One thing that always occurs to me when I’m watching the news in Mexico, is the way Israel is being treated. Not that Mexican media are overly biased in favor of or against Israel, but the terminology used in their reports strikes me as odd.
Just now I saw a short report on Milenio Noticias, where the citizens of Israel were, as usual, referred to as ‘the Jewish people’. Obviously that isn’t quite accurate: not all citizens of Israel are in fact Jewish, even though Israel clearly is a state with a predominant Jewish element (just look at the text of the national anthem). Still, nearly all Mexican media insist in calling Israelis by definition ‘Jewish’, and that is not correct.
It’s a classic example of confusion over ethnicity, language and nationality with regard to Israel. An inhabitant of Israel is in terms of nationality an ‘Israeli’. He or she might be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Atheist or something else. To add to the confusion (and it can be very confusing which terms to use when referring to Isarel), an Israeli isn’t necessarily an ethnic Jew, and an ethnic Arab can be a religious Jew, et cetera. To an outsider, Israel and Palestine are semantically difficult pieces of land. Still, even though I don’t lose any sleep over the persistent use of the word ‘Jewish’ to refer to any citizen of Israel, it does irk me a little.
Obviously it’s factually incorrect, but there’s more to it. Where does it come from? And why could it be problematic? First of all, as far as Mexicans are concerned with Israel and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (and most are not), the opinion is usually slightly negative towards the Israeli state. In fact, the general opinion of Jews in Mexico does maintain some negative stereotypes. Whether that’s because of the traditional Hispanic and Catholic anti-Semitism exported to the New World in the colonial age, or whether it’s because of worldwide prevalent anti-Semitism (in any degree, from harmless to virulent and potentially violent) unrelated to Western religion isn’t quite clear to me, but if a poll were held among all Mexicans asking who their favorite ethnicity would be, Jews and Israelis wouldn’t come out on top.
Of course, a negative image of Israel and a negative image of religious and/or ethnic Jews are not the same thing. A 2011 poll by the BBC indicated that Israel holds a ‘negative’ deficit with Mexicans, which may well be for the same reasons as Israel is seen negatively all over the world in general: often it is more related to an anti-American, anti-imperialist view by non-Westerners, as Israel still receives unconditional support by the US government and the ‘Palestinian cause’ is still seen (be it fair or unfair) as one of the most painful and persistent legacies of American global hegemony by those contesting the latter.An individual can look favorably upon ethnic and/or religious Jews, while at the same time abhor the policies of the Israeli government.
So, going back to the journalistic issue here: what’s wrong with insisting to call any people with Israeli nationality Jews? Have a look at what the (relatively scarce) reporting on Israel is about: it is almost without exception a collection of stories of conflict, violence, of religion against religion, of ethnicity against ethnicity.
Even though, as mentioned before, there is no overt anti-Israeli bias, the perception one gets from watching Israel-related news in Mexico is that of a Jewish government with overwhelming firepower oppressing the people of Palestine. Now, if the above is consistently linked to the Jewish people, instead of the Israeli people, and taking into account that there is still some lingering, albeit relatively harmless, anti-Semitism in Mexico, I feel that media should be a little more careful. Negative news foments negative stereotypes, and insisting to link the word ‘Jew’ to an incessant stream of negative news coming from Israel does more than just create a persisting negative image of the country Israel: at best it does nothing to take away lingering anti-Semitism already existing in Mexico.
Of course, these are all personal musings. Except for some scarce data on the image of Israel in Mexico I couldn’t find a lot of research on anti-Semitism in Mexico.
At any rate I would prefer Milenio Noticias and other Mexican media to discern better between the terms ‘Jewish’ and ‘Israeli’. At least you’d create a little more understanding amongst your public as to the confusing issue of ethnicity, religion and nationality in an already hard to understand situation in the Middle-East.