Racist reporting gets free hand
2012-12-28
Examples of racism are abundant in the Israeli press. Both individual journalists and the media outlets that publish them must be taken to task for stereotyping Palestinians, and in some cases, inciting violence against them.
By I’lam: Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel
It is not altogether true that free expression is under threat in Israel. Sure, one may have been led into believing so, what with the passing in 2011 of the
“Nakba Law,” penalizing commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, and the
“Anti-Boycott Law,” restricting anyone calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including in the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, for decades, the Hebrew media has essentially been given free rein to incite to racism and violence against Palestinians, with seemingly little self-reflection and even less accountability.
Our latest compendium of weekly monitoring of the mainstream Hebrew media highlights how the space for free expression for racist reporting in the Israeli media encounters little restriction, even during times when things are “quiet on the war front.”
In our most recent monitoring, we were able to highlight five dominant patterns regarding racial incitement in the media: lack of objectivity and racist opinion pieces; generalizing in the service of legitimizing the occupation; portraying Arabs as primitive; incitement of religious tensions; and incitement of violence against Palestinians.
