Israel's English-Language Media, AFP, Selectively Report on Israeli Poll

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
30 November '10

A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute noted that Israelis don't trust the media. In fact, at only 34 percent, the number of Israelis who trust the media is as low as it has been in the past eight years.

That same poll — or more specifically, the way Israel's main English-language news Web sites reported on one aspect of the survey — might also help explain why this is the case.

Along with questions about a number of weighty issues relating to Jewish-Arab relations, the poll asked Israelis whether it would bother them to have members of certain communities as neighbors.

Both Jewish and Arab Israelis were asked, for example, what they would think about living near homosexuals, foreign workers, ultra-orthodox Jews, immigrants from Russia or Ethiopia, mentally handicapped and others.

Perhaps most interesting to observers of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Jews were asked if it would bother them to have Arabs as neighbors, and Arabs were asked if it would bother them to have Jews as neighbors. Indeed, the English-language Web sites of Ha'aretz, Yediot Aharonot and the Jerusalem Post each mentioned this aspect of the poll in their coverage of the overall findings. So did Agence France Presse. But in a striking double standard, each of these news sources presented readers with only half of the picture, relaying that many Jews expressed discomfort about the idea of living next to an Arab but altogether ignoring the fact that even more Arabs expressed discomfort about the idea of living next to a Jew.

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Israeli Jews sick of Arab bad behavior

Fresnozionism.org
30 November '10

“Let’s see you explain this,” say my friends:

The Israel Democracy Institute released the results of its Israeli Democracy Ranking and poll on Tuesday, revealing that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis say the government should encourage [Israeli] Arabs to emigrate from Israel, and only 51% believe Jews and Arabs should have equal rights. — Jerusalem Post (the poll data is here)

Well, I’m going to try. The usual suspects will claim that this shows that Israeli Jews are racists. But there’s other information in the poll that indicates otherwise. For example,

We … posed the question: “Would it bother you to have as your neighbor: immigrants from the Former Soviet Union; ultra-Orthodox Jews; former settlers; a homosexual couple; foreign workers; an Arab family (asked of Jews)/a Jewish family (asked of Arabs); mentally retarded individuals; Ethiopian immigrants; mentally ill individuals in community treatment; people who do not observe Sabbath or holidays?” … For all groups cited, more than half the Jewish respondents answered that having such a neighbor would not bother them (the average of those who responded that they would be bothered is 23%).

That doesn’t sound very racist to me. But there is one kind of question about Arabs that Jews responded in a uniformly negative way: 70% of Jews disagreed with the statement “In your opinion, should more Arabs be appointed to senior positions in Israel?” 86% of Jews think that a Jewish majority should be required for decisions “fateful to the state,” and 62% that “as long as Israel is in a state of conflict with the Palestinians, the views of Arab citizens of Israel should not be taken into account on security issues.”

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Top Left-wing Activists Face Lawsuit For Plagiarism

Maya Sela
Haaretz Correspondent
12 August 09

The Israel Democracy Institute and one of its researchers, Anat Roth, are suing attorney Michael Sfard and Col (res.) Shaul Arieli, two well-known left-wing activists, for copyright violation.

The suit, filed in the Tel Aviv District Court, states that in their book about the separation fence, "Homa u'Mehdal, Geder Hahafrada - Bitahon or Hamdanut" ("Wall and Failure, the Separation Fence - Security or Greed"), Sfard and Arieli plagiarized material written and edited by the plaintiffs without seeking permission or even properly crediting the author.

This material included "substantial sections" of Roth's 2005 study of settler campaigns against the fence and the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, including "exclusive, unique interviews" that she conducted with settler leaders over many months.

Upon discovering this, Roth and the IDI demanded that Sfard, Arieli and their publishers - two divisions of Yedioth Ahronoth Books, which were also named as respondents - halt sales of the book, remove unsold books from stores and publish an apology in the press. Not only did the respondents refuse, they are still printing and selling the book, and even planning to translate it into several foreign languages, the suit said.

The suit seeks damages of NIS 300,000.
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