Most pro-Israel people know that the endless media stream of propaganda photos out of Israel are staged. Occasionally a photo slips out of a media scrum of four hundred reporters crowding around three protesters. But it's hardly ever written about it.
So Emma Green's Atlantic article runs counter to the established wisdom and also takes note of the protest theater.
The area outside Damascus Gate is literally set up like a stage: Big steps lead down on three sides to the lowered platform where people emerge from the Old City. A few dozen people stood on the steps and chanted in Arabic, holding a sign featuring a truck that called on America to “dump Trump” and another sign showing Trump’s lips as urinals. A throng of journalists surrounded this group, outnumbering them roughly three-to-one. As protesters moved, the cameras shifted around them, moving like a flock of birds near a power line.
All the world's a stage. But Israel is blatantly a stage.
You see the protesters in the photos and videos. But you don't see the media puppeteers.