Peace: A Five Letter Word

On March 10th 2015, the Arutz Sheva Israel National News website, published an article titled “Rabbi Yosef’s Daughter Clarifies: Shas is Leftist”. The article reports on what Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom, a leading voice for the Shas party, said at a meeting in Tel Aviv hosted by the Geneva Initiative and what her opinion reveals about the Shas political perspective. As the title implies Rabbanit Adina is the daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who was one of the most influential rabbis of modern Israel and more importantly founded the Shas party in 1984. He was the voice of the Sephardic and Mizrahi ultra orthodox Jews, acting as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973-1983. As a founder he created the Shas party with his ultra-orthodox Sephardic beliefs in mind and guided the party with these values as the Shas spiritual leader until his death in 2013. After Yosef’s death, Bar-Shalom his daughter has become a major source for her father's opinion with concern to the Shas party, and politics and religion as a whole. She is a major political influence in her own right, being recognized as an Israeli Prize winner  in 2014 for her special contributions throughout her life to Israeli society and the State of Israel.

The article focused on her discussion points at the Geneva Initiative meeting on March 9th 2015 concerning peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians. She mentioned her fear of the consequences of electing another radical right wing government in the upcoming elections (in which the right wing Likud party ended up winning). Her fear is that the tremendous amount of blood spilled over the conflict within the past couple years will increasingly get worse as the right wing government continues to fail to produce a viable peace agreement. She further goes on to mention that if there is a peace process in the upcoming elections, Shas including the chairman Aryeh Deri and other Shas members of the Knesset will push adamantly for the success of the initiative, just as her father would have wanted. The authors of this article respond to Bar-Shalom's claim that her father would have supported the peace process, claiming that Deri (the current chairman of Shas) was the real mind behind the Shas peaceful position at the Oslo accords, not Yosef.

Bar-Shalom continued to talk about her father Rabbi Yosef and his politics, claiming that her father loved Eli Yishai(who recently broke off from Shas to form the right wing-haredi and religious party, Yachad -Ha’am Itanu) but disapproved his right wing path. She mentions that Yishai committed an act that her father forbid when he ascended the Temple Mount in 2007, which exasperated the Arab-Israeli tension. Again the authors of this article refute Bar-Shalom’s claim of her father's opinion, they believe that Yosef actually approved of Yishai more than Deri, instead of Bar-Shalom's claim of the opposite.

The article ends with a discussion of the condition of the Arab citizens of Israel. Bar-Shalom claims that Israeli Jewish ignorance about the reality of the maltreatment of Israeli Arabs is what has fostered the hatred. She believes that if the State of Israel acted correctly to address the needs of Arab Israelis, the non Jewish population could be utilized as a bridge of understanding, instead of a wrench in the gears of peace. The authors conclude the article by presenting information that portrays Arab Israelis as opposing the state of Israel.  They mention that according to a poll late last year, 29% of Arab Israelis blamed the state of Israel for increased terrorism, and that this meant that a third of Arab Israelis approved of this terrorism(a claim I will refute). The authors add that Arab Israeli protesting (against the state of Israel) on Israeli independence day is a prime example of how blatant Arab Israeli disapproval of the State is.

The article summarized above was co-written by Uzi Baruch and Ari Yashar. Uzi Baruch is the Editor in Chief at Arutz Sheva and Ari Yashar is a member of the Arutz Sheva  24-hour News Desk. Arutz Sheva is a media network that identifies with religious Zionism. It is known for being a right of center news agency, some comparing it to the Israeli equivalent of US Fox News or the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.

This religious Zionist/right wing tone is exemplified throughout the article. The authors give tacit disapproval of Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom concerning her advocacy for accelerated Israeli-Palestinian peace deals and her criticism of the right wing government. They dismiss Bar-Shalom’s claims about her father's political opinion on two occasions, undermining her reliability. When she put the blame on Israeli Jews for the continuation of difficulties in the countries conflicts, Baruch and Yashar lay claim that the blame is truthfully on the Arabs. They mention how Arab Israelis protest against the state annually on its own independence day and  how a third of them approve of terrorism, demonizing the Arab citizens of Israel after Bar-Shalom defended them as not the source of the problem.

The article also makes a false assumption in its second to last paragraph about the ramifications of a poll on Israeli opinion of terror. The poll claims that 29% of Arab Israelis blame the state for the wave of terrorism after last summer's war, and the authors falsely assume that this meant that a third of Israeli Arabs approve of the terrorism. This claim is irrational, just because they blame the state of Israel for the increased terrorism does not mean that they approve of the terrorism itself. One can believe in an actions origin without approving of the action. Baruch and Yashar’s irrational assumption, belittling and demonizing the Arab-Israelis,  gives support to their right wing/ religious Zionist underlying aspirations.

