The ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a well established part of Indonesian religio-political discourse. Anti-Zionism if not outright anti-Semitism is foundational; Israel has few friends in Indonesia. Various media reactions to the 2008-2009 Gaza attacks are placed within wider ethnographic and linguistic contexts to explore how news is spun in a cultural system of conflict. In becoming part of a cultural system of conflict, discourses about Israel take on the properties of myth.