Thread by @AnshelPfeffer

Perhaps it’s because everything in the twitter bubble is so fast, raw and emotional, there’s a feeling this round of warfare in Gaza has changed something. But has it? The last round in 2014 was much longer, with many more casualties and nothing changed. Why different this time?

Perhaps it’s because I’ve become jaded doing this for too long but I can remember a “this time it’s different, this time it’s a real Intifada, this time the world isn’t going to stand for it anymore” vibe in each of the rounds of violence I’ve covered, long before social media.>

Even the one time an actual Intifada did break out in 2000, it didn’t change the basic dynamics. What did change was at some point that I’m not sure anyone can accurately put their finger on, it stopped being the Arab-Israeli conflict and became the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Because a lot of the (social) media discourse is defined in the US, there’s a feeling that since the progressive twitterati, including young Jews and a few congress members, are more worked up this time, that’s a game-changer for a conflict 6000 miles away. That’s a bit arrogant.

Also. There’s a kind of irony to the fact that the wing of US politics that’s currently turning against Israel happens to be the wing that also thinks the US should be less interventionist. So theoretically, if they were in power, Israel would anyway be less influenced by the US.

Anyway, if the long tragic history of American engagement in the Middle East has taught us anything, it’s that US presidents and administrations are almost powerless to dictate their designs on the region. That won’t be any different if a future administration is not pro-Israel.

This was just a long way of saying that we should be very wary of assuming that shifting political moods in the US will have that much of an influence on what happens on the ground between Israelis and Palestinians.

Some people answering this thread saying “but now finally the media is showing it.” As if since the start of the 1st Intifada in 1987 Israel/Palestine hasn’t been saturated with international media showing every bit of it.