War is raging in the Middle East. One region in particular is seeing some of the worst ethnic violence and atrocities imaginable. Men, women and children are mercilessly slaughtered in the streets. Attacking combatants have no problem killing innocent civilians in their homes or even places of worship. Girls and women of all ages have been raped. Innumerable families have been displaced. Those who wish to bury the dead risk their lives by coming out in the open to do so.

This terrible war engulfing Sudan has killed around 15,000, injured 33,000 and displaced over 8.6 million people.

But how many in the Western world even know Sudan is in a civil war? How many upon reading the introductory paragraph immediately assume it’s talking about the war in Gaza?

By watching Western mainstream media alone, one might think the Israel-Hamas war is the only war on Earth that matters. Cries of Israeli genocide seem even to drown out reporting of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Doesn’t the ongoing Yemeni civil war, which has killed over 150,000 people, deserve equal coverage to Gaza? According to the Geneva Academy, there are more than 110 armed conflicts going on right now. Why does Gaza get so much coverage? Why don’t we hear about Sudan?

Though they once supported Israel, most major Western media outlets have turned on this tiny nation in the Middle East.

Israel-Hamas War

This was on full display in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. As videos of Hamas’s atrocities spread, the media mostly came to Israel’s defense. msnbc’s Joe Scarborough said on October 10:

The question … that must be asked in Israel is why anybody in that government thought that they could somehow strike a deal with the devil, with Hamas …. It never works. It never works because you can’t negotiate with terrorists.

But shortly after, these same outlets began changing their tune. They portrayed Hamas not as an aggressor but as a victim. On April 5, Scarborough seemed in favor of striking “a deal with the devil,” saying:

It seems to me that the hostages aren’t even secondary in [Netanyahu’s] mind. Because … people say, “Well, Hamas could release the hostages.” Yeah, they could. They’re terrorists. … They’re not going to release the hostages … unless the conditions are right. … [T]he conditions most likely are a ceasefire and the allowing of the worst terrorists to escape out of Gaza with their lives.

These two quotes contradict: Israel can’t negotiate for hostages with Hamas because it’s a terrorist organization, but negotiating with Hamas is the only way to get the hostages back because Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Also on msnbc, a mother whose children were taken captive by Hamas was asked about her feelings on civilian deaths in Gaza. Reporters do not note the extraordinary steps Israel takes to protect civilian lives in Gaza or care that Hamas aims to maximize civilian deaths, Jew and Arab alike, even to the point of ordering Gazans not to evacuate targeted areas.

Likewise, reporters seem not to care that Palestinians back Hamas’s beliefs. The transcript from a 2021 phone call between an Israel Defense Forces (idf) member and a Gazan man before an Israeli bombing of the Gazan’s apartment building reads:

idf: “[W]e are going to bomb the building.”
Gazan: “You want to bomb? Bomb whatever you want.”
idf: “No brother, we need to do everything we can so you don’t die.”
Gazan: “We want to die.”
idf: “But you have a responsibility for children’s lives.”
Gazan: “If the children need to die then they’ll die.”
…
Gazan: “This is how we reveal your cruelty.”

No matter the situation, the goal in Western media always seems to be make Israel look bad. How many news heads are giving Hamas lectures about following the rules of war? As journalist Matti Friedman said, “If you consume Western media coverage, it’s not a war. It’s a campaign against Palestinian civilians.”

But as Friedman pointed out, the turn we’ve seen the past few months is just a small example of a larger trend that has been underway for years.

Friedman

Friedman was a reporter and editor in the Associated Press’s Jerusalem bureau from 2006 to 2011. At the time, the AP had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and Palestine. “That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined,” he said. It was “higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’ eventually erupted.”

At the time, AP’s policy was to mention censorship only if Israel was behind it. If Hamas censored a story, the AP would not mention it. When an reporter wrote a piece on Hamas’s intimidation of media outlets, the AP chose not to publish it. When Friedman suggested an article on the Palestinian Authority’s corruption—“a pressing concern for many Palestinians under [its rule]”—the bureau chief told him that Palestinian corruption was “not the story.” However, any hints of Israeli corruption were covered meticulously.

From Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, Friedman counted the bureau’s stories of various Israeli failures and tallied 27 pieces—about one every other day. That was higher than the number of critical stories about Palestine, including Hamas’s tyranny, over the preceding three years. The Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of Jews, was never discussed in print. Hamas’s construction of military infrastructure wasn’t deemed important, but reporting Israel’s assault on said infrastructure was vital.

The AP does have a bureau in Gaza, but it’s known that Hamas won’t allow any reports they don’t like. During the 2008–2009 war, Friedman knew Hamas terrorists were dressing as civilians but had to stay silent because of a threat to the AP’s reporter in Gaza. Friedman wrote:

[The AP] is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd. Staffing levels in Israel have decreased somewhat since the Arab uprisings began, but remain high. And when Israel flares up, as it did this summer [2014], reporters are often moved from deadlier conflicts. Israel still trumps nearly everything else.

Israel’s 2013 conflict claimed 42 lives that year—about the same as Chicago’s monthly homicide rate at the time. Yet the media deemed that more important than Syria’s civil war, which killed over 97,000 people that year. Friedman covered many other examples of this betrayal in his 2014 article and a 2024 interview.

1967

But why has mainstream media, which claims to sympathize with oppressed minorities and condemn racial attacks, taken the side of the 475 million-plus Arabs in the Arab League over the approximately 7.2 million Israeli Jews?

Some, including Jewish historian Trudy Gold, trace the beginnings of this betrayal back to the Six-Day War. In the buildup to that 1967 war, Arab nations surrounding Israel were preparing to invade. Israel’s only option was to strike first. After the war that followed, Israel had doubled in size in less than a week. Gold writes:

[A]fter ’67, the Jews are seen as winners. And this is where you’ve got to think about what happens in the ’60s. Think student revolution … the Vietnam War … the Japanese Red Army … the Baader Meinhof group. The plo [Palestine Liberation Organization] is created … nationalist movements which are opposed to the old system of colonies. … Do you see how the shift happens? Israel, all of a sudden, is becoming an oppressor, no longer a victim.

According to that claim, when the left betrayed Israel, its media outlets followed. There may be some validity to that claim, but there is another, more foundational cause for the media’s extreme anti-Israel bias that the world needs to know about.

The Main Cause

To fully understand major trends in world news, one must look to the Bible. One third of the Bible is prophecy—90 percent of which is for the current age. Within its text is the cause of this betrayal.

Modern Jews descend from the ancient Israelite tribe of Judah. God doesn’t favor any one people over another (Acts 10:34), but the Bible reveals He has a unique plan for Jews. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in March 2016: “God made a scepter promise to the Jews. They were also chosen to preserve the Old Testament and the sacred calendar—‘the oracles of God’ (Romans 3:1-2).”

The Bible also reveals there is a devil who rules this world (2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9). He hates God’s plan and is working to thwart it. His fingerprints are all over anti-Semitism. He especially hates the Jews’ role in God’s plan. In 2019, Mr. Flurry wrote, “Most people who hate the Jews don’t even know why they do. Can we see Satan behind such … hatred?”

Regardless of Satan’s efforts, God’s plan will be fulfilled. Bible prophecy shows that Christ will soon return. When that happens, Satan will be shut up, unable to influence mankind anymore (Revelation 20:1-3). What follows will be a time of perfectly harmonious utopia for Arabs, Jews and all people.

To learn more about Judah’s role in God’s plan, read “Satan’s Great Wrath” in Mr. Flurry’s free book The Key of David.