So, suddenly Israel isn’t a story anymore?

Your protests are both too much and premature. Looking over the papers online this morning I seem the protests covered in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Independent, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, and CNN among others. It isn’t front page news, but most news about Israel-Palestine isn’t front page news, particularly when something as major as the debt ceiling debacle is happening. If the protests are sustained at a high level and actually look like they are going to result in changes, I would expect even more coverage. I don’t think anyone is seriously saying this isn’t a story.

I have read several posts justifying the “western” mainstream media “sudden” blackout on Israel, and with all respect to the posters, their arguments are not only not convincing, but show a lack of understanding on media control. An integral part of Israel’s survival strategy as an occupier is their control of the message and the means to deliver it. Saturday’s demonstrations were the peak of a several weeks’ movement every newspaper worth its name should have been following, regardless of world events, however important. Ami’s intriguing title “So, suddenly Israel isn’t a story anymore?,” says it clearly: Israel is on the news day in and day out, and to see the “western” (read corporate) media stop reporting on Israel, on a weekend, after a 150,000 people show of force, is not coincidence. The corporate media, at least in the US. decided to downplay Israel’s social movement, since they know it comes at a very crucial juncture, when Israel has been preparing for a foreign onslaught, not a domestic challenge. I don’t believe the NYT or the WaPo care so much about giving Israel “the proper placement” in world news. Their editorial policy re: Israel is, well, “Made in Israel,” or close by. However, I find it embarrassing that the GU or the Independent from UK did not do their job, and I tend to believe the European media has been waiting for the housing/etc. movement in Israel to show some real signs of something akin to Tahrir square, have some real punch. However, I don’t see any malice in their coverage, or lack thereof, nor the obvious complicity of the US media. The US/corporate media is under total control of the Israel lobby. The news blackout on the marchers is not coincidence, or a displacement of Israel by more important news, i.e. the debt ceiling. If Hamas would have dropped a couple of dud Qasam rockets on the outskirts of Sderot, I am sure it would have made front page news on the NYT or the WaPo, even if the debt ceiling debate would have failed.

Taoist

Well at least in England we have this thing called the silly season which lasts from mid/late July through to late August or early September, during which our political and media elite all disappear to holiday in Tuscany or the Dordogne.

Typically junior underlings are left to run the newspapers and TV news shows for the whole of this period and these are far too lacking in confidence and resources to show much interest in foreign political stories which do not fit easily into the preferred ideological mode of their publications.

So if its about Israel but not about bombs and rockets and assassinations and settlements they literally don’t know what to do about it – so play safe and don’t make a big deal of it at all.

So you’ve really got to up the ante and turn it into The Israeli Summer if you want the mass media here to notice it at all.

Well, I still haven’t seen any coverage in the US MSM. Even if the NYTImes has finally seen fit to cover the story somewhere in the paper. Sometimes I think the NYTimes should alter their logo from “All The News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the news that fits, we print”.
But aside from that, the overwhelming majority of the American public DOES NOT READ THE NEW YORK TIMES either because the print is too small or some of the words are too big.
Many people do look at the Huffington Post as a news portal,so as to search for where stories are not only in the US but in other parts of the world. Most of the Huffposts stories when clicked on are from other news sources. Moreover, these referred stories are included in the center column on its home page. It was BURIED in the business section.
Yet to the vast majority, the “news” is what they get on ABC, NBC and CBS. On the evening broadcasts, two of the networks, the two with the much higher ratings, NBC and ABC after the extensive coverage of the debt ceiling circus, did a international news story. Remarkably both had foreign correspondents in Mogadishu, Somalia showing people who are starving and living in tent cities, and especially on ABC the report was treated as a “tearjerker”.
If these reports keep coming in, I see it as a preparation so that the American people will understand when the US armed forces intervene there for “humanitarian reasons”.
I’m waiting on that to see if I’m right or wrong.

Its not worth covering. As soon as it begins to rain, your tents will disappear.

Is it possible you think Israel is so important it should captivate our attention at all times?

The Corporate Media would not want to give the rest of the world any ideas……we are all in the same boat but we sit and do nothing.

Wake up people!!!!