Israel’s frenzied reality: When destroying an enemy navy isn’t the top news story - analysis

“The IDF announced that it destroyed Syria’s navy,” the announcer of the KAN radio news bulletin said matter-of-factly at 11:00 am on Tuesday.

There were two astounding things about that announcement.

The first was that Israel had taken out the Syrian navy, with all its ships and sea-to-sea missiles.  The second was that this item did not lead the news bulletin -- that distinction went to the courtroom drama of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took the stand for the first time in his more than four-year-old corruption trial. 

Think about that for a moment. Israel had neutralized an entire enemy naval force, along with much of its air force, in what could only be described as a Six-Day War-style operation. And yet this astounding military achievement was relegated to a secondary headline. It was just one more story in a news cycle overflowing with drama.

This illustrates the relentless pace of life in this country right now.   

Meanwhile, the deaths of seven IDF soldiers in Lebanon and Gaza reported the day before didn’t even make the 11:00 am bulletin. Their funerals and the circumstances of their deaths — once events that would have gripped the nation — were overshadowed by these other stories.

This unrelenting flood of events is not unique to this week. Consider just the past two months: A ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon came into effect two weeks ago; the IAF significantly degraded Iran’s air defense systems and ballistic missile program six weeks ago;  Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, eight weeks ago. Each of these is an earth-shattering event, yet they all blur into a whirlwind of historical moments, leaving little time to breathe in between, take them in, and process their significance.

No sooner is the nation processing one momentous event than another comes and pushes it to the side. 

And then came the rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria on Sunday. Journalists rightly termed this as “historic” — the downfall of a dictator whose family had brutally ruled the country for 54 years is indeed historic.  But in the same breath, the term “historic” was also used to describe Netanyahu’s courtroom testimony, the first time a sitting prime minister has taken the stand in his trial.

Historic shift

Even though Netanyahu’s testimony was “historic” in the sense that something like this has never happened here before, using the same adjective for both events feels inadequate and even misleading. 

The rebel takeover of Syria is a seismic shift with far-reaching regional consequences. Netanyahu’s testimony is unprecedented but will not have nearly the same impact on the country or the region. Its real significance will not be evident until a verdict is reached and the appeals process is exhausted — a process that could stretch on for years.

Nevertheless, these days in Israel do have a “historic” feel,  as if we are living through events that will be flagged and highlighted as highly significant in future history books. 

The rapid-fire frequency of these formidable events creates a dangerous paradox: we become simultaneously desensitized to drama and addicted to it. When every headline screams “historic” or “dramatic,” it becomes difficult to distinguish the genuinely monumental from the merely momentary.

This addiction to action isn’t just a feature of the news cycle; it’s woven into the national psyche. If there is a world-stopping event leading the news daily, what do we do when there isn’t?  Then, we tend to take a regular run-of-the-mill story and make it dramatic.  

Yair Lapid’s father, the late justice minister Tommy Lapid,  once captured this tendency perfectly in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post.  “If a drainage pipe bursts in Tel Aviv, the next day’s headline will declare that the country’s entire sewage system is on the verge of collapse,” he wrote.  In a nation addicted to drama, even the mundane becomes magnified.

This tendency is amplified by a media landscape that thrives on hyperbole. Every political skirmish in the Knesset, every piece of propaganda released by Hamas, every disagreement with the US president, every arrest or protest is a crisis or something billed as dramatic.  

But this addiction has a cost. The constant bombardment of high-stakes events erodes the public’s ability to process grief and celebrate victories. When tragedies like the deaths of seven soldiers barely register because other events drown them out -- in this case, genuinely significant ones -- it reflects a troubling, though understandable, numbness.

At the same time, our national addiction to drama creates a vacuum that demands to be filled — often by overinflating and blowing up smaller stories into dramatic crises.

And yet, how can we help it? Israel experiences in a month what other nations might in a year. The news cycle here is frenetic, like the pace of the collective life here itself -- filled with triumph, heartbreak, and tension, often all at the same time.