This past Sunday, July 19, like another 1.5 billion people around the globe (roughly ten times more than the average Super Bowl audience), I sat in my family room tuned attentively to the World Cup Final between Argentina and Spain, avidly rooting for Espana. For the previous 39 days, viewers from around the globe rooted for their favorite teams with a nationalistic fervor rivaling, some say, surpassing the Olympics. For those 39 days, the total amount of viewers reached a cumulative 11.5 billion just through the quarter-final stage alone.
Earlier this summer and culminating with their wedding on July 3, the US corporate media was consumed for weeks about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelse tying the knot. Who was invited, who was snubbed; reception entertainment; how Madison Garden would be decked out; and more was fodder for our American celebrity-driven culture.
On Friday, July 17, two days before the World Cup final game, Israel targeted and bombed a funeral procession in the central Gaza Strip killing eight and wounding another 22. The funeral procession was for a person murdered by another Israeli missile strike earlier that day. Four other people, including two women, were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Friday. That brings the total of air strikes to 40 last month alone, the highest monthly total since the latest “ceasefire” began, and the total number of Palestinians murdered by Israel to 1130 since last October’s truce, including 274 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
And speaking of the World Cup, this is not even to mention the 567 Palestinian football (soccer) players and over 900 Palestinian athletes Israel has targeted and killed since October 2023.
And on Tuesday, July 14, the Israeli Security Cabinet revealed publicly an earlier decision to build 34 new illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including six in Bethlehem, allocating 1.3 billion shekels ($425 million) to expedite the process. These are in addition to 68 other new illegal settlements recently approved.
So while our media was all agog about the Swift-Kelse nuptials and while we were watching the World Cup, Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing continues; Gazans continued to be murdered, and Palestinians in the West Bank continue to be illegally displaced.
And nary a peep from the corporate media. Nary a peep from governments. Nary a peep from churches and other religious organizations.
And nary a peep from us.
Are we that easily distracted? Are our attention spans that short? Is our tolerance level for another’s suffering that shallow? I keep thinking: What if a billion-and-a-half … hell, what if a tenth of a billion-and-a-half, what if 150 million people rose up and demanded justice for Palestinians, what a difference that would make.
If only. If only. Someday our kids and grandkids are going to ask us where we were, what we were doing during this modern-day holocaust. What the hell is wrong with humanity? What the hell is wrong with us?
Michael Spath, July 20, 2026