(UK Media Watch-CAMERA) Adam Levick - An official Guardian editorial on March 11 included the following accusation: "Israel is not a state of all its citizens, Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu declared on Sunday. His words should be shocking, but in truth they made explicit the message of last year's nation state law, rendering Palestinians in Israel second-class citizens." This is completely untrue. The Jewish Nation-State Law merely codifies Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people - a principle which is the core of Zionism. It also lists a number of manifestations of Israel's status as a Jewish state, including the country's flag, national anthem, calendar, language, and immigration policies. As the head of the Israel Democracy Institute conceded, the impact of the law is "largely symbolic." The protection of individual rights of non-Jewish citizens is already covered in the Basic Law on "Human Dignity and Freedom," which the Israeli Supreme Court interprets as guaranteeing equality. The Guardian doesn't even attempt to demonstrate in which manner the Israeli law undermines equal rights because editors couldn't point to even one civil or political right enjoyed by non-Jewish citizens before the law that they no longer enjoyed after the law was passed. Their assertion that the nation-state law renders Arab-Israelis "second-class citizens" is a flat-out lie.
2019-03-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive