Ha'aretz's Apartheid Campaign Against Israel | |
Amidst its financial hardships and declining Israeli readership, the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, has
upped its anti-Israel advocacy, engaging in a campaign to promote the
apartheid canard about Israel. First, Akiva Eldar falsely alleged that
the Israeli government had acknowledged Jews as the minority population
residing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a claim he
was forced to correct. Then Gideon Levy wrote an article bearing
the sinister headline, "Survey: Most Israeli Jews support apartheid
regime in Israel." The online versions in English and Hebrew were
subsequently changed slightly. And the print edition’s English headline
was "Survey: Most Israeli Jews advocate discrimination against Arabs."
This story was followed the next day by an article that attempted to
solidify as fact supposed Jewish support for an apartheid regime, with
the headline, "Arab MKs: Israeli Jews' support of apartheid is not surprising."
Levy’s article claimed that according to a recent
survey the majority of Israelis not only support apartheid, but also
hold racist views towards Israeli Arabs and believe that apartheid
already exists today in Israel. Predictably, the story spread like
wildfire and was quoted in major media outlets such as London’s The Guardian and The Independent, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Agence-France Presse, and dozens of other sites, blogs and forums.
Pro- and anti-Israel activists have spent the past
two days debating the reliability of the survey, its wording and
meaning, as well as the accuracy of Gideon Levy's article publicizing
the poll. But most of those involved in the debate did not see the
complete, original survey because it was not published anywhere,
including in Levy’s article. One notable exception was this in-depth analysis
by Avi Mayer which relied upon the original poll. CAMERA/Presspectiva
obtained a copy of the original survey, and compared it to Levy’s
article and Ha’aretz’s headline to see whether or not they accurately reflected the survey.
Unsurprisingly, Levy’s article was full of omissions
and distortions. He apparently ignored the data that did not suit him
and emphasized those that were in accord with his own well-known
anti-Israel world view. At times, he completely reversed the survey’s
findings. The sensational headline represents, at best, Levy’s
interpretation of the survey and does not represent objective, factual
reporting.
It also appears that the survey itself has its own
share of problems – including the lack of clarity and hypothetical
nature of the questions, no definition of terms that were used, limited
answer choices, no correction for confounding factors, and general lack
of explanation about what exactly was meant by the questions.
Yet even on the assumption that the survey was a valid one that was appropriately conducted, the results neither justify Ha’aretz’s
bombastic headlines, which seem to be part of a campaign to damage and
delegitimize the Jewish state, nor the article itself that cherry-picks
or otherwise misrepresents the results in order to reach the
predetermined conclusion of the headline.
Levy Distorts
Levy’s striking misrepresentations included the following:
Levy conveniently omitted the original question and answers from the survey. They were:
If the answers are divided according to those who see
it as "good" and those who see it as "not good," then 67% see it as a
bad situation. But Levy did not bother to inform reader that the 50% of
those who saw separate roads as "necessary" saw it as an undesirable
situation.
When a "minority" becomes a "majority"
Levy devoted much of his fiery wrath to the alleged
racism of Israeli Jews toward Israeli Arabs, but here too he distorted
the results in order to make his case. Already in the third sentence of
the article, he wrote:
Levy misled his readers. There are five questions in
the survey relating to discrimination against Arabs. Below are the
questions and results:
Does the overall picture obtained from these results
support Levy’s characterization of most Israeli Jews favoring
discrimination against Israeli-Arabs? On the contrary. Most people
reading these results would perceive just the opposite, that a majority
of Israelis do not support discrimination against Arabs.
Moreover, there are confounding factors here that
skew the numbers, making the majority a smaller one than might be
expected. For example, the highest percentages of negative answers to
the questions about Arab children sharing a class room with their
children and Arab families living in the same apartment building came
from the group that self-identified as ultra-Orthodox Jews. This
community tends to insulate their families from the outside world and
would be expected to just as readily answer that they would not want
their children sharing a classroom with secular Jews, or that they would
want all their neighbors to share their same values and strictures.
This artificially confounds the data. Israeli society is certainly not
perfect, but it is a far cry from Levy’s misrepresentation that most
Israeli Jews openly and explicitly favor discrimination against Arabs.
Levy’s misrepresentation was even worse in the commentary accompanying the main article, where he wrote:
What is amazing about the above paragraph is that
Levy chose precisely the three exanples that demonstrate the opposite of
the scenario he describes. Unfortunately, readers horrified at the
"findings" described by Levy do not possess the tools to see that the
author was deceiving them, because the results of the survey were not
included.
The issue of Levy’s selective reporting is evident
throughout the article, in which he introduced the "negative" data
without mentioning the "positive" data.
For example, when he wrote that "a third of the
respondents support a law that would prevent Israeli Arabs from voting
for the Knesset, " he did not bother to mention that 59% oppose such a
law.
Similarly, when Levy wrote that "36 percent support
transferring some of the Arab towns from Israel to the PA, in exchange
for keeping some of the West Bank settlements," he did not bother to
note that even more– 48% – oppose it. And when he wrote that "42 percent
don't want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don't
want their children in the same class with Arab children," he did not
bother to note that even more – 53% and 49% respectively – would not
mind.
