Major news organizations, including The Washington Post, ABC News and CBS News reprinted an Associated Press (AP) article that incorrectly portrayed as undemocratic a move by Israel’s education minister to bar members of B’Tselem from giving presentations or conducting other activities in publicly-funded schools. The decision was made after the controversial group, which supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, published a report in which it accused the Jewish state of being an “apartheid regime.”
Lost in the mix, however, is that the Israeli government has not banned B’Tselem from assuming any position; rather, Jerusalem has determined, in accordance with the law, that state-funded schools are not appropriate vehicles through which to slander Israel.
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The Myth of Israeli Apartheid: Not Part of the Israeli School Curriculum
When announcing the decision, Education Minister Yoav Gallant said that organizations like B’Tselem “contradict the goals of the education system, including calling Israel false disparaging names, opposing Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, discouraging meaningful service in the IDF, or acting to harm or degrade IDF soldiers during or after their service.”
Yet, the AP story casts doubt on the legitimacy of the move by Israel’s democratically-elected government by quoting a representative of Adalah, another pro-BDS organization that is innocuously described as an “Arab legal rights group:”
Adalah said it had appealed to the country’s attorney general to cancel Galant’s directive, saying it was made without the proper authority and that it was intended to “silence legitimate voices.”
In reality, the Israeli parliament in 2018 passed legislation authorizing the education minister to prevent members of groups that “act against the goals of education and against the IDF from entering schools.” The law was intended to curb organizations from fanning flames of hatred against Israel through the promotion of the BDS movement’s annihilationist agenda.
This critical fact is, by happenstance, mentioned in the AP article — buried in the ninth paragraph below the Adalah quote — but thereafter includes this modifier: “It was not clear if Galant’s decree was rooted in the 2018 law.”
Yes, it was.
Israeli Education Being Disrupted By B’Tselem
Unsurprisingly, Al Jazeera quickly pounced on the opportunity:
B’Tselem is determined to keep with its mission of documenting reality, analyzing it, and making our findings publicly known to the Israeli public, and worldwide,” the group said.
The stated goal of Israel’s education system is to prepare children to become responsible members of a democratic, pluralistic society in which people from different ethnic, religious, cultural and political backgrounds coexist. This is coupled with the aim of promulgating Jewish values, including the principles of liberty and tolerance, in order to fulfill “Israel’s raison d’être as the historic homeland of the Jewish people.”
The contradiction between B’Tselem’s “apartheid” accusation and its previous efforts to single out Israel for condemnation and what is meant to be taught at Israeli public schools could not be more stark.
Related Reading: The Israel ‘Apartheid’ Myth: Media Parrot Antisemitic Libel
Media Blackout? Why BDS is a Big Deal and a Big Problem
That BDS is not mentioned by the above-mentioned media outlets is no oversight. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement blankets opposition to Israel’s to right to exist in human rights verbiage. Indeed, BDS leaders have openly rejected Jewish self-determination.
BDS is deemed so perverse that in 2019 the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution denouncing the initiative as one that “promotes principles of collective guilt, mass punishment and group isolation, which are destructive of prospects for progress towards peace.” That same year, the German parliament passed a resolution condemning BDS as antisemitic.
By subjecting the Jewish state to a standard that no other nation on earth is held to, B’Tselem and, in turn, media outlets have blurred the fine line between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and overt Jew-hatred.
Related Reading: The False Israel-Apartheid Libel
The Case of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib: When Israel Bans BDS Proponents
A similar dynamic played out in 2019, when Jerusalem barred members of Congress Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from visiting the country. This decision, which prompted HonestReporting to act, was also grounded in Israeli law, which allows the government to prevent proponents of BDS from entering Israel.
Nevertheless, international news organizations originally castigated the Jewish state with headlines such as:
(Washington Post, August 15, 2019)
What went largely unreported was that the US lawmakers’ trip to Israel had been organized by Miftah, a Palestinian group whose BDS-related activities are well-documented. Indeed, based on their proposed itinerary, the planned visit by Omar and Tlaib had one goal: that is, to advocate for the economic isolation of Israel. Notably, unlike virtually all previous trips organized for Democrat and Republican legislators, Omar and Tlaib had no intention of meeting with any Israeli officials.
Uncritical Media Coverage: A Trojan Horse For BDS?
Based on the legal definition of what constitutes apartheid, Israel does not come close to fitting the bill. As such, one can only assume that groups that disseminate this libel do so with the aim of maligning the Jewish state and ostracizing it from the family of nations.
When media outlets gloss over B’Tselem’s pro-BDS activities and uncritically cite other similar groups that condemn an Israeli policy decision grounded in existing law, it is justifiable to ponder the legitimacy of their reporting — and to proactively counter it.
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