Regardless of the authors point of view, the sources used in this article are all reliable. While the Arutz Sheva media network began in 1988 as an illegal radio station broadcasting from a boat in the Mediterranean sea, it has evolved into the self proclaimed number one place for news from Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East. In 1999 the Knesset granted it a licence to broadcast and absolved Arutz Sheva from earlier illegalities. The internet radio show still broadcasts, along with a website, and the B’Sheva newspaper is the fourth most widely read newspaper in Israel. This article may have a right wing overtone but the information is legitimate. It has become more and more evident as I continue to analyze the Arab-Israeli conflict through journalism,  that one article is never efficient to get a proper understanding of an issue.

Democratic Difficulties

On February 18^th 2015, The Ma’an News Agency published an online article titled “Israel court quashes ban on Haneen Zuabi election campaign”. The article reports on the recent Israeli Supreme Court decision to overrule the Central Election Committee ban on two candidates for the Knesset in the upcoming elections. The Central Elections Committee barred Haneen Zuabi and Baruch Marzel last week, relinquishing the ability of both candidates to be on the ballet in March. According to the Israeli government website, one function of the Central Elections Committee (CEC) includes approving the list of candidates for each election.  The orders from the CEC still required the approval of the Supreme Court which denied the ban.

The article briefly discusses each candidates political views and their subsequent reason for the CEC’s attempted ban. Haneen Zuabi is an active member of the Knesset who is running for re election this year and is a representative of the Balad political party. While the committee gave no official reason for the disqualification, her lawyer Hassan Jabareen said that it was because Zuabi was determined to be “hostile to the Jewish State”. This hostility stems from her (and her parties) rejection of Israel as a Jewish State, believing that it should be one single country in which Arabs and Jews have equal rights  Zuabi was also banned ahead of the 2013 election but that decision was also overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, oddly mirroring the events preceding this years election.

The other candidate that the CEC voted to ban was Baruch Marzel. The article describes Marzel as an extreme right winger and a follower of the right wing political activist Rabbi Meir Kahane who was assassinated back in 1990.  Marzel is a member of the Kahane inspired Otzma Yehudit nationalist political party in Israel.  The article mentions that his disqualification from the CEC was due to alleged racist comments and actions towards Arabs and other migrants. Marzels attorney said the alleged comments and actions either never happened or were misunderstood.

           

The article ends with some background information on the Arab population living in Israel. It mentions that there are 1.3 million Arab-Israelis, composing 20 percent of the overall population of the country. While they constitute 20 percent of the population they are projected to possibly win a mere 10 to 13 seats in the 120 member Knesset, only around 10 percent. The article ends with a history lesson about how the present day 1.3 million Arab-Israelis are descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained despite the mass displacement during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

The authorship of the article summarized above is credited to the “Ma’an Staff”. The Ma’an News Agency is the largest independent media group in the West Bank and Gaza strip. While Ma’an is popular in Palestine the company has been criticized for having an anti-Semitic tone. While there is not blatant anti Semitism in this article, there does exist a heavily pro-Arab/pro-Palestinian viewpoint. This viewpoint is expressed in three main ways. First of all the article is heavily focused on Zuabi (the Arab candidate) and little attention is given to Marzel (the Jewish candidate). His name is not mentioned in the title and only 3 lines of the article are dedicated to his analysis compared to 7 lines for Zuabi. It seems to me that Marzel was just added as an inadequate attempt at representing both sides of the issue, he was thrown in as a side note.

Secondly the only opinion represented in the article is that of Adalah, an Arab-Israeli legal rights group which is a strong pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli advocate.  They are quoted in the article condemning the CEC, calling them racist with improper motives to portray Arab members of the Knesset as terrorist. What this quote fails to mention is that only one of the two candidates banned were Arab which undermines the theory that the CEC is trying to portray strictly Arabs as terrorists. It would be more appropriate to claim that the Committee is trying to portray all radical politicians as terrorists, since both Zuabi and Marzel are considered radical politicians and are not both considered Arabs.

The third aspect of the report that reflects a pro-Arab tone are the final three paragraphs of the article that outline some information about Arab-Israelis. There is no purpose to include this information other than to paint the Palestinians in Israel as victims and are deserving of our sympathy. While the content is reliable, it is one sided and inefficient without posting similar information about the Jewish population of Israel.

