World attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict reflects fascination with Jews more than strategic importance.

Evidence

And the public in general is interested in Jews; it is not interested in Kurds or Berbers or other peoples whose names they don’t even remember. Jews—as it used to be said—are news. For one thing, there are the Jews themselves who constitute a not insignificant pro­ portion of both the consumers and producers of media news coverage. Then there are the people who dislike Jews to varying degrees, but usually for the same reasons. These again are not an insignificant proportion. Anything in which Jews are involved, either as parties or as opponents, arouses interest. Jews sometimes tend to assume that this interest is invariably and inevitably hostile; but this is not so at all. It is sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but is mostly neither the one nor the other, expressing an overwhelming curiosity to know about these peculiar, extraordinary people and to seek better or fuller information about what they are up to, what they are doing, and why. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1637

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ logic and to arguments in White Noise about media shaping what people attend to.
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether ‘dislike Jews but usually for the same reasons’ is a general antisemitism claim or something more specific Lewis has in mind.