Don't mention the war?
For the past week, the headlines here have been mostly about how the police cracked the Bar Noar shooting case from 2009, when a gunman killed two people and injured many others in a gay youth center.
This was the focus of Wednesday's broadcasts, understandably. The case is captivating. The public is hungry for juicy details on the dynamics within the gay community, and devours every piece of gossip. Against this backdrop, the public's quest for more news nuggets grew incessantly. The unintended consequence was that the public has been distracted from other matters.
The Middle East is in upheaval. We must be on guard for what the region has in store for us.
But news desks have put this turbulence on the back burner. It is now a second- or third-tier story. On Wednesday it barely made it into the electronic media.
The battles between regime and opposition forces inside Syria close to our border have prompted some countries to pull their troops from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force. Substitutes have yet to be named. The 1974 separation of forces agreement is, for the first time, on the verge of collapse. Warfare has also blurred the line between Syria and Lebanon, with the countries effectively up in arms as a result of Hezbollah's involvement in the fighting near Damascus and Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces making incursions into the Land of the Cedars. What is most troubling is the fact that the fighting is slowly creeping toward Israel. This has created a very combustible situation.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Assad that "certain moves" would be intolerable, he got the message. But Assad may no longer be able to control how events unfold within his own country. All the while, Russia and Iran have been at his side. The West is reluctant to intervene and has yet to show it is willing to wholeheartedly stand by the lesser of two evils. Even Turkey, which has had some clout on Iran, is now preoccupied with internal housekeeping that has somewhat hurt its regional heft.
The events in Syria are on the same scale as the Spanish Civil War, fought from 1936 to 1939. It served as an opening act for the terrible years that ensued, in which Nazi Germany dominated Europe. Back then, as in this century, those who were considered the responsible adults were hesitant; some of them, mainly France and Great Britain, stood idly by and failed to prevent the worst calamity in the history of humanity.
Where things are heading in Syria remains unclear, but the worsening situation does not bode well for us. Why has Syria been out of the headlines? The captivating Bar Noar case may provide a partial explanation, as this is part of human nature. But the inability to paint a credible picture of the strategic developments in Syria, which has in turn bred embarrassment, confusion and anxiety, might also have something do with that.
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