The specific data and sources included in this article are all reliable. The Ma’an news agency, while one sided is respected as reliable. The reporting work is also contributed to AFP (Agence France‑Presse) which is one of the oldest international news agencies in the world.  AFP has a respectable history of trustworthy journalism which gives the article and its data legitimacy. In my opinion this article’s downfall is its biased one sided nature not its source or information legitimacy. This is a similar trend that I found in the previous Ma’an article I reviewed concerning Palestinian Cartoonists and a trend that I assume I will run into repeatedly as I continue to research the Arab-Israeli political news. 

Cartoons are Crazy

On January 16^th 2015, The Ma’an News Agency published an article titled “For some Palestiniancartoonists. Religion is off limits”. The article reports on the responses of Palestinian cartoonists to the events surrounding the terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo Magazine at its Paris headquarters on January 7^th that left 12 dead and 11 injured. The attack was orchestrated by two French Muslim brothers who claimed to be religiously motivated to perform their attack to avenge the prophet Mohammed whom the magazine often mocked alongside a variety of religious and political leaders.  The article focuses more specifically on the attitudes of 3 Palestinian cartoonists (Mohammad Sabaaneh, Ramzy Taweel, and Baha al Boukhari) towards both the terrorist attack and the content of the Charlie Hebdo controversial issues. All three Palestinians shared two main points of view;1) that the attack was a terrible tragedy  and, 2) that while they defend free speech and condemn the violence they do not agree with the content that Charlie Hebdo published concerning the Prophet Mohammed. The first half of the article was concerned with this disapproval of both the attack and the magazines issues.

The second half of the article is separated by the bolded quote 'The pen and the smile' and focuses on the reasons why the Palestinian cartoonists are upset and what they think the response should have been. They believe that while free speech is important, faith and religion is a touchy subject that should be avoided by any aspect of mockery or satire. While some found it flat out offensive to depict the Prophet Muhammad in that way, they all agreed that violence is and was not the answer. Instead the Palestinian cartoonists believed that those offended should let it go, shrug it off, or as Mohammad Sabaaneh put it “combat idea with idea, cartoons with cartoons”. All 3 Palestinian cartoonists involved in this article acted upon this last suggestion, each publishing their own cartoon response to the events and circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack (Mohammad Sabaaneh, Baha al Boukhari, Ramzy Taweel)

The article summarized above was written by John Davison who is a journalistic contributor to AFP news agency. From the style in which Davison writes, one can presume that his point of view is disapproving of the religious based cartoons produced by Charlie Hebdo and sympathetic towards the Palestinian cartoonists. His point of view is not expressed blatantly but in the structure of his writing and his narrow area of focus. First, Davison structures the article in a way that portrays the Palestinian cartoonists in a positive protagonistic “fighting the true fight the right way” kind of light. Each cartoonist is first quoted saying something loving and positive and then only after is quoted mentioning a critical aspect, a sugar coating technique. Second, the narrow minded nature of the article is expressed in the first half of its title “For some Palestinian Cartoonists”. The opinions of this article are based off of 3 cartoonists from Gaza responding to an event involving Islamic extremism. The only reason this tiny demographics point of view was chosen by the author was because while the majority of the cartoon industry and world had overwhelming and complete support for Charlie Hebdo (Je Suis Charlie), these Palestinian cartoonists criticized the magazine even in the wake of the tragedy. Besides the three cartoonists, Davison also mentions that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Hussein criticized the Charlie Hebdo comic calling it an insult to a third of the world. The four sources for this article are all extremely one sided and form a specific niche of opinion. Thus Davison with bias writes from the point of view that is both supportive of the Palestinian cartoonists and critical of Charlie Hebdo.

 Regardless of the authors’ point of view, the sources used are all legitimate in the sense that the facts presented are factual. All of sources are cartoonists from Palestine (illustrator Mohammad Sabaaneh of the newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida, free-lance Palestinian cartoonist Ramzy Taweel, and the veteran illustrator Baha al Boukhari of the daily Al-Ayyam). The Ma’an News Agency that posted the article is the largest independent media group in the West bank and Gaza strip. While Ma’an is popular in Palestine the company has been criticized for having an anti-Semitic tone. This tone was shown in the article when Davison mentions that it is widely believed that the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad intelligence services. While this rumor of Israeli involvement exists nothing has ever been proven with concern to who murdered al-Ali and therefore the inclusion of the claim is suspicious.

On the other hand the article was originally published by AFP (Agence France‑Presse) which is one of the oldest international news agencies in the world.  AFP has a respectable history of trustworthy journalism which gives the article and its data legitimacy. In my opinion this articles legitimacy is not the problem but the narrow minded viewpoint is what makes the article insufficient reading for getting a well rounded understanding of the issue.