CNN’s Van Jones Says, ‘No Jews, No News.’ Victor Davis Hanson Says, Not Exactly.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We’ve seen, since Oct. 7, 2023, a new overt antisemitism, a new candor about prejudice against those of the Jewish faith and Israel in particular.

Recently, the CNN host and commentator Van Jones said something I found quite astounding. He was asked about the news, and he said that we are ignoring a mini genocide or maybe a regular genocide in Nigeria. And that is because we have emphasis on other areas.

I mean, that’s a legitimate criticism to make. Over 120,000 Nigerians have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorism. But he says that’s not being covered because they’re not Jewish. In fact, he coined a phrase I found quite disturbing: “No Jews, no news.”

Mr. Jones, let me correct you.

There are a lot of wars around the world that we’re not covering.

One hundred thirty thousand Armenians were just ethnically cleansed the last two years from Azerbaijan in disputed territory. But they had been there for hundreds of years. No one covered it.

In the second and third Chechen wars, Russia went into Chechnya, and they leveled the city of Grozny. They wiped it out. No one really knew anything about it. It was not covered.

As I am speaking, India and Pakistan exchanged missiles with each other. They’re both nuclear powers. Nobody’s talked about it. It was prompted by a mass terrorist attack against India.

So, there’s all sorts of conflicts all over the world that are not being reported on besides the Nigerian genocide.

Second: The Middle East is a special place. It is the nexus, the historical nexus of three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is the home for the three major religions of the world—or at least three of the most important—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It has been a historical cauldron of great empires: Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms, the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the British Empire.

This is a crossroads where power and war intersect. We almost had a nuclear confrontation in 1973 between the Soviet Union and the United States during the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.

So, there are a lot of reasons why we privilege the Middle East news, especially the worry about an Iranian nuclear weapon or Middle East terrorism. Where have ISIS been from? Where did al-Qaeda come from? Where did Hezbollah come from? Where did Hamas come from? Where did the Palestinian Liberation Organization—where do they all come from? They came from the Middle East.

Every time there is any development in the Middle East, Europe is terrified because of their large 10% to 15%, 16% Islamic populations that are not assimilated fully or integrated. And they’re afraid if anybody sneezes in the Middle East, then they get a major terrorist attack.

So, Mr. Jones, the Middle East is a special place, not because of Jews alone, and that’s not why we cover the Middle East in a way we don’t Africa, or we don’t Chechnya, or we don’t the Indian-Pakistan border.

It is true that constituencies in the United States can influence the emphasis on events abroad. We don’t talk about the Turkish invasion and illegal occupation of Cyprus in a way that we should because the Greek lobby has been assimilated, integrated, and intermarried, and it does not have the clout that it used to.

We are talking about the Middle East, more about Gaza, than we are Oct. 7. And that is because the population from people from the Middle East in the United States has soared. And we have hundreds of thousands of students from the Middle East—illiberal regimes—that are either Arab or Islamic, or both. And they put a high premium on coverage of that area.

If we want to give the Nigerian genocide its proper emphasis—and I think we should—then we need to inform black Americans, a natural constituency, and say, “Why don’t you lobby and influence the Left and the mainstream media to cover this disaster?”

The only time we’ve covered major problems in Africa were during the apartheid regime, when it was white-on-black violence. Now that there’s more black-on-white violence in South Africa and it’s one of the most dangerous places in the world in the post-Mandela era, we don’t talk about it.

But why don’t we talk about Nigeria? And why doesn’t the black community get energized in a way that you would like them to? I don’t know. I think there’s something to the fact that it doesn’t have a sensationalism.

For example, there are 12,000 black Americans tragically killed every year. We don’t talk about them. But we do talk about Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and Michael Brown because it was white on black. And that creates a new sensationalism that I guess, in our callousness, we don’t talk about on a Saturday night in Chicago when 20 people are killed.

There’s another final thing to remember, Mr. Jones. The people who are killing innocent Nigerian Christians, perhaps 130 over the last 15 years, are black Islamic terrorists, Boko Haram. And in the hierarchy of DEI, the Left does not criticize groups that they feel are on the oppressed or victimized side of this Marxist binary.

So, in their way of thinking, you do not criticize black Islamicists, even when they kill black Christians, to the same degree you would if they were other Christians or they were white settler colonialists, as the Left calls them.

So, getting back to the original problem. It’s not: “No Jews, no news.” It’s the fact that the Middle East is a special place, historically. Currently, it’s full of global dangers, whether the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bosphorus. It’s a unique place.

And the reason that we do not talk about the Nigerian Holocaust is not the color of someone’s skin. We learned that from Chechnya, as I pointed out. And we’ve learned that from India and Pakistan. We’ve learned that from the current violence with Kosovo and Serbia. It’s because it does not have the same geostrategic resonance that the Middle East does.

If we want to reboot interest in that terrible catastrophe, then let’s get the African American community energized, as other ethnic communities like the Arab Islamic community, who put such emphasis on Gaza. Let’s do this with Africa.

And let’s not care about who the people are who are killing innocent black Christians in the sense that we give them a pass. They are black Islamic terrorists and they’re not part of any non-white coalition. They’re horrific people and they’re doing horrific things. And it’s past time the United States should draw all of our attention to these poor victims in Africa that are being slaughtered by a radical, religious creed.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post CNN’s Van Jones Says, ‘No Jews, No News.’ Victor Davis Hanson Says, Not Exactly. appeared first on The Daily Signal.