Confronting the Misinformed Over Lattes. Venti-Size.

Last week, my journalism professor ('News Writing and Reporting') asked the class to conduct some man-on-the-street interviews. The purpose of the assignment was to practice interviewing, quoting and attributing; the first and easiest place I could think of for some quote-gathering was Starbucks at 34th and Park-- easily one of the most eclectic mixes of coffee-drinkers in the area.

The usual spot.

We were to pose several different questions to the unsuspecting latte-sippers and web-surfers, including the asking-for-it open-ended, "What do you think of the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world?"
Eric, a gray-haired young man sporting a Calvin Klein-sweater and dark denim, told me that he's ecstatic about the Arab protests. "These people aren't only rising up against their own government," he said excitedly, motioning with his arms from his bar stool, "but also defeating the US and its backing Mubarak!"   
Interesting.
"The [Egyptians] are role models for us in America. There are a lot of lessons for us here: I hope the new leadership will correct other imbalances in the area, and inject a whole new context of ethics into the region."
Very interesting. 
I nodded, jotting down every word. "Inject a 'whole new context of ethics'? In what sense?"
"That is, into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said somberly.
Apparently the only issue throughout the whole Middle East that so bothered this fellow New Yorker was Israel. Not the millions of women across the region who continue to be oppressed. The journalists who are denied the right to speak out about crucial issues and most terrible injustices. The homosexuals who are refused to live as they please, minorities who are refused to pray as they wish.

How tragic: that a people's honest fight for freedom and democracy has become inextricably tied to an issue completely unrelated to it, thanks to media portrayal. Up till now, "Middle East" in news headlines was more often than not a code word for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time ever, the world's and the media's "absurd obsession with Israel has been laid bare", as Nick Cohen writes so well this week in The Guardian. Now, the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe's attention.
Israel's left-wing daily Haaretz echoes, in some ways, Cohen's views. Bradley Burston thanked the Egyptians for jolting not just the world but the Israelis out of fixed ideas. "It is beginning to dawn on my people, the Israelis, that freedom for Arabs may have nothing to do with annihilation for Jews," he wrote. And he's right: perhaps these recent protests really have nothing else to do with Israel, other than the fact that Arab citizens might be able to "influence the trajectory of their countries' development" -- a development which can only be positive for Israel, if it proves to be true and democratic.
It seemed to me that my friend Eric was seeking to draw lines that didn't really exist between two issues, making the exact mistake he has been drawn to make by the news outlets. 
"I was just reading about the latest headlines, on the J-Street website," he pointed to his open laptop screen proudly, clearly proving his worldliness. 
I marveled at the objective choice of news source.
Towards the end of our conversation (which lasted for a whole fifteen minutes, much longer than it was supposed to), I closed my notebook and asked him pointedly if it struck him at all wrong that, with all of the injustices being committed throughout the Middle East these past few weeks, the only issue which the UN Security Council has convened to discuss was the Israeli settlements.
"Really?" he said, surprised. "Didn't they meet to discuss...Egypt?"
Mhmm. Actually, they didn't.

~grande cappuccino. whipped cream of course.~