great reporting conditions great visuals. Conflicts really concentrated. Just put the cameras right there. You’ll capture most of it.
If it bleeds it leads.
It’s that combined with the likelihood for this to turn into WWIII due to the complex web of nation alliances involved in this conflict. Also, many major religions believe the end of the world is tied to this situation.
Hamas led the largest attack on Israel in decades, Israel has responded with their most significant attack on Hamas in decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas_attack_on_Israel?wprov=sfla1
Hamas announced the start of the operation, stating that it had fired over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within a span of 20 minutes. Israeli sources reported that at least 3,000 projectiles had been launched from Gaza. At least five people were killed by the rocket attacks.
They overwhelmed the air defense systems through sheer numbers. Proving a bit of theoretical weakness
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the thousands of violent deaths may have something to do with it.
Have you heard about Yemen recently?
No? Then it must be quiet there. No deaths at all.
A cynical news producer would say “Yemen? Who cares? Muslims killing other Muslims is about as interesting as gang members killing other gang members. Give me Muslims and Jews killing each other, though, and we’re talking RATINGS, baby!”
Because this time it really could lead to WWIII. The middle east has always been a powder keg, but this time, both sides have committed such atrocities that there’s no coming back from it, unless they sit back at the negotiation table. (They won’t).
For the Israeli side, it’s the 1400 dead and mutilated bodies and the 200 hostages they somehow forgot about. For Hamas, the last decades of living in an open air prison, harassment and dehumanising of their people. Also they have nothing to lose at this point. And the violence is not letting up.
If Israel continues with this bloodlust thing they’re doing by bombing civilians, journalists and UN workers indiscriminately to death, chances are the Hezbollah’s will get involved in Lebanon. They’re much more organised and subsidized. When they get seriously in, it means the US will be obliged to counter attack. When the US counterattacks, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Egypt, all the Arab countries (with A SHIT TON OF MONEY) will get involved too in this war. This means more death and a war that no one will win, only more dead civilians as usual.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is Netanyahu’s end goal. Forcing the US to join in on the war is their only way of winning this genocidal war. And to do that they have to antagonise all the regional players to a point that they can no longer look away from all the kids dying and start a real war on them so the Israeli can play the victim and be supported by the US and some (not all!) EU countries. This can break the world, divide the unity of the EU and pit them against the US. Africa will get involved too. Actually pit everyone against everyone…
And then we have China and Russia…this is literally their wet dream. They’ll swoop in and take over after everyone of importance dies.
Sorry, just very drunk and it is still a worst case scenario…
This place has been the expected start of WWIII for the duration of the Cold War and a bloody mess of atrocities on all sides for longer than that.
But there really is a less world-destroying end to this. When the hostages are returned and sufficient Hamas leadership is dead and resources destroyed, Israel will pull out. US will pour in aid, with the help of neighbors like Egypt.
Then comes the hard part, but much less violent: diplomacy. How do we get some sort of working agreement between the parties such that Israel feels safe and Palestinians aren’t too repressed? Everyone thought we had this a few years ago but then Hamas took over with the promises of terrorisn and destruction.
Because it’s recently escalated from a simmering series of minor conflicts to full-blown war. Hamas launched a coordinated series of strikes against Israel on Oct. 7th, massacring lots of people, and Israel has responded by bombing Gaza indiscriminately, killing thousands of civilians in their attempts to slay Hamas leaders.
This is “new,” in other words. It’s receiving a lot of attention because it’s a big change from the state of things prior to 10/7/23.
To add to this, Israel has not performed a full-scale military invasion into Gaza before now.
There’s also a contingent that’s betting it’s the kickoff to the End Times.
Because things escalated significantly in the last few weeks.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1210831466/death-toll-gaza-israel-hamas-conflict
It’s an easy story, there are clear sides, and there are vocal demographics in the West that really care about it.
So it drives clicks. Local Palestinian, Jewish, and related groups are saying stuff that makes for easy interviews. The “other side” is easy to find, so creating multi-source stories is a breeze. For journalists with tight daily deadlines, it’s a gift.
Even better, politicians are courting those groups, so they’re saying stuff that, again, is easy to report on. And it’s local news!
There are clear sides?
The right side, and the wrong side,. Plus you can interview people who argue about right versus wrong. It’s a lot of content that can be farmed
In your opinion, Which sides are which sides? I don’t need an essay, just a definition :)
From a media perspective it doesn’t matter. Also there’s more than two sides.
Which was the point I was getting to with the original commenter. But thanks for… ya know… jumping in.
Having “clear sides” doesn’t mean there’s a clear “right side” and “wrong side”, imo.
The sides aren’t very clear when you start looking closer. And they’re both the wrong side of you think about it. The best side is the “wow that’s a shit show I’m glad I’m not involved with” side.
Not the guy you asked, just a random on the internet so take this with a grain of salt.
The Israeli’s actually stated goal is genocide. They don’t want to relocate the Palestinians, they want to eradicate them. To that end they’ve committed so many war crimes against those folks.
