On the morning of July 19th the BBC News website published a report titled “Jewish nation state: Israel approves controversial bill” which opened by telling BBC audiences that:
“Israel’s parliament has passed into law a controversial bill that defines the country as an exclusively Jewish state.
The “Jewish nation state” bill downgrades Arabic as an official language and says advancing Jewish settlement is a national interest.
It also states that the “whole and united” Jerusalem is its capital.”
The BBC’s report did not provide readers with the text of the bill. Had it done so, BBC audiences would have been able to see that the part referring to language in fact reads as follows:
“The state’s language is Hebrew.
The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.
This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.”
The clause referring to “Jewish Settlement” reads:
“The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”
Readers of the BBC’s report are told that:
“…some clauses were dropped following objections by Israel’s president and attorney-general, including a clause that would have enshrined in law the creation of Jewish-only communities.”
That dropped clause actually allowed the state to:
“authorize a community composed of people having the same faith and nationality to maintain the exclusive character of that community,”
The BBC did not bother to inform its audiences of the fact that many communities composed of people belonging to religious and ethnic groups such as Bedouin, Druze, Circassians, Christians and Muslims also exist in Israel.
The BBC’s report promotes comment on the story from three sources: members of the ‘Joint List’, the Israeli prime minister and an anti-Zionist foreign funded political NGO.
“Israeli Arab MPs condemned the legislation but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a “defining moment”. […]
Arab MP Ahmed Tibi said the bill’s passing represented the “death of democracy”.
Adalah, an Arab rights non-governmental orgnisation, said the law was an attempt to advance “ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies”.”
With the report providing no comparison between this legislation and similar laws and constitutions in other countries, the view of the story that BBC audiences are intended to take away is of course amply clear.