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February 24, 2007
Non news fit to print
Ethel C. Fenig
Usually, if something doesn't happen it is not news. A pound of prevention is worth thousands of pounds of many human lives. The tip of the iceberg doesn't reveal the massiveness of the entire entity. Well duh! OK, these tortured analogies are important background for why ex New Yorker, now Israeli resident, Hillel Halkin explains "the news you didn't read." (First noted here at AT, by the way, 4 days ago)
What you didn't read about last week was a major terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city. And you didn't hear this news because this time it didn't happen thanks to extensive, intensive intelligence Israeli authorities managed to capture those involved before the bombs went off.
And thankfully, in Israel this happens many (alas, not always) times; terrorists caught, even killed, before they do their deadly damage. But this low news triumph has an ironic twist. If it happened in Tel Aviv, you need at least a bomb going off, and preferably a death or two, for anyone elsewhere to sit up and take notice. And this explains a certain paradox: the more successful Israel's army and security services are in preventing deadly acts of Palestinian terror against Israelis, the more the world looks upon the means of prevention as vindictive and unnecessary harassment of Palestinians on Israel's part.
But ultimately, as Halkin has to explain for those who don't understand the obvious The world hears mostly about the nasty things. "Dozens of Israeli lives saved yesterday" doesn't play well with the editors of the New York Times or the Guardian in London. We in Israel, who know those lives could have been our own, our friends', or our family's, have a different take on it.
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