Nightshot of the Israeli supreme court building in Jerusalem. Photo: wiki commons.

Could one imagine the media outrage if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, or Justice Alito refused to sing the American national anthem? One could envision media headlines worldwide for weeks – and naturally calls for them to step down.   Want to guess in which country a similar situation happened this week – a country always in the media – yet the media ignored the story? No, it wasn’t Britain or Australia.

This week in the State of Israel, an Israeli Arab judge on the Israeli Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justice Salim Jubran refused to sing the Israeli national anthem. And the whole world media was quiet – quiet that a sitting Supreme Court Justice wouldn’t sing his country’s anthem. Quiet that another Justice – Elyakim Rubinstein supported him saying the “refusal to sing the national anthem was a personal decision that was justified.” Quiet that the Deputy Prime Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, of the “conservative” (Likud) party also supported him.  (Could one imagine “right-wing” Arab political parties supporting a minority?) Quiet that in the Middle East where there’s no other democracy, the Jewish state constantly maligned for supposedly oppressing the Arabs allows them to serve on the Supreme Court.

There are so many perversions in this story being ignored by the media – especially when one considers that if an Arab were to dare do such a thing in the Arab world they’d most likely be hung. In a region where religions other than Islam aren’t permitted, an Arab minority sitting on the Jewish state’s Supreme Court – and that’s not a story? Want to talk about media bias? Yet another reason that Israel needs a proper Public Relations campaign. Of course, reading the media and listening to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan I’d be reminded as he said this week the Jews control the media, and “In 100 years, they control movies, television, recording, publishing, commerce, radio, they own it all.” As much as I wish Farrakhan was telling the truth, clearly the media bias against Israel tells us another.

Ronn Torossian is CEO of 5WPR, a Top 25 PR Firm and Author of “For Immediate Release”.