Mainstream Media Empowers Fake Humanitarian Groups’ Claim That Israel is an Apartheid State

B’Tselem, an anti-Israel organization posing as a humanitarian group, ignored a government ban prohibiting the indoctrination of Israeli students. But the inaccurate claim by B’tselem that Israel is an apartheid state was picked up by The Washington Post,  ABC News, CBS News, and reprinted by the Associated Press. 

Earlier this month, Yoav Galant, Israel’s education minister moved to ban B’Tselem from lecturing in Israeli schools due to its recent claim that Israel is an “apartheid regime.”

“The Ministry of Education under my leadership engraved on its banner the promotion of Zionist, Jewish and democratic values, and it acts accordingly,” said Education Minister Yoav Galant in a letter to the ministry. Galant stated that by calling Israel an apartheid state, such groups “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.”

The claim by the group was full of inaccuracies.

“It is one regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid,” the group’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad, said in a statement.

The B’Tselem report also went further in its accusations against the Israeli government, saying that Israeli Arabs “do not enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens by either law or practice.” B’Tselem supports the racist Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement that targets Jewish owned businesses in Judea, Samaria, and the Golan.

The ‘Breaking the Silence Law’ passed in 2018 proscribed lectures and activities at schools organized by left-wing groups calling for legal action to be taken against Israel’s IDF for so-called “crimes” against Palestinians. 

Despite the explicit ban, B’Tselem director-general Hagai El-Ad spoke at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa last Monday.
The articles about the incident published in the mainstream media listed above neglected to report that B’Tselem was in contravention of the law that prevents teaching this anti-Israel narrative in public schools. The articles also claimed that “Palestinians… have fewer rights than Jews in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.” This is explicitly inaccurate as Arabs living inside the pre-1967borders have full rights. Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are citizens of and subject to the rule of the Palestinian Authority.

While claiming to be a group working to ensure humanitarian rights, Be’Tselem only reports alleged humanitarian violations attributed to Israel while ignoring those perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority. In 2016, an Arab activist working for Be’Tselem posing as a prospective Jewish purchaser of land owned by Palestinians provided the Palestinian National Security Forces with the names of Palestinian land brokers willing to sell land to him. The Palestinian legal code regards sale of land to Israelis as a capital offense. Such people are beaten and executed.