The headline in Ha’aretz’s print edition
trumpeted that "Most Israeli Jews advocate discrimination against Arabs"
– a conclusion clearly not borne out by the results of the survey. But
this was evidently of no concern to editors who opted for a sensational
headline that presented Israel in the worst possible light, no matter
how false it was.
Support for Apartheid?
The subject of apartheid – the focus of Ha’aretz’s
headline and on which Levy places his primary emphasis, as well as the
charge that was disseminated around the world – takes up just 3 out of
the 17 questions in the survey and is divided into two separate
allegations by Levy:
a) the majority of Israelis support an apartheid regime; and
b) most Israelis think that Israel is already an apartheid state
Levy shares an honest point acknowledged by the
pollsters that provides a key to understanding the problematic nature of
the above allegations:
Indeed, in the three questions dealing with the
concept of apartheid, there is no definition or explanation of what is
meant by the term "apartheid." This raises the question of how the
pollsters concluded, on the one hand, that the respondents "support
apartheid" even while admitting that the term may not have been clear to
the respondents. This logical failure would have raised a red flag to
responsible journalists. That it did not give Levy reason to pause is
testament to his lack of journalistic ethics.
Levy began the article by stating:
It is an emphatic conclusion, but not what was asked
in the survey. The only question addressing annexation of the
territories was Question 16:
While 69% of respondents answered no, the survey’s
question addressed a hypothetical scenario that had no bearing on the
current situation. Moreover, there were more interviewees who responded
that they oppose annexation than those who responded that they support
it (48% oppose, 38% support). In other words, almost half the
respondents were forced to choose an answer about a hypothetical
scenario that they explicitly oppose. Yet Ha’aretz’s online edition turned
this finding into a headline without noting that it only described a
hypothetical scenario that was already widely rejected by respondents.
The online headline was subsequently changed to include the word "would"
presumably to account for the hypothetical nature of the result:
"Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel" but
the damage wrought by the original headline had already been done,
demonstrating the success of Ha’aretz’s apparent campaign to portray Israeli Jews as racists who support apartheid.
What about the claim that the majority of Israelis believe that an apartheid regime already exists in the country? Levy wrote:
This is what the survey says:
Beyond Levy’s ignoring of the survey’s nuance, with
his blanket assertion that Israel "practices apartheid against Arabs,"
are the problems inherent in the survey question itself – which Levy
similarly ignores. What is "apartheid in some areas" or "apartheid in
many areas"? The term "apartheid," contrary to its superficial use in
the survey, and contrary to the concept of "discrimination" has a very
clear and precise meaning: According to the 2002 Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court, it refers to "an institutionalized regime
of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any
other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of
maintaining that regime." (See more at "Israeli Apartheid Week")
There is no such thing as "some" apartheid. There is
either apartheid or no apartheid. Apartheid is not simply discrimination
– the sort that exists in almost every country around the world
including Israel, which is precisely why the term was created
specifically to describe South Africa’s regime.
Anyone who understands the meaning of the word
"apartheid" cannot reliably answer such an illogical question that seeks
to reveal whether Israel practices apartheid "in some areas" or "in
many areas." Of even greater concern is the impact of Levy’s assertion
"that 58% of Israeli citizens support apartheid" on those readers in
London, New York, or Berlin who actually know what real apartheid is.
Despite the fact, that by any parameter, there is no
connection between any Israeli policy and the South African apartheid
regime, international activists are currently attempting to brand Israel
with this smear in order to convince good and caring people that Israel
is a second South Africa and should be treated as such – with boycott,
divestment and sanctions. The Ha'aretz articles of the last few days indicate that the Israeli paper, too, seeks to demonize Israel as apartheid.
The fact that the survey question did not define
"apartheid" or explain to respondents the difference between "apartheid"
and "discrimination," and the fact that the pollsters admitted that the
term was not clear to all respondents suggests that respondents took
the term "apartheid" to mean "discrimination" and understood it as
simply a synonym for the latter. Moreover, the absurd response options
of apartheid in "some" areas or in "many" areas also would suggest that
the poll writers, intentionally or not, misled respondents into thinking
that "apartheid" is interchangeable with "discrimination." This is a
plausible interpretation of the data that Levy chose to ignore.
It is difficult to overestimate the damage done to Israel by Ha’aretz’s
sensational headlines and reporting. Instead of engaging in serious and
balanced social criticism based on the findings of the survey, Ha’aretz chose instead to export Gideon Levy’s hysteria and obsession in the form of distorted headlines and an inaccurate story.
Ha’aretz's campaign is transparent. Last
week the paper falsely reported that the Israeli government admits
to apartheid, this week it wrongly reported that the Israelis themselves
admit to apartheid. Foreign journalists, ambassadors, diplomats, and
policymakers around the world should take note. While Ha’aretz
might have been perceived as a serious and reliable inside source of
news about Israel, it is becoming increasingly clear that it nothing
more than a tool for anti-Israel activists.
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