“Haaretz website led today with this headline: ‘Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel’. Once again the real issues, and real challenges, get lost in the scramble to make the facts meet the political agendas of the writers.

The article was written by Gideon Levy and was based on poll of 503 people. According to Levy the poll showed that ‘Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.’  One finding of note was that 69 percent objected to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexed the West Bank. Levy editorialised that the results proved Israelis were now ‘openly, shamelessly, and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists’. ‘“We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel.”’

The Haaretz story was quickly followed up by a post from Harriet Sherwood at The Guardian website. She suggested that Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, ‘recently argued for the annexation of land.’

There are two kinds of problem with these reports.

First, the editorial framing of the poll by Levy and Sherwood was faulty.”

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