A Financial Times (FT) report on Arab citizens of Israel in the context of the upcoming elections (“Arab Israeli voters aim to eject Netanyahu,” Oct. 18) is as predictable as it is dishonest.
It’s predictable as anyone familiar with the FT’s reporting would understand that their stories demand that Arab-Israelis be portrayed as merely victims of the Jewish government – a dynamic that’s continually present in their coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues as well.
It’s dishonest in that the article, by their Jerusalem correspondent James Shotter, didn’t seek open-source information that would have provided readers with a more accurate picture of the relationship between Arab and Jewish Israelis. It also framed individual opinions about discrimination against Arabs as indisputable facts.
The skewed framing begins in the first sentence, when Shotter writes that “Under Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, Israel’s Palestinian minority has endured a surge in violent crime and a ferocious clampdown on dissent.”
First, as CAMERA documented previously, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens of the state don’t identify as “Palestinian.” Rather, strong pluralities choose, instead, “Arab,” “Arab-Israeli,” or just “Israeli.” This is a serious deception by the FT, as that word choice serves to falsely conflate citizens of Israel who are ethnically Arab with Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.
Further, Shotter fails to provide any evidence to back up his claim that there has been a “ferocious clampdown on dissent” targeting Arab-Israelis under the current government. While he cites unnamed “human rights activists” stating that “scores of Arab Israelis were arrested, harassed, lost their jobs or faced disciplinary proceedings over statements and social media posts,” it’s likely that the “human rights activists” are affiliated with Adalah – a radical NGO whose director rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Further, as even Adalah has conceded, many of those arrested, or who faced professional disciplinary action, involved their expressions of support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacre. It’s of course illegal in the UK to express support for proscribed terrorist groups as well, undermining Shotter’s implicit suggestion that such prohibitions are anti-democratic crackdowns on “dissent”.
Shotter then quotes an Arab-Israeli named Maher Budeir, who says that “the most immediate problem is a suffocating planning regime that makes it almost impossible for Arab communities to expand legally…It was always harder for Arabs than Jews to get building permits. But this government has made it a policy. It’s a complete double standard.”
However, according to a 2024 report by the Israeli State Comptroller, Israelis in the Arab, Bedouin, Druze, and
Circassian sectors make up 21% of the total population, and received 24% of the 1,135,310 housing units
approved by planning authorities between 2013 and 2022.
While the report does tacitly acknowledge a disparity in actual building permit issuances, the reasons for are complex. They include “widespread unauthorized building has actively undermined formal planning efforts and progress”, and the fact that “planning bodies, local committees, and municipalities have struggled to finalize the detailed plans required to legally issue building permits.”
So, instead of doing due-diligence to determine the myriad of factors behind the difference in building permits being issued to the Jewish and non-Jewish sectors, Shotter, by uncritically quoting one Arab-Israeli, left readers with the desired message that racist government policies are to blame. This is likely based on the broader highly questionable assumption held by many that any racial or ethnic disparities in economic or social outcomes must be explained by racism.
The FT article then states, as if it were a fact, that “Arabs have long been treated as second-class citizens in Israel,” an allegation contradicted by serious analyses of Israel’s democracy, and which may be based on a completely discredited report by Adalah.
Adalah’s “Discriminatory Laws Database” (often cited by British outlets) is largely informed by their belief that Zionism is intrinsically racist, and that laws based on Zionist ideals, are, by definition, racist. This position is so extreme that even the Guardian was critical of the motion recently adopted by the Green Party that “Zionism is Racism”. Adalah’s “discriminatory laws” list also risibly labels, as racist, the Law and Administration Ordinance (1948) that defines the country’s official rest days, and the Law for Using the Hebrew Date.
Further, polls of Arab Israelis by the Israeli Democracy Institute tell a completely different story than the one promoted by the FT. A 2025 survey shows that nearly as many Arabs as Jews view Israel as a good place to live.
The report also revealed that 44% of Arabs are proud to be Israeli. While this figure is much lower than the percentage of Jews who are proud to be Israelis, it’s nonetheless telling in that Shotter myopic take ignored this large segment of the Arab community who feel that Israel is a good place to live and/or are proud to be Israeli.
Another positive sign of Arab integration into Israeli society ignored by the FT is a comprehensive trend study conducted by the Dayan Center which showed that over 75% of Arab-Israelis support voluntary non-military national service for Arab high school graduates, both boys and girls. Additionally, some Arab-Israelis – who are except from mandatory service – do serve in the IDF. In fact, 85% of the Druze Arab population have self-conscripted since Oct. 7, 2023, while 60% of Bedouin-Arabs have served.
In addition to ignoring positive trends with the Arab-Israeli community, his report characteristically fails to critically scrutinise Arab MKs the way he does Jewish MKs. While, for instance, he correctly notes that Itamar Ben-Gvir is an “ultranationalist previously convicted of incitement to racism against Arabs”, not one critical word is written by Shotter about extremist Arab-Israeli politicians.
While Shotter approvingly notes that “the Joint List, which unites a range of Arab factions — are on course to win between 12 and 15 seats in Israel’s…Knesset [in the Oct. 27 elections], up from 10 now,” he omits that the Joint List also includes the Balad Party, whose leader until this current election, Sami Abu Shehadeh, expressed support for the Oct. 7 massacre.
Further, MK Ofer Cassif, a Jewish member of of the Arab Hadash Party, which is also on the Joint List, called Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank “freedom fighters”, compared Israeli policies to the Nazi regime and, a day after the Oct. 7 massacre, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing.
Even Mansour Abbas, whose Ra’am Party was, in 2021, the first Arab party in decades to be part of a ruling coalition and won plaudits for his reconciliatory approach to Arab-Jewish divisions, is rooted in the Southern Islamic Movement. This movement was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a global Islamist organization that has been outlawed in around a dozen countries for links to terrorism. Hamas, of course, is the Palestinian branch of the MB.
It is, however, important to stress that while the Southern Islamic Movement has traditionally participated in the Israeli political system, and has distanced itself from the MB, the Northern Islamic movement – led by the extremist Raed Salah – is indisputably linked and inspired by Hamas and the MB.
Finally, missing from Shotter’s analysis of Arab-Jewish relations is any mention of the May 2021 Arab riots in mixed Arab-Jewish cities. Over ten days, there were roughly 520 violent clashes between the rioters and the police: three Israeli citizens were killed, and dozens were wounded, among them 306 policemen. While there were also Jewish counter-riots and anti-Arab violence by Jewish extremists, over 6,000 Israeli Arabs actively participated in the riots.
There are, of course, Israelis with racist attitudes towards Arab citizens of the state, and criticism of such attitudes – and resulting discriminatory policies – do deserve serious scrutiny. However, within Shotter’s moral binary, evoking oppressed Arab-Israelis who lack agency resisting their Jewish-Israeli oppressors, there is simply no room for nuance, or complexity of any kind which would complicate the desired narrative.