Nick Cohen: They Missed the Story

Writing for Standpoint Magazine, Nick Cohen reports how all the reporters , lawyers and academics missed the story in the Middle East, focusing on the perceived evils of Israel and the West rather than the real source of Arab discontent — their own dictatorial rulers and static societies:

Logistics as much as infantile leftism produced the ideology of Middle Eastern commentary. Israel was the only story in the region journalists could cover daily. Rather than stop pretending to be omniscient and admit their limitations to the viewer, rather than show common human feeling and think of the silenced millions, journalists pretended that Israel was the region’s only story because it was the source of the region’s ills. The effect was anti-Semitic because the Jew once again was depicted as a supernatural figure with the diabolic power to create suffering on an epic scale. That narrow, prejudiced world of Middle Eastern commentary went up in flames when the Arab revolutionaries threw their first Molotovs. Whatever happens next, its loss will be no loss at all.

h/t:RL