By Tim Graham | August 31, 2014 | 9:25 AM EDT

Former AP reporter Matti Friedman has been quoted all over the blogosphere for his eye-opening article for Tablet magazine headlined “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth.” Friedman, who reported for AP in Jerusalem from 2006 to 2011, offered a post-mortem on the latest fighting in the Gaza strip.

“When the hysteria abates, I believe the events in Gaza will not be remembered by the world as particularly important. People were killed, most of them Palestinians, including many unarmed innocents. I wish I could say the tragedy of their deaths, or the deaths of Israel’s soldiers, will change something, that they mark a turning point. But they don’t.”  The importance lies in the tone of international press coverage: