The Jewish Press, America’s trashiest Orthodox Jewish newspaper — renowned for excusing the improprieties of rabbinic child molesters and instead attacking their whistleblowers — has launched a new blog.
Flatteringly enough, in its first post, the Jewish Press Blog saw fit to attack Jewschool as representatives of “the encephelophobic Left among American Jews” due to Josh Frankel’s displeasure with Tel Aviv University’s decision to raise its admission age to 20.
Nevermind the fact that Frankel went to Yeshivat HaGush, is the former national president of NCSY, spent last summer working for the OU, and is an active duty IDF reservist. Damn those American Jewish lefties!
More disturbing is the fact that their first ever blog post is one that justifies discrimination against Israeli Arabs. The author goes so far as to invoke the outrageous claim that the state of Israel is employing a form of “affirmative action” that discriminates against Jews in favor of Arabs.

The fact that there exists discrimination against Jews in Israel is not new. There is lots of discrimination against Jews. Arab municipalities are overfunded relative to those of Jews. The police are far more reluctant to enforce the law, such as regarding illegal construction and squatting, when it comes to Arabs. And of course the greatest example of discrimination against Jews in Israel is the fact that Arabs are exempt from being conscripted into the military or alternative national service.

With the exception of the conscription issue, these are lies. Inversions of reality, in fact. (It should also be acknowledged that many Arabs, Bedouin and Druze serve in the IDF as volunteers and face discrimination in the ranks there as well). And that’s a damn shame.
Israel made a noble commitment to its Arab citizens — it extended to them the promise of equality, and in that, a guarantee of indifference to their ethnic and religious identity: blind justice. An act of grace reflective of Am Yisrael’s highest aspirations, the state of Israel offered to its Arab citizens that which we ourselves had been denied so often throughout our journey of dispossession. In doing unto our fellow as we’d have him do unto us, rather than doing as he’d done to us, it gave us an opportunity to be an exemplar, an ohr l’goyim.
Unfortunately, and much to Israel’s own detriment (particularly in terms of its public image), the state routinely reneges on this promise, failing to enforce its own laws and court rulings, and allowing bureaucrats and business owners to run amok without fear of repercussion. This disorganization — this chaos of self-indulgence — pervades every aspect of Israeli society, and good Israelis, Jewish and Arab alike, suffer from it. In that regard, the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens is only an indicator of the state’s overall failings. Israel’s inability to enforce its laws and insure the rights of all its citizens have dragged Israelis’ faith in government so low that the state is now widely seen as being in decline, and by some analysts accounts, on the verge of collapse.
If that doesn’t convince you to stand up for the rights of Israeli Arabs, and to stand up for all citizens of Israel by demanding more accountability for these failures, at least consider this:
The presence of Arab members of Knesset and Arab students in Israeli universities is a chief talking point invoked in Israel’s defense when the treatment of its Arab citizens is called into question. And yet, TAU’s decision has the effect of discriminating against Arabs and infringing upon their oft cited educational opportunities, thus undermining the credibility of the talking point.
Even if examined from a purely Machiavellian hasbara angle, this decision is bad for Israel.
But, meh, what can you expect from The Jewish Press? Intelligence? Reason? Responsibility? Don’t be absurd, darlin’.
Expect the worst. It’s The Jewish Press…