By Madeline Budman
You don’t need another blog post telling you how politically fraught, emotionally charged, and overall complicated the State of Israel is in 2017. Chances are, the geopolitics of Israel are already very much on your radar. Whether you’re on the far right, the far left, or in some complicated in-between like me, your social media feeds and news source of choice probably do not let you forget that there’s an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Matti Friedman, former Associated Press correspondent and author of Pumpkinflowers, explained to the Nachshon fellows on January 29th why he thinks it is that we receive multiple news alerts a day about this tiny country in the Middle East.
In 2014, Matti Friedman published a Tablet Magazine article titled “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” which sent shockwaves through the media world about what it means to report on Israel. Without taking an explicit stance on the conflict (although he identifies as a part of the Israeli Left), Matti first set out to highlight what he saw as an absurd imbalance through numbers alone. For instance, he pointed out that Jerusalem, the city that we Nachshon fellows are living in this semester, annually has fewer violent deaths per capita than Portland, Oregon. More importantly for the global stage, Matti highlighted that when he was a reporter for the AP, there were more than 40 staffers covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was more “news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined” (Friedman). It should be no surprise, then, that we’re constantly consuming articles about Israeli political flaws and the conflict. Considering all of the information that Matti puts forth, there is no doubt that the media disproportionately covers Israel in terms of population, landmass, and daily events.
When Matti met with us, he opened up the conversation to explore why this might be. While several of us presented our own theses as to why Israel receives so much attention -- from the importance of Israel to the American Jewish population, to ethical questions about Israel’s policies, and to the amount of aid Israel receives from the U.S. annually -- Matti suggested that the answer might be deceptively simple. He theorized that Israel is viewed not as a state, but as a cosmic moral problem onto which the West projects all of its anxieties about human imperfection and the treatment of the other. Instead of taking Israel at face value, just as one might any other nation, it is elevated to new standards by critics around the globe. The disproportionate media coverage, he suggested, is simply a byproduct of the news catering to what will sell based on already-present interests. Israel has become the most important story on earth because of a cycle of media obsession and a fascination with the Jewish state, not because there is anything especially unique about the way the country is run relative to all other nations. Recognizing this, however, doesn’t solve either the problem of biased media coverage or the morality problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so the question of solutions remains open.
After our session with Matti, I was left feeling even more confused and frustrated about the international narrative on Israel than I had before. However, talking with Matti helped equip me with the tools to articulate and analyze my political views in a more nuanced and critical way. I’ve come to understand that before I can grapple with my complicated beliefs about Israel, I have to first work to untangle the overwhelming media coverage, which I’d assumed was normal given the importance of Israel in the American Jewish community, on this country and the conflict. Although I and all of the other fellows have begun our personal Israel journeys previously, I know that our beliefs and connections will all continue to grow and develop over the course of this semester, and I’m immensely grateful that we were able to meet with Matti Friedman to kick start that exploration.
