Picking the Wrong Signpost

UPDATE

Following HonestReporting’s complaint, The Guardian has replaced the photo with an image of the Knesset chamber where the legislation will be debated.

The Guardian reports on a proposed Israeli law that would change the status of the Arabic, which is currently an official language in Israel, as part of a wider bill promoting the Jewish identity of the Israeli state.

But what was The Guardian’s photo editor thinking when selecting this photo to illustrate the story?

The image is likely to draw smiles from Israelis and any tourists who have visited the Mount Bental scenic lookout on the Golan Heights. The sign is a somewhat kitschy part of the tourist site showing the approximate distances from there to cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, Amman and even the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

It is certainly not representative of Israeli signposts, such as street signs, which are in Hebrew, Arabic and English, such as the one below.

In fact:

• The country’s laws are officially published in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
• All road signs, food labels, medicine brochures, safety regulations and messages published or posted by the government must be translated into Arabic. In fact, most of Israeli signage is trilingual: Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
• All information regarding elections must be provided in Arabic.
• In the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, MK’s can give speeches in Arabic, and quite a few of them do so.
• As for the media: a portion of public media productions (TV, radio) must be in Arabic, and commercial channels and various media platforms and advertising companies produce daily content in Arabic, as well. The online world is no different – many Israeli websites provide their services in Arabic, starting with official government sites.

So is The Guardian’s photo choice simply an embarrassing error borne of ignorance or was it a deliberate attempt to falsely imply that Arabic is absent from Israeli signs and thus from Israeli public life?

Either way, we’ve contacted The Guardian to point out the error and requested a more appropriate image be used.