A Guardian blogger has been crunching some numbers, counting how often the paper mentioned which countries in 2010. The UK comes first, of course: it's a British paper. The US comes second, which is a no-brainer. Next come Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries in which there have been or still are fighting British troops, so the interest in them is arguably local. China, the world's largest country and its economic motor in 2010, is the first really foreign country on the list, at 5th place.
Then comes.... Israel.
Ahead of all the rest of the world. Ahead of next door Ireland, the country with the frightening banking crises. Ahead of South Africa with the World Cup. Way ahead of Haiti, where nothing ever happens, not to mention Sri Lanka with its wars, rigged elections and large refugee camps. Congo (remember? The country with millions of casualties in the world's bloodiest war since 1945?) - Congo gets mentioned about one ninth as often as Israel.
Belarus, the last Soviet dictatorship in Europe, with a stolen election and no human rights to speak of, is hardly on the list at all.
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What an incredible admission by the Guardian.
We have a graphical depiction of the obsession here -
http://cifwatch.com/2011/01/02/the-guardians-israel-obsession-in-one-image/#comment-39059
France will be miffed when it finds out that it is less interesting than Israel
Even Pakistan and India rank lower, i.e. former colonies lots of whom are living in the UK now.
Russia, Iran incredible, so it ain't paranoia ...
Israel gets into the news in disproportion to its size but I think there is a very simple reason for this:
1. Interesting things happen in and around Israel.
2. Israel is a first world country where reporters can enjoy all sorts of modern creature comforts.
3. Israel is a democracy where the reporters aren't in any actual danger from the government.
When you combine these three factors, you get a simple reason why Israel is in the news so much.
It's the same reason that Jews were in the news so much in Der Sturmer.
Lee your reasoning holds no water
-interesting things happen in many countries and places every day
-there are a lot of first world countries supplying the same or more comfort
-many places central to world events are democracies too, without the danger of random Quassam/Katyusha attacks or suicide terror.
I suggest an other explanation fitting especially to the Guardian.
There is a sound demand on the market for PC antisemitism, and the Guardian simply behaves according to the rules of the free market, supplying cheap and easily marketable junkfood for the hungry united haters of the world. Only one example is enough to illustrate my point perfectly, an article by Nick Cohen on CIF about Hungary. Be aware of the huge number of deleted BTL comments - most of them were vile antisemitic rants, part of them incitement to murder. Some of the unmoderated posts speak about Netanyahu, the occupied territories,the influence of the world Jewry - and all of them commenting an article about Hungary. Evidently the BTL comments demonstrate who are the Hungarian readers of the Guardian and and elsewhere and what they want to read about.
Lee your reasoning holds no water
-interesting things happen in many countries and places every day
-there are a lot of first world countries central to world events supplying the same or more comfort
-many places central to world events are democracies too, without the danger of random Quassam/Katyusha attacks or suicide terror.
I suggest an other explanation fitting especially to the Guardian.
There is a sound demand on the market for PC antisemitism, and the Guardian simply behaves according to the rules of the free market economy, supplying cheap junkfood for the hungry united haters of the world. Only one example is enough to illustrate my point perfectly, an article by Nick Cohen on CIF about Hungary. Be aware of the huge number of deleted BTL comments - most of them were vile antisemitic rants, part of them incitement to murder. Some of the unmoderated posts speak about Netanyahu, the occupied territories,the influence of the world Jewry - and all of them commenting an article about Hungary. Evidently the BTL comments demonstrate who are the readers of the Guardian in Hungary and elsewhere and what they want to read about.
Of course, the main reason is that Israel is not abdicating the western values like the UK and most of EU, is proud of her achievements as a young nation, is daring to fight and even kill in self-defense, to the horror of the gutless euro-dhimmis. And she´s an advanced and creative country, highly educated, democratic, with excelent science and technology, high IHD, and all that while encircled by massive hatred.
In sum, Israel is a reality-shock in the face of the post-modern coward appeasing euro-trash ideological world-view, and this causes deep resentment.
And to top it all, there´s the burden of guilt, as Israel is the nation of that very same people they almost exterminated barely 70 years ago, in the most successful pan-european project ever devised.
What interested me was the Guardian's admission that a large part of it was comment rather than news. Is this because... 1. It's fashionable to have an opinion on Israel if you are left or centre-left? 2. When it comes to Israel, everybody's an expert? 3. The opinion columns are written by people with a student mentality who see everything in black and white? 4. They give space on their pages to people with shady politics who want to draw attention away from themselves? 5. They really believe that peace in the middle east = peace in the world (the linkage theory)? 6. Because, if you write rubbish about Israel or Israelis without checking the facts you don't get a death threat or hauled into a court of law? (Have their been any cases since Sharon vs Newsweek or Time Magazine?)?
I suspect the answer involves the fact that Israel is a Western country interested in maintaining an unapologetic against a non-Western enemy, unlike the European institutional and intellectual mainstream. It's the same reason South Africa got more attention than Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or why (to return to an earlier discussion) MK and the FLN avoid getting tagged as terrorists more often than the IRA.
In any case, evidence that the European elites and media are disproportionately concerned with Israel seems to be one of the strongest arguments against the BDS movement, since it can be easily quantified. I wonder why it's not used more often.
Sorry, that should be "unapologetic _nation-state_".
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