What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that?

Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October 7th. In fact, it’s knocked Russia’s war in Ukraine, the one we were told was so essential to the future of democracy, off front pages (and their media equivalents) everywhere. And the coverage of recent protests has strikingly outpaced those of any other antiwar protests in this century. What the American news media do is, of course, only part of any story, but their recent protest focus contrasts vividly with how they’ve typically covered antiwar and peace actions and so reveals something about how we Americans are thinking about war and peace right now.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, American journalists did report on the outrage over that country’s actions and the outpouring of support for Ukraine, but in the endless months of conflict since then, they’ve paid almost no attention to actions calling for a negotiated settlement there, even as that war goes bloodily on and on. Neither was there much coverage of antiwar protests against Washington’s endless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan after February 15, 2003, when (depending on whom you read) six to 15 million people took to the streets of 600 to 800 cities around the world in the largest one-day antiwar protest in history. There, too, even though antiwar veterans and peace groups continued to stage actions, the interest of American news outlets soon evaporated.

Admittedly, Camp Casey, a sprawling encampment of relatives and supporters of soldiers and veterans who wanted to stop the war in Iraq, which sprang up near a vacationing President George W. Bush in August 2005, temporarily caught the attention of a bored press corps idling in the heat. By spring 2008, however, when I was trying to drum up interest in Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, a sizeable gathering of Americans who had fought in those two wars and were publicly testifying about their misguided actions there, I was dismissively told by a New York Times reporter, “If you read the New York Times, you would know that it doesn’t cover rallies.”

A couple of summers ago, the Boston Globe and other local news outlets showed no interest in talking to anyone boarding buses in that city for the Poor People’s Campaign’s Moral March on Washington, which included antimilitarism in its platform. In contrast, when about 100 locals boarded buses for a pro-Israel rally in Washington this November, the Globe devoted 24 paragraphs to the story. (Granted, the pro-Israel-march buses loaded at Gillette Stadium, home to the Patriots football team, which is always news in these parts.) It’s common to gripe about insufficient reporting on a cause you care about, but for me — and I’ve covered antiwar actions since 2001 — it’s striking that the media, in their gatekeeper and agenda-setting roles, have been so eager to cover protests about Israel’s war in Gaza in ways they seldom did when it came to U.S. antiwar actions earlier in the century.

Does it matter if you throw a protest march and reporters don’t come? Yes, because the very point is to be noticed. The news media are a sphere where competing ideologies and aims play out in the open. So, the way marches and other actions are or aren’t covered helps shape public opinion, affirms or challenges received wisdom, creates a historical record, and — fingers crossed — helps define future political practices.

In this case, with the United States in a powerful position to influence the course of the war on Gaza, continued reporting on antiwar protests could help pressure President Biden to stop embracing (could there have been a worse optic?) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand a permanent ceasefire instead.

Why This Story Now?

Amid competing narratives, unverifiable information, intense emotions, and everything we still don’t know, it’s important to keep all the often-contradictory realities we do know in mind — and be suitably alarmed.

We know that the United States lavishes at least $3.8 billion yearly in military aid to Israel, along with Get Out of Jail Free cards when it comes to human-rights abuses. Josh Paul, a State Department official who resigned in protest over the way our weaponry was killing Gazans, reminded us of just that recently. (The U.S. has also given money to the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, but vastly less of it.)

We also know that 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered in the October 7th raids by the armed wing of Hamas, the most Jews killed at one time in that country’s history. And we know that about 240 others of all ages were kidnapped in those raids and held hostage.

We know that nearly 16,000 Palestinian civilians have now been killed in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and that about 1.7 million Gazans, three-quarters of the population there, have been forced to flee their homes in search of ever more elusive safety. We know that, of about 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, 240 were released in exchange for 105 Israeli hostages and that, in the same period, about 244 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed in clashes on the West Bank.

We’ve gotten little information on combatant casualties in Gaza, save occasional announcements from the Israeli military and a rare statement from Hamas, but that’s not unusual. In recent American wars, only independent organizations like icasualties and the Costs of War Project have tried to offer comprehensive reckonings of the damage done.

“Far too many” Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in early November, but how many is the right number when civilian deaths of any sort should be unacceptable? In the face of so much slaughter, destruction, and upheaval, the urge to choose sides, take a stand, make a statement, or man the barricades was compelling. And so it was hardly surprising, after the barbarity of October 7th, that rallies in sympathy with the Israeli hostages, against anti-Semitism, and even calling for revenge sprang up around the world. As many as 290,000 protestors gathered in solidarity with Israel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on November 14th. But as the Israeli assault on Gaza escalated and civilian deaths soared, sympathies began to shift and protests here and elsewhere calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Gaza grew rapidly.

Meanwhile, staff and political appointees at the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and at least 40 other government agencies signed letters or memos calling for a ceasefire, as did at least 100 congressional staff members, who staged a walkout. People put up posters of Israeli hostages. Others tore them down. Businesses and institutions issued position papers and those that didn’t were pressured to do so. Even restaurants got into the act.

On university campuses, those sympathizing with........

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