Israel "Ethnically Cleansing" Bedouin Arabs?

The demolition of an unrecognized Bedouin settlement in the Negev attracts some foreign media looking to fit the story into their own one-sided agenda.


Honest Reporting
Media Critiques
28 July '10

It had all the elements that the foreign press in Israel could have hoped for - a mass eviction accompanied by the destruction of homes, a large Israeli police presence, the potential for confrontation and, even better, the fact that those being evicted belong to the Arab minority within Israel.

So it was that CNN, BBC, AFP and the LA Times saw fit to cover the demolition of an unauthorized Bedouin settlement in the Negev region. Indeed, irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the issue, such scenes are never pleasant and involve some level of human suffering. The foreign media, however, based on the quotes of non-governmental organizations, managed to portray a complex story in very black and white terms.

Writing in The Guardian's Comment is Free, notorious anti-Zionist academic Neve Gordon, not even bothering to address the wider context of the demolition, even went as far as to state that he

suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.

While the rest of the media did not sink to Gordon's level of vitriol, most of them certainly did nothing to dispel a one-sided narrative that portrays Israel as the usurper of Arab land. The status of the Bedouin in Israel is far more complex, as is this particular case of the demolished unrecognized village. As the Jerusalem Post explains:

(Read full critique)

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