If a human rights group declares that the state in which it operates is an apartheid regime, and no one reports on it — is that state still a democracy?
This week, B’Tselem, one of Israel’s oldest anti-occupation groups, published a groundbreaking report describing Israel as an “apartheid regime” from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. This is the first time since the organization’s founding in 1989 that B’Tselem refers to policies inside the Green Line, as opposed to focusing solely on the occupied territories.
Along with the publication of B’Tselem’s full report on its website, the organization sent press releases to the media in Israel and abroad; the story was picked up by major outlets including The Guardian (which also hosted an op-ed by B’Tselem’s executive director Hagai El-Ad), Le Monde, El País, NPR, CNN, NBC, ABC, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Independent, AP, RFI, and Politiken.
Yet while B’Tselem’s statement received major coverage across the world, the Hebrew media in Israel was almost entirely silent.
Although one can agree or disagree with B’Tselem’s position, one cannot help but wonder why Israel’s top news outlets refrained from reporting on it. By ignoring the report, those outlets prevented the very people living under what B’Tselem calls an apartheid regime to be exposed to its opinion. After all, it is far more crucial that Israelis learn about the reality they live in than readers of El País, Le Monde, or The Washington Post.