Ha’aretz is a major source of critical and anti-Israel stories for the international media. In the latest example, Ha’aretz’s radical left-wing commentator Gideon Levy has deliberately fed the international media a skewed and biased reading of a poll that claims “Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel“.
Gideon Levy regularly demonizes the Jewish state to foreign audiences and in his own newspaper columns. He regularly goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israel, crossing red lines and allying himself with those who refer to Israel as a racist “apartheid state”, promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and wish to see the very destruction of Israel.
On the basis that Levy promotes the canard of Israeli “apartheid”, he is the last journalist who could give an objective analysis of this polls results.
His article opens with the following premise:
Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.
But let’s take a look at the findings:
Gideon Levy’s entire premise is based on a hypothetical situation where Israel annexes the West Bank. However, perhaps the real story here is that a plurality of the Israeli public does not favor annexing West Bank settlements let alone the West Bank in its entirety.
This makes the question of voting rights for Palestinians in an annexed West Bank entirely moot. That such a large majority of the Israeli public would deny such a right to Palestinians is unsurprising given that this would effectively lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state if it allowed Palestinians to vote as equal citizens or the end of Israel as a democratic state if it denied Palestinians those rights.
Which is exactly why the Israeli public does not support such a policy, precisely because the majority of Israelis do not want to be associated with apartheid.
Other statistics are casually tossed in by Levy to support his view of Israel as an apartheid state:
A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.”
What Levy fails to clarify is that this form of separation is not done on a racial basis but solely on citizenship. Israeli Arabs have as much right as Israeli Jews to travel on any roads they so wish. Any separation on the West Bank road system (and there are plenty of shared roads) is solely due to security and has nothing whatsoever to do with claims of apartheid.
Levy chooses to highlight significant minority opinions where it suits him. For example:
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