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Patrick O’Connor, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2006
One of the major
developments in March 28th's Israeli elections was the sudden rise of
Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party which became the fourth largest
Israeli party. Yisrael Beiteinu advocates transferring a number of
Palestinian towns in Israel to Palestinian Authority control, thus revoking
the Israeli citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The
popularity of this proposal fits with the results of a poll released last
week which showed that sixty-eight percent of Israeli Jews would refuse to
live in the same apartment building as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and
forty percent of Israeli Jews believe the state needs to support the
emigration of Palestinian citizens.[1] However, because of the way Israel is
portrayed in the mainstream US media, such blatant discrimination would
likely surprise the US public.
Israel’s obfuscation of the second-class status and even of the very
existence of Palestinian citizens, 20% of Israel’s population, is a crucial
component of a broader Israeli strategy of presenting the public face of a
liberal democracy while simultaneously repressing Palestinians. The US
mainstream media, with the New York Times in a leading role, collaborates
with this strategy. The US media emphasizes the Israeli narrative and
focuses coverage on Palestinian terrorism, while minimizing the central
Palestinian experiences of Israeli occupation and seizure of Palestinian
land, Israeli state terrorism, and systematic Israeli discrimination against
Palestinians living in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the diaspora.
Three news articles on “Israeli Arabs” and the Israeli elections published
in March in three of the most trusted and widely read US newspapers – The
New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post provide one example of
US media support for the Israeli narrative. Israel uses the term Israeli
Arab rather than Palestinian citizen of Israel as one tool in the
longstanding effort to “divide and rule”, and to cover up the familial,
historical and cultural relationship between Palestinians living in Israel
and those living under occupation. None of the articles challenges the use
of the term Israeli Arab, and none questions whether a Jewish state with a
substantial non-Jewish minority can be democratic and ensure equal rights.
While mentioning discrimination, the three articles completely omitted
Yisrael Beiteinu’s proposal to revoke the citizenship of many Palestinians.
This disregard for Palestinian citizens of Israel is consistent with the
findings of a recent research study I conducted on the publication of op-eds
by Palestinian and Israeli writers over the last five years in the five US
newspapers with the greatest circulation.[2] Though these newspapers
published 201 op-eds by Jewish citizens of Israel, they published just a
single op-ed by a Palestinian citizen of Israel currently residing in
Israel.
However, The New York Times, commonly viewed as the most influential US
newspaper, follows the discriminatory Israeli narrative on Israel’s
Palestinian citizens to a much greater degree than the Washington Post and
LA Times. This also corresponds with my op-ed research findings. From
2000-05 the New York Times published 3.4 op-eds by Israeli writers for every
op-ed by a Palestinian writer, while the LA Times published 2.3 Israelis per
Palestinian, and The Washington Post published 1.4 Israelis per Palestinian.
Throughout Dina Kraft’s March 21 New York Times article, “Politicians Court
a Not-so-Silent Minority: Israeli Arabs”,[3] Kraft maintains a rigid
dichotomy between “Palestinians” and “Israeli Arabs.” Kraft provides no hint
of family ties, shared identity, history or culture between Palestinian
citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.
Kraft describes Palestinians citizens of Israel as a distinct group from
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, “Almost 20 percent of Israel's 6.8
million citizens are Arabs (a group distinct from the Palestinians in the
West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip)….”
In contrast, in the May 25 LA Times article “Israeli Arabs Feel Little Stake
in Vote,”[4] reporter Laura King calls them “brethren”, noting “a central
dilemma for Israeli Arabs: whether they should identify more strongly with
their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or seek to
strengthen their own identity within Israel.”
The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson reports valuable information in his March
5 article, “Israeli Arabs See Lesson in Hamas Victory”[5] that “The Arab
families who remained in their villages during Israel's 1948 war of
independence account for roughly 20 percent of the Jewish state's 6 million
people… They are also viewed with suspicion by Israel's security services,
who fear they might be a Palestinian fifth column concentrated in a strip of
towns running north from here along the 1949 armistice line into the Galilee
region.”
Kraft’s complete separation of “Israeli Arabs” from “Palestinians” is
particularly audacious given her article’s dateline from “Baqa
Al-Gharbiyeh,” a town which dramatically illustrates Israel’s systematic
separation of Palestinians in Israel from those in the Occupied Territories.
Baqa Al-Gharbiyeh is a Palestinian town inside Israel, just west of the
Green Line. Connected, just east across the Green Line and inside the West
Bank is the Palestinian town of Baqa Al- Sharkiyeh. “West” and “East” Baqa
in Arabic, are really one town straddling the Green Line, but now separated
by a 25 foot high concrete Wall which divides families and friends. Though
from the same families, Baqa Al-Gharbiyeh’s residents are typically
identified as “Israeli Arab” citizens of Israel, while Baqa Al-Sharqiyeh’s
residents are “Palestinians” under Israeli military occupation.
In contrast to the other two newspapers, The New York Times describes
discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel in an ambiguous
manner. In the LA Times, Laura King notes that: “Joblessness and poverty
rates are much higher among Israeli Arabs than among the Jewish majority.
Arabs as a rule do not serve in the Israeli army, which gives many young
Israelis a boost in their career prospects… Arab cities and towns inside
Israel receive substantially less funding than Jewish municipalities. And a
poll last week suggested that a majority of Israeli Jews regard Arab
citizens as a threat to national security.” Scott Wilson in the Washington
Post mostly repeats these points, but adds discrimination in land ownership.
Wilson also mentions the Israeli police and military’s killing of 49
Palestinian citizens in 1956 .
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