Israeli-Arab newspapers. Photo: nrg.

Incitement to violence against Israelis and Jews “isn’t coming from where you’d expect it,” Israeli Druze columnist Daniel Salameh asserted in an op-ed published Monday by Israeli news site nrg.

According to Salameh, the anti-Israel invective is not only being promoted in mosque sermons or social media posts, but rather “right under our noses” in the Israeli-Arab media.

Salameh, fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic, recounted perusing Israeli-Arab newspapers on Friday and registering surprise at their focus. Instead of covering issues of relevance to the Israeli-Arab community, he said, the stories were focused on condemning Israel.

Among other concrete examples, Salameh pointed to a headline in Al-Sonara, a prominent Israeli-Arab newspaper, which read “The IDF is deliberately killing our children.” And another, about a female terrorist who attempted to carry out a stabbing attack in Afula — with no mention that the young woman had been threatening police with a knife — and claiming she had been shot for speaking Arabic.

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Salameh lashed out at the papers for presenting the false impression that Israel allows its soldiers and police officers to freely kill any Arabic-speakers, and that the Israeli-Arab community is subjugated and deprived of basic rights.

In his piece, Salameh asserted that though expressing opinions and taking sides is legitimate, “When [media outlets] present an entire community, daily, with one-sided and distorted facts which portray terrorists as heroic, sensitive and humane martyrs,” they make hate and violence inevitable.