The specific issue of Palestinian refugees is generally seen as one of the key stumbling blocks to finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . … Jewish refugees… is not something that is generally viewed as a central issue in the peace process in the same way the Palestinian refugee issue is. Should the issue of Jewish refugees become an integral part of the negotiations in the Israeli-Arab peace negotiations or a stumbling block thereto, we would of course look at them in a more in-depth fashion.
Are we to conclude that if Jewish refugees blew themselves up in Arab supermarkets, they would get the attention they deserve?
In other ways, Jewish refugees are too much of a stumbling block. The media do not want the complication of the exodus of a million Jews from Arab countries, and their unresolved human rights, to cloud their simplistic ‘narrative’ of who the bad guys are in this conflict. You will scour the mainstream press in vain for reference to Jewish claims for compensation or restitution of property in Cairo, Jerusalem or Hebron.
The persistent failure of the media to give context to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and certainly to cover any history before 1967, means that Jews from the East are invisible. When Jerusalem Day is celebrated, you can bet that there will be more sob stories in the press about Palestinians wrongfully ejected from their homes.
Jews have neither presence nor rights in Arab countries, nor in eastern Jerusalem, and those parts of the West Bank where Jews lived before 1948. As far as the media are concerned, all Jews are settlers.
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/elisfanclub.