In retaliation, when they have no choice but fight against impossible odds or lay down and die, the Palestinians choose to fight, as would be or you or anyone else. The thing is, they are just as bad about the whole disgusting war crime thing. Granted they are the ones imprisoned and faced with no choice but death, so in my mind it’s more excusable than what the Israelis are doing, but it’s still super fucked up stuff that people should look at and go wow what the FUCK is wrong with you….
So whose really the bad guy? Great fucking Britain! They made deals ages ago to grant the same land to both the Israelis and Palestinians and then fucked off before shit hit the fan saying cheerio from their ships. Truly the British started this shit and then just bounced. They should be the ones to fix it. I would say they should make all Palestinians full British citizens with all the relevant benefits and make them a little Palestine in Britain somewhere - shit, do it in Leeds - nobody will miss it and to them it’ll be paradise in comparison to the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is not innocent in this. They’ve both been fighting for a long time. And yeah GB is a fucker for stirring that pot.
But it’s 2023, god is fake, the holy war is pointless, and there is no such thing as a holy land. Everyone needs to wake up and stop fighting. There’s not a reason to fight that makes any sense. Obviously, Israel—the government—needs to stfu about genocide. Those people need to be fired.
But……. Hamas is totally in bed with Russia. Is that because they’ll take whatever help they can get at this point? Probably. I mean, you can’t buy guns at the gas station. (You can in Texas, but that’s another thing haha).
Something something thou shall not kill.
Oh god please don’t take my statement as saying Hamas is innocent, they are monsters as well! It’s disgusting genocidal madness on both sides of this conflict. My point was only to highlight that despite both sides in this conflict being evil incarnate, the true evil behind the conflict on a global level is good old British colonialism. I did not not mean to attempt to justify any of the disgusting incidents by Hamas or Israel.
Understood.
Even the Palestinians. People want to distinguish them from Hamas because most are innocent civilians in desperate conditions, but they supported Hamas. They are all for violence, murder , terrorism. They applauded when Hamas killed innocent civilians and took hostages. Yes, they are suffering the most but they also are part of the problem
The sides are clearly defined. Which, if any is the good side, not so much. However people have strong opinions about one or the other so there’s lots of opportunity for arguments
I don’t feel people who can pick a side here have done much homework on this.
For every group saying “X is good/bad because Y” there’s another group willing to disagree for their own reasons.
That provides journalists with an easy way to get balanced coverage and multiple sources on a story. Which their editors and peers expect.
Israel is one of the US’s biggest allies, calling the attention of the American media, and the world often talks about what the US is talking about. Didn’t Zelenskyy talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict taking attention off Ukraine?
Probably because this conflict is good for Russia to get the west focusing on something else. I bet they are tunneling money/weapons to Hamas, and probably using their troll army to keep it relevant.
Other big conflicts and humanitarian catastrophes are not covered by the media strangely.
Fuck war, fuck authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, fuck people wanting to hurt other people.
Recently, Hamas carried out their largest and most brutal attack on Israel, killing many innocent people and generating international shock
Israel is now responding by invading Gaza: a dense, poor city with about 2 million people in it to try to wipe out Hamas.
There is now worldwide outrage at Israel’s response, which is disproportionately deadly due to their advanced military and billions of foreign aid. People are protesting Israel as an apartheid state and claiming that they are now pursuing genocidal goals.
I posted this question too and got called a racist. I was just curious where all the Ukraine stuff went. Sounds like a planned distraction to me. And since Hamas announced it loves Russia…
There’s no doubt that Russia are backing Hamas and doing so mainly to divert resources and attention away from Ukraine.
At the same time, the war in Ukraine is slowing down while the situation in Israel/Palestine has rapidly escalated.
Nothing is slowing down. But yes, it’s ramping up elsewhere as a distraction
No you’re absolutely right. Russia’s even behind some of that “anti-semitic tensions in Europe” stuff making headlines.
It’s an actual influence operation.
Watch out for those “Foreign couples” 😎
The war in Ukraine was already dropping off the news cycle before the Hamas attack on Israel.
Not from where I sit. 🤷♂️
News tends to be a zero sum game. There are a finite number of reporters that fit into a news budget, and they usually have a fixed number of stories they need to submit. News publications are usually measured in words or minutes, after which the publication stops for the current news cycle.
So yeah, this topic will prevent coverage of other topics.
I feel like that’s a rather typical response when people question the attention level of current events. Things grab attention for a bit before something else comes along and takes a chunk of the spotlight.
Every so often I still see the occasional sun bleached anti-China poster from a few years ago
Israel’s genocidal revenge campaign is finally on full display with no legitimate distractions in the news cycle. Even in the US, despite the Israeli government’s efforts to influence ours, there’s public pushback that can’t be ignored.
Also, if anything happening on the planet right now is going to ignite World War III, this is it.
For years many in Syria have said that WW3 has already begun and is being fought in the middle east. You could very well argue this is the opening stage of World War 3. We’re only one misclick, or one civilian airliner being shot down away from even greater catastrophe.
It’s been simmering on the stove for a while but someone must have put the lid on the pot or something because it boiled out all over the place and burnt grandma
There is something photographic to cover.
