The Media Accountability Project  

The use of the term “attackers” in the headline is misleading. According to the Israeli parliament’s press release, the new law applies to Palestinians who are convicted of an offense that “constitutes a breach of trust to the State of Israel.” As reported by the Times of Israel, the law applies to Palestinians who have been “incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime.” Many of these requirements are vague and could potentially encapsulate many Palestinian citizens of Israel convicted of a variety of offences, and not necessarily for violent attacks on Israel. Therefore, referring to them as “attackers” minimizes the potentially harmful implications of this new law.

It is encouraging to see that anti-Palestinian racism is finally being acknowledged by school boards, and was recently named by the Peel school board in their anti-racism policy.This is critically important at a time when Israel’s discriminatory treatment of the Palestinians is increasingly acknowledged by human rights groups as apartheid. Sadly, Kay’s rejection of the idea that Palestinians can face racism, and her slanderous remarks against Palestinian solidarity activists, demonstrate just how pervasive the problem of anti-Palestinian bigotry really is.