Basing herself on two years spent working as a journalist in Israel, Zenobia Ravji explains the ignorance, distortion, and mendacity that characterize much reporting on the Jewish state:

[Traveling in Israel], I stumbled on a really eye-opening story—“everyday life” in the West Bank. In the U.S., I was exposed to images of violence and chaos any time the West Bank was mentioned in the news. So when I accidentally ventured into the West Bank during my travels, I had no idea I was even there. I was surrounded by tranquil scenes, modern infrastructure, and economic cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. I guess this was too boring to make any headlines. . . .

And it wasn’t just the normalcy of life in the West Bank that went unreported. Many of the human-rights violations by the Palestinian Authority were never mentioned, such as the lack of freedom of speech and the press, and a complete neglect of the Palestinian people by their own politicians, who continue to exploit the peace process while pocketing European and American funding for a “free Palestine.” . . .

I found to my surprise that much of the foreign press was ignorant and quite lazy in its reporting. [Reporters] often had a less-than-limited understanding of the region, its history, and its politics. They tended to write stories that fit the preconceptions of their editors and producers. . . .

Over time, I came to realize that to be considered successful by the Western media, a journalist must stick to an acceptable script. In the Middle East, this means portraying Israel and the Jews as the bad guys, and the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority as the good guys. If you don’t do this, you are professionally ostracized.

As the war in Gaza appears to be coming to close, writes Michael Milshtein, Israelis are left with “a sense of failure and bitterness” despite the IDF’s “military successes and strategic achievements.” Meanwhile, he writes, Gazans are likely to see the war as a “historic achievement,” and thus once more fall into the cycle of ecstasy and amnesia that Shany Mor identified as the key pattern in Palestinian understanding of the conflict.

Milshtein too acknowledges how much the present results resemble what preceded them, reminding us that Arabs and Israelis felt similarly after

the 1956 Sinai Campaign when, like in the current war, Israel was pressured by the United States to withdraw from conquered territories and bring the conflict to an end. The same applies to the Yom Kippur War, the second intifada, the Second Lebanon War, and the 2014 Operation Protective Edge [against Hamas]. Arab collective memory regards these events as achievements resulting from sacrifice and the ability to absorb severe blows, exhibit steadfastness (sumud), and make it impossible for Israel to declare decisive victory.

This phenomenon shouldn’t lead Israel to conclude it has been defeated but must be understood so as to formulate sober goals and courses of action in dealing with enemies in the region.

For now, there are no signs of soul-searching [among Palestinians] concerning the price of the war. Responsibility for the carnage and destruction, described as a nakba greater than that of 1948, is laid at Israel’s doorstep. This reflects a long-standing fundamental Palestinian flaw: a “bipolarity” with, on the one hand, fighting spirit and praise for the ability to harm Israel and, on the other, victimhood from the results of the war the Palestinians themselves started.