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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...
You mentioned Israeli casualties drive it started.
Last I heard dead Palestinian numbers were at like 6500 dead more than half of those being actual children.
9200 on friday. Roughly 900 a day so presumably passed 10k now. Ridiculous amount of kids.
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.
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
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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.
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.
Because things escalated significantly in the last few weeks.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1210831466/death-toll-gaza-israel-hamas-conflict
Not to underplay the severity of the thousands and thousands of deaths, but it's because christians are obsessed with Israel somehow being a keystone to their end of the world cult.
Muslims too
Also Jews
The world is something fundamentally different from what you see in your news.
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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.
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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.
The war in Ukraine was already dropping off the news cycle before the Hamas attack on Israel.
Not from where I sit. 🤷♂️
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.
I mean, shit hit the fan. That tends to get attention.
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
the media requires people to pay attention to it or they cant sell ad placement. bad news sells better than good news does.
the war in Ukraine is basically at a standstill, no one is going to watch it. media needs a new focus and Israel vs Iranian funded hamas terrorists is the next big thing. in a few months it'll be something else - it's just the focus of the "now".
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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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