Ha’aretz Launders Israeli Arab’s Column

MEMRI has done a fantastic job exposing Ha’aretz‘s whitewash of a column by Israeli Arab journalist Zuheir Andreus in which he calls on Arabs to exploit the “Nakba Law” to delegitimize Israel. MEMRI writes:

In his article, Andreus said that Israel’s laws were reminiscent of Nazi laws, and called on Israeli Arabs to participate in an international campaign to delegitimize Israel and “expose its disgrace.” He proposed ways of circumventing the Nakba Law in order to ensure that the Nakba would be instilled in the consciousness of the coming generations. Finally, he stated that the Palestinians were “neither guests nor sojourners” in Israel and that anyone who disliked this fact could take the next plane back to the country from which he came to Palestine.

An edited Hebrew translation of the article appeared in the Israeli daily Haaretz, with a number of key omissions and alterations.

Ha’aretz‘s cleaned up version include the following changes:

· In the Arabic version, Andreus writes that “Israel’s law book” is similar to “the Nazi laws against Jews and foreigners, which were passed by the criminal Hitler during the Second World War.” The Hebrew version says that Israel’s laws are reminiscent of “dark periods in history and raise difficult questions regarding the liberty of the Arab [citizen].”

· In the Arabic version, Andreus states that the Palestinians are “neither guests nor sojourners in Israel,” and invites any Israeli who dislikes this to “take the next plane back to the country from which [he] came or from which [he was] brought to Palestine.” The invitation to leave Israel is missing from the Hebrew version.

· The expressions “country for all its fascists” and “country for all its settlers” are absent from the Hebrew version.

· In the Arabic version, Andreus says that disconnecting Israeli Arab cities and villages from electricity will “cause no small financial damage to the racist [electric] company… which does not pay heed to the ‘inside’ Palestinians, refuses to employ Arabs, and does not even appoint them to customer service [positions]…” The Hebrew says that disconnecting the power will “cause some small losses to the Israeli electric company.”

· Finally, the Arabic version quotes lines from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish ending in the words “depart from our land,” which are absent from the Hebrew article.