"Good evening; this is CNN Headline News. Tonight, our top story is that a suicide bomber in Jerusalem has killed two people in the second attack in as many days. We will go live to the scene for round-the-clock coverage . . . [several minutes into the broadcast] . . . and as a footnote, a team of radical Islamic terrorists murdered twenty four Hindu worshippers today in India."
To those who say bloody stories cause people to watch the news, you are right. However, it would seem that if that logic held true, the bloodier the story, the more attention it would get. Whenever violence in Israel or the West Bank claims the lives of a few people, all the news coverage immediately jumps on the story. However, when an event such as Wednesday's massacre of twenty four Hindus in India occurs, it tends to be reported as an incidental detail, lost in the news. Although the news report cited above was a parody, this type of treatment goes on regularly on news networks. Even small events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often dominate all-news headlines. Meanwhile, the world has not turned its attention towards the Indian-Pakistani standoff, the implications of which could go far beyond what the Arab-Israeli conflict could ever produce.
There are many similarities between the India-Pakistan conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Both Israel and India are made up of people believing in a non-Christian religion, and both are currently battling Islamic extremists and terrorists. Both the Palestinian Authority and the Pakistani government claim to be doing all within their power to stop terrorists, but are both treated with incredulity by the other side. Additionally, both Israel and India are regarded as allies of the United States, and both have nuclear weapons. However, therein lays an important difference. Israel's adversaries, the Palestinians, are armed with rocks, AK-47s, and other light arms. Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has the potential to kill hundreds or even a few thousand people in total, the India-Pakistan conflict has the potential to kill more than a billion people. This should worry the American public, but it doesn't. Logically, the India-Pakistan conflict should be getting attention from the media, U.S. leaders, and the United Nations, since a full-scale war between India and Pakistan would likely kill more people than any other in human history. However, no one seems to care. Why is that? The issue is not why the Arab-Israeli conflict gets so much attention, but rather why (geopolitically) more important conflicts get so little attention. Although there are a many reasons why the Arab-Israeli conflict gets (and should get) attention from the media, no suicide bomber halfway around the world should be able to dictate the headlines of the Western media with his misguided dreams of martyrdom.
Unfortunately, the "hyping" of the Israeli conflict has given many people the false impression that it is the most important conflict in the world. For example, in a recent politics seminar a well-informed student asserted that "If you're not (thinking about) the Middle East, you're nowhere!" It is this kind of Middle East-centric opinion that blots out the rest of the world's pressing issues. It is this type of perception that we must change.
Though the Arab-Israeli conflict has persisted for many years, and produces great news stories about the victims and their daily lives, this should not mislead us into thinking that it is the only (potentially deadly) game in town. Despite the media's focus on a narrow range of issues, it is important to recognize that, just because it is not on the headlines, it may still be important. The Arab-Israeli conflict produces heartbreaking news stories, but other, overlooked conflicts have the potential to go nuclear. Even the war on terrorism has been long overshadowed by the problems in the West Bank. There are potentially devastating conflicts around the world that that most people don't even know about. But to find them one needs to go beyond CNN Headline News and the front page of USA Today.
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