Where’s the Coverage? Arab Enrollment in Israeli Universities Grows 78%

The number of Arab students in Israeli universities has grown an astonishing 78.5% over the last seven years, according to Israel’s Council for Higher Education (CHE). Although several Israeli outlets noted this new statistic, many major U.S. newspapers—including some which routinely publish commentaries labeling Israel an apartheid state—failed to do so.

CHE’s survey reported that in 2017, 16.1% of students in Israeli universities were Arab—up from 10.2% in 2010. Israeli graduate programs also witnessed an increase in Arab enrollment, from 6.2% to 13% over seven years. Similarly, Arab attendance in postgraduate programs rose “60% from 3.9% to 6.3%,” according to a Jan. 25, 2018 Times of Israel dispatch (“Number of Arab Students in Israeli Universities Grows 78% in 7 Years”).

Times of Israel reporter Dov Lieber noted that 26,000 Israeli Arabs were enrolled in higher education in 2010. By 2017, the figure was 47,000.

The CHE report was created in order to track the success of governmental programs aimed at better integrating Arab Israelis into higher education. The equivalent of eighty-eight million U.S. dollars was spent on the program from 2012-16. Its success has prompted the government to extend the program to 2022.

CHE’s survey noted that, while the program has made great strides, Israeli Arabs, as well as the Bedouin, remain underrepresented in higher education. Citing CHE, Lieber highlighted that “the only subjects in which Arab students were represented in proportion to their percentage of the population were education and medical professions.” However, fields in which Arab enrollment was previously low, such as engineering, mathematics, business administration, hard sciences and humanities, all experienced significant increases since 2010.

The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, and others detailed the study’s findings. But no major U.S. news outlets did, according to a Lexis-Nexis search.

Western press outlets frequently run stories slandering Israel as an apartheid state—failing to note that Israel, like all liberal democracies, might not be perfect but nonetheless strives—under difficult circumstances—to provide a level of equality and opportunity that is unique to the region. As CAMERA has highlighted, Israeli Arabs have a vastly greater standard of living and quality of life when compared to the Arabs residing elsewhere in the Middle East. Nonetheless, many in the media fail to provide essential context, and often parrot the talking point of Israel’s critics, which single out the Jewish state for opprobrium—holding it to standards that aren’t applied to other nations.

The Washington Post (“Is Israel An ‘Apartheid State?’ This U.N. Report Says Yes,” March 16, 2017) and The New York Times (“Tempest at U.N. Over Report That Says Israel Practices Apartheid,” March 15, 2017), among others, have published reports and commentaries that often uncritically repeat claims that Israel is an apartheid state akin to pre-1991 South Africa. Both papers failed, however, to highlight Israel’s success in increasing Arab enrollment in higher education.