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.

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.