Famously, the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” graces the front page of every New York Times edition. The slogan was coined at the end of the 19th century by the paper’s publisher, Adolph Ochs. Of course, in today’s hyper-globalized world, the slogan is wishful thinking. No paper could realistically cover all the important news stories of the day.
Still, it would be hard to argue that outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and others adequately cover even those stories they do print. They often devote precious space to emotive or opinionated claims, while omitting highly material and relevant information that sheds important new light.
Provided below are three important, but underreported, stories from the week bearing on Israel and the Middle East that media consumers should know.
1) Horrors of Israeli Hostages’ Captivity Continue Emerging
Western media outlets have generally avoided confronting their audiences with the true brutal nature of Palestinian terrorists. As addressed in this weekly update before, this even includes the brutality Hamas has unleashed on its fellow Gazans.
Images of Israeli hostages, including Rom Braslavski (right), from terrorist propaganda videos.
This week, the media is ignoring the abuse to which Rom Braslavski, a recently freed hostage, was subjected. Braslavski, who spent 738 days held hostage by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, revealed in an interview on an Israeli news channel that he was sexually assaulted during his captivity. While other former hostages have spoken out about the sexual abuse they endured, Braslavski is the first male to do so.
To its credit, CNN covered Braslavski’s story, as did Reuters. However, other major Western outlets – including the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, and AP News – have said nothing of Braslavski’s ordeal.
2) Iranian Election Interference in Iraq
For all of its talk about Western interference with the nations of the Middle East, Iran sure engages in plenty of foreign interference itself. From fueling its violent proxies in places like Lebanon and Yemen, to information and propaganda operations in the West, and even acts of terrorism around the world, Iran’s efforts to interfere in other nations are prolific.
A clear example is emerging in the upcoming Nov. 11 elections in Iraq, where Iran maintains a network of militias, such as the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Kataib Hezbollah, and political parties that are all but openly loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran instead of to the Republic of Iraq. These Iranian proxy organizations have spent years pushing through legislative changes and coopting state institutions to cement their ability to control Iraqi affairs.
Recently, Iran has been attempting to force many of these militias to “prioritize their political activities” so as to present “fresh faces acceptable to the Iraqi public” ahead of the elections. In Sunni-majority areas, the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces have been “attempting to deter Sunnis…from voting” and even “purchasing” voter cards from non-Shia Iraqis. This comes after the recent assassination of a notable Sunni political candidate last month.
Iran’s interference in Iraqi elections has been largely absent from Western media, with most coverage coming from Arab media and a handful of Western think tanks, such as the Institute for the Study of War.
3) India-Israel Defense Cooperation
Israel’s relations with India continue to improve. Recently, the Indian government announced it will be approving “a series of defense deals with Israel worth about $3.762 billion,” including “rockets for the ground forces and MR-SAM air defense missiles developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) with local company BDL.” IAI will also be “convert[ing] six commercial planes into Indian Air Force refueling aircraft for $900 million.”
While Western media has reported breathlessly on the often symbolic efforts to cut off Israel’s defense industry by European nations, it has said little about the growth of Israel’s relationships with non-European partners like India.
No major Western outlet has yet covered the defense deal with India.
Historical Context for Current Events
As Western journalists and protestors have fixated on a fictitious “genocide” in Gaza over the last two years, elsewhere a true atrocity was being carried out.
In 2023, several months before the October 7 massacre in Israel, yet another civil war broke out in Sudan. Casualty figures vary widely, but all agree the death toll is likely far higher than is being reported. One former U.S. envoy has suggested as many as 400,000 have been slaughtered.
The horror reached new heights in recent days with the capture of El-Fasher by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Researchers reported that bloodstained sands – sites of mass executions – could be spotted from space, and nearly 500 civilians were slaughtered in a maternity hospital. As reported in The Telegraph, “More people may have died in the past week there than in the entire Gaza war, researchers now believe.”
The contrast between the global fixation on the purported victims of Jewish state and the global shrug toward the plight of others is nothing new, however.
Recall the autumn of 1956. Following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956, and the exclusion of Israel from freedom of navigation through the canal – as guaranteed in law – Israel pressed repeatedly at the United Nations for a response to Egypt’s actions and the constant drum of cross-border attacks. Its pleas were met largely with disinterest and apathy. In the words of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: “We demanded week after week that UN representatives take substantial steps to ensure the Arab countries put an end to these murderous attacks and legally observe their ceasefire obligations. All our insistence was in vain.”
On October 29, however, Israel launched a military operation – secretly as part of a British and French plan – in response to the Egyptian move. Finally, the UN sprang to action, and with an unseen level of urgency. Within hours, an emergency special session of the UN was being organized, and on November 7, the General Assembly voted to create a peacekeeping force to put an end to the conflict. Of note, a decade later, this peacekeeping force would simply step aside to make way for Egyptian forces as they amassed on Israel’s border ahead of a planned invasion of the Jewish state.
But the Suez crisis was not the only one unfolding on the world stage. A week earlier, on October 23, the Hungarian Revolution had begun as university students poured into the streets to demonstrate against Soviet domination. By October 30, a new Hungarian government was declared, only to be met two days later by an invasion of Soviet troops. On November 4, Radio Budapest would go silent after cries of “Help Hungary! Help Us!” With the Soviet invasion came mass executions and arrests, as some 200,000 Hungarians fled to Austria and Yugoslavia.
Whereas UN diplomats had sprung into action over the conflict in the Sinai, they dithered over the Soviet invasion and the slaughter of thousands of pro-democracy Hungarians. It wasn’t until November 4 – as the pleas for help on Radio Budapest went silent – that the UN General Assembly finally acted. But far from its aggressive approach to the Sinai – sending peacekeepers – the General Assembly instead opted merely to ask the Secretary-General to “investigate the situation.”