It’s somewhat ironic that the New York Times chose to publish an opinion piece on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, entitled “How Israel Silences Dissent.” For it is an oft used tactic of Israel’s detractors to take advantage of Jewish holidays, Shabbats and the like to disenfranchise many Jews from a conversation.
As for the opinion piece itself, the ominous sounding headline is indicative of an attempt to paint Israel as some sort of police state where minority views are not only frowned upon but actively persecuted, more in keeping with many of Israel’s Middle Eastern neighbors rather than a free and liberal democracy.
The “Bad News from the Netherlands” project and others like it were created, using the Netherlands as an example, to demonstrate that media coverage can degrade a country’s image by using selective news without context. And so Mairav Zonszein takes some examples from the extremes of the Israeli discourse and uses them to tarnish an entire country and its people.
According to Zonszein:
The vilification of the few Israelis who don’t subscribe to right-wing doctrine is not new. Similar acts of incitement occurred before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. But now they have multiplied, escalated and spread.
This would suggest that the majority of Israelis are “right-wing” despite evidence such as the current makeup of the Knesset that suggests otherwise. (A significant number of Knesset members belong to centrist or left-wing parties.) But when you come from the place on the political spectrum occupied by Zonszein, it isn’t surprising that most Israelis appear to be right-wing in her eyes.
Zonszein’s bio on the radical left +972 Magazine where she writes, states that she is an activist with Ta’ayush, “a direct-action Arab-Jewish group whose activism focuses on the rural Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills.” According to NGO Monitor, Ta’ayush emphasizes the language of demonization and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Over and over Zonszein treats us to a polemic whereby Israelis are portrayed as rabid religious nationalists hellbent on rooting out dissenting voices:
The aggressive silencing of anyone who voices disapproval of Israeli policies or expresses empathy with Palestinians is the latest manifestation of an us-versus-them mentality that has been simmering for decades.
. . .
Israeli society has been unable and unwilling to overcome an exclusivist ethno-religious nationalism that privileges Jewish citizens and is represented politically by the religious settler movement and the increasingly conservative secular right.
. . .
Israelis increasingly seem unwilling to listen to criticism, even when it comes from within their own family. Not only are they not willing to listen, they are trying to silence it before it can even be voiced. With a family like that, I would rather be considered one of “them.”
Zonszein evidently doesn’t see the irony of her own biography which states:
I began working as an editor with Haaretz.com in 2012. Before that I was an editor with +972, and have also worked for various NGOs, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Ir Amim.
All of this is evidence of a very healthy civil society and a free press, something that Zonszein cannot bring herself to acknowledge in her opinion piece.
That a majority of Israelis do not subscribe to Zonszein’s politics does not make it a tyranny of the majority. It does, however, appeal to the holier than thou attitude of the New York Times towards Israel, which regularly gives a voice to dissenting opinions on how Israel should conduct itself.
[sc:graybox ]You can send your considered comments to the New York Times – [email protected] – remembering to include your address and phone number in order to stand a chance of publication.
