The clashes in Syria pitting Bedouin tribes and Syrian military forces against the Druze began on July 11 with the assault of a Druze merchant by a member of a Bedouin tribe.
Fighting escalated quickly. By July 13, battles were underway in and around the Druze region of Sweida. Survivors of the fighting over the next three days described unspeakable brutality. Pictures emerged of Syrian soldiers humiliating Druze men by shaving off their mustaches – an act of deep dishonor in the Druze community. And yet, for the most part, the world did not take much notice.
The first article about the situation to appear on the front page of The New York Times print edition was on Thursday, July 17. But that piece led not with the story of atrocities in Sweida but with “deadly airstrikes” launched by Israel in Damascus.
Another piece about the fighting appeared on the Times front page the next day, this one without an Israeli angle in the headline: “Battle leaves pall of death on Syrian city.” That article dealt with the horrors that took place in Sweida.
Tellingly, however, in the 10 days since the incident that spurred the fighting in Syria – fighting that, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has claimed more than 1,200 lives – The New York Times has devoted more of its front page to stories and pictures about Gaza and Israel than Sweida and Syria.
There have been two front-page stories about Israeli actions in Gaza and another about efforts at Cheltenham High School near Philadelphia to remove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from its alumni Hall of Fame.
During this same period, there were two front-page pieces on the clashes in Syria – one of them, again, focusing on the Israeli strikes in Damascus – and a third dealing with the discovery of mass graves near Damascus used by Bashar al-Assad’s regime to bury opponents during the country’s brutal civil war.
And in an age where pictures are more important than words, there were no pictures from Syria but two large pictures from Gaza on the Times front page during these 10 days: one of Gazans on the beach with a caption saying that Israel prohibits them from entering the water or fishing, and another, on Monday, showing anguished Palestinian women mourning dead relatives at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The Times lead story on Monday was “Israelis shoot dozens rushing for aid in Gaza,” a piece that, as usual, relied heavily on figures provided by Hamas, numbers Israel insists are significantly inflated but which it makes little effort to counter in real time.
That same day, the Syrian Observatory reported 205 people killed in Syria, more than the number cited in Gaza. Yet it was Gaza, not Syria, that led the Times front page.
And the Times is actually paying more attention to the situation in Syria than many other media outlets, human rights organizations, the UN, or foreign ministries around the world.
This isn’t new. The disparity in international attention is as predictable as it is stark. Israel-Gaza leads the global conversation. The fighting in Syria, unless Israel is somehow involved, struggles to get notice.
The question is: why?
The reflexive answer is bias – there is a double standard and, for a variety of reasons, some having to do with antisemitism, Israel is held to different standards and is judged by a different measuring stick.
And yes, that’s part of it. But the full picture is much more complex, stemming from a mix of newsroom economics, visual incentives, narrative simplicity, lobbying infrastructure, and geopolitical priorities. Gaza ticks nearly every box that makes a story dominate global headlines. Sweida ticks almost none.
The disparity in coverage starts with access. Gaza is just minutes from Israeli press centers. Reporters can file stories from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, rely on local stringers, and get dramatic photos and videos by the hour. NGOs, UN agencies, and Hamas spokespeople – camouflaged as the Gaza Health Ministry – feed journalists a steady stream of real-time data, images, and interviews.
Sweida? It’s remote with an extreme kidnapping risk. Over 700 journalists have been killed covering Syria’s civil war, and Sweida is under tight regime control.
Getting into Syria as a journalist officially requires prior approval, security clearance, and specialized visas or permits from the authorities. Unauthorized entry, such as crossing through Jordan or Turkey without permits, risks severe penalties. For those who do get clearance, insurance premiums are extremely high.
Electricity and internet blackouts cripple real-time reporting, and content from local stringers is sparse.
Gaza fits favored frame of occupier vs. occupied, strong vs. weak
Then there’s the story itself. Gaza fits a frame the media loves: occupier vs occupied, strong vs weak, nuclear power vs impoverished territory. That David-and-Goliath template is easy to tell and emotionally resonant. It easily fits a limited time slot because framed in this binary way, it is not complicated.
Sweida? It’s messy. Bedouin militias, government loyalists, and Druze fighters. No clear villain, no single victim group, no tidy arc. It’s complex, local, and tribal. That makes it harder to explain and easier to ignore.
Furthermore, coverage intensifies whenever Israel is involved. For whatever reason, there is truth to that old adage, “Jews are news.” Witness the fact that the NYT first put the Syrian story on the front page after Israel got involved. Every action Israel takes is scrutinized, analyzed, and debated.
Syria, by contrast, is seen as a failed state mired in civil war and sectarian violence, so when hundreds are killed there on one day, it is tragic but, to a certain degree, expected. The world has been numbed by it and is not surprised.
And then there’s the activism. Pro-Palestinian advocacy is highly organized, heavily funded (thank you, Qatar), and globally embedded across university campuses, human rights organizations, and social media influencers. This creates constant public pressure and reinforces the perception that Gaza is a cause the world deeply cares about. In today’s media environment, outlets tend to prioritize stories that they believe their audiences are interested in following.
The Druze, on the other hand, have no such infrastructure. They’re not backed by Gulf money, and they lack a global network of activists, advocates, and influencers lobbying on their behalf. As a result, the ecosystem that amplifies specific causes – journalists, NGOs, academics, social platforms – largely overlooks the Druze in Syria. Their suffering exists, but few call attention to it.
And then there are the human rights organizations – such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – which churn out regular reports and press releases on Israel, often based on claims from partisan and biased NGOs. When it comes to Sweida – silence.
On July 10, HRW found time to condemn the US for sanctioning Francesca Albanese, the UN’s antisemitic special rapporteur on the Palestinians. But it had nothing to say about the slaughter in Sweida. Amnesty? It blasted the EU on July 15 for not suspending its association agreement with Israel but also stayed silent on Syria.
In short, Gaza is covered widely because it is symbolically and politically loaded. Syria is ignored because it is seen as broken, and no one cares.
The UN reinforces this imbalance. Gaza appears on the Security Council agenda monthly. Sweida earned one emergency session on July 17 and then disappeared. Agencies such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and the World Health Organization publish regular updates on Gaza. In Syria, very little. The media follows the data. The story gains far less traction when there is only a trickle of data coming out of Sweida.
This is not, ultimately, just about coverage gaps or editorial choices. Instead, it is about what the world chooses to see and what it opts to ignore. The lives lost in Sweida may not generate hashtags or front pages, but that doesn’t make them matter any less.
Gaza dominates the conversation not only because of what happens there but because of the infrastructure built to ensure that it does. Syria, broken and complex, doesn’t stand a chance.
And so while the world debates Israel’s every move and dissects every strike in Gaza, a quiet massacre unfolds across the border. Quiet, not because it’s less horrific, but because fewer are paying attention.
That disparity, too, tells a powerful story.