Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, Calif. · 20 July 2018

CP-2018-048

Israeli law sparks debate on status of Jews, Arabs

Netanyahu applauds passage of nationhood bill, while others call its provisions racist.

By Noga Tarnopolsky

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — Israel's parliament approved a contentious law early Thursday defining the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people, a move critics said undercuts the rights of the Arab minority and could inflame tensions with Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed passage of the measure as “a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel.” But Arab lawmakers tore up copies of the bill in the Knesset chamber after the 62-55 vote, shouting “Apartheid!” “You passed an apartheid law, a racist law!” shouted Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of parliament.

“Why are you afraid of the Arabic language?” Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Arab Joint List, said the Knesset had “passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens.”

“Today, I will have to tell my children, along with all the children of Palestinian Arab towns in the country, that the state has declared that it does not want us here,” he said.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

2018 GROUP. Headline phrase for the law: 'Israeli law' in the headline; the deck calls it the 'nationhood bill'. Neither 'nation-state law' nor 'Jewish nation-state' appears in the headline or deck; the body's first sentence has 'defining the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people'.

WHO LOSES, in the headline: nobody is named as losing - the headline frames it as a 'debate on status of Jews, Arabs', a symmetry the body does not support. The body names 'the Arab minority', 'Arab lawmakers', and, inside Odeh's quote, 'Palestinian Arab towns in the country'.

ARABIC DEMOTION: present but only inside Tibi's shouted question, 'Why are you afraid of the Arabic language?' - the article as transcribed does not explain the official-to-special downgrade in its own voice in the passages recovered here.

Cite this clipping

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