Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: No News is Good News that Should be in the News
What is “news”? It’s invariably considered to be something that “happened” – usually negative (other than some outstanding scientific breakthrough). Think about this: when did you last come across a headline like this in the newspaper: “Yesterday, 10 million Israelis had a non-eventful, relaxing day.” I’m sure: never!
But something that does not happen can actually be worthy of a news headlines. The problem is that there is no specific time frame to report it. “News” is what occurred yesterday (in newspapers), this morning (on the nightly TV news program), or an hour ago (on internet news sites). But non-news news tends to be ongoing, without a specific chronological framework, and therefore doesn’t register as “real news.”
However, it certainly can be. Here are four recent examples from Israel’s situation during its post-Oct. 7 Gaza War.
First, despite some pundits claiming a lack of signs that Israel’s military campaign is not achieving much, anyone living in the central part of Israel (that’s most Israelis) knows otherwise. There’s been an almost total cessation of rocket fire over and into Israel’s major (and even minor) cities – a product of the IDF eliminating almost all of Hamas’s long-range missile firepower. Has anyone mentioned this in the press? Not to my knowledge (maybe because of superstition: “if you talk about the Devil, he might appear” – but still…).
Second, even more warnings were forthcoming regarding what might happen within Israel’s own Arab sector. Israelis haven’t forgotten the violent internal riots of 2021 during the Shomer Ha’khomot (“Guardians of the Gate”) military campaign against Hamas. Thousands of Israeli Arabs were involved in rioting, attempted lynchings, vandalism and setting property on fire – mostly in mixed Jewish-Arab cities such as Lod, Ramleh, and Acre (Akko), but also in exclusively Arab towns and numerous roads in the Negev and the Galilee. One could just imagine what would occur along those lines in a far more intense war, post-Oct. 7, 2024.
So what did happen? Nothing. No rioting, no vandalism, no attacks. Period. After a few initial protest demonstrations – nada. There are probably several reasons for this, chief among them the Israeli Arab’s horror and embarrassment at the barbarism of their Gazan compatriots – also perhaps fear of what the Israeli security authorities would do this time around if internal violence reared its head. But whatever the cause, such non-action should be considered big-time news indeed. Not only for the present period of war but especially for what it indicates about the growing political maturity and willingness of Israeli Arabs to accept the demands of Israeli citizenship and the democratic rules of the game.
Third, Israel’s military fatality rate. Numerous war correspondents and pundits, including academics, warned immediately after the Oct. 7 massacre that if and when the IDF entered Gaza it would be a bloodbath for both sides. The reason? Urban warfare is advantageous to the defensive side, and the numerous opportunities for surprise attacks in closely built quarters – especially with the added surprise of Hamas militants suddenly appearing out of its numerous tunnels – will exact a huge price in dead Israeli soldiers. That has not happened. True, this past week has been especially deadly; altogether, though, a bit over 200 IDF soldiers have died in combat (not counting Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack inside Israel). That still leaves the fatality numbers way beneath what was feared before the war broke out.
Paradoxically, those “predictions,” along with their underlying rationale, are the reason for the relatively very low IDF fatality rate: Israel’s Army leaders are well aware of the dangers inherent in such urban fighting, so they changed tactics accordingly. Instead of massive, frontal attacks, the IDF devised a slow and steady, pinpoint strategy calling in air power where the fighting had become too intense and dangerous. Thus, in around 110 days of fighting, the daily rate has been on average two soldiers dying per day – far lower than any other serious war that Israel has ever been involved in! Have you read that anywhere? I doubt it.
Fourth and finally, given the ferocity of Israel’s Gazan response to the Oct. 7 massacre, and the pro-Palestinian protest demonstrations around the world – impressive in numbers and frequency – one would expect Israel’s standing among its “allies” in the Middle East to be seriously compromised. Yet Egypt, Jordan, and the Abraham Accords countries have not even threatened to cut off relations with Israel. In fact, while further diplomatic negotiations with Saudi Arabia are on hold for the time being, the Saudis announced last week that they are still willing to sign a full peace treaty with Israel, fully recognizing the Jewish State (!), if and when a two-state solution is finalized and a Palestinian state is established. Obviously, that’s a long way off – but the very mention of this during the Gazan War is itself a statement that nothing is going to derail the overall peace process with the moderate Arab world. Here too, the lack of bad news is good news indeed, deserving wide coverage.
No one expects the media to focus exclusively, or even mostly, on positive non-news. The audiences would find that hard to comprehend. But it wouldn’t hurt for the media to occasionally note this phenomenon when it actually happens to not happen. Given that almost all news is “bad news,” one can conclude that positive non-news is actually quite newsy.
