Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Gaza in Latin America

Andrés Oppenheimer touched on something last week I've noticed in the coverage of the Israeli invasion of Gaza: it's extremely intense.
People seem to be following the Middle Eastern conflict in Gaza much more closely -- and passionately -- than in the United States.

Newspapers in this corner of the world are splashing headlines about the conflict across their front pages, much more prominently than the global financial crisis or local stories. On television, the Israeli attack on the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza after the group's constant rocket attacks is the focus of debates, with most voices criticizing Israel.

I meant to write about this last week, but I got sidetracked. Here's the covers of La Jornada, El Universal, and Excelsior the day after the ground invasion began. The last time all three papers (which, I should point out, have very different political slants, placed the same foreign event on their cover was Obama's election. Before that, I can't remember one.

As Oppenheimer mentions, the coverage is anti-Israel, but I don't see it as anti-Semitic, but rather anti-imperialist. (I'm not calling Israel imperialist, just pointing out that that's what I see in the coverage.) The negativity feels much more like the resentment of a bully than a more disturbing example of anti-Jewish bias. Oppenheimer also points out that for anti-American populists, knocking Israel is a way to take aim at the US.

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