{"id":34905,"date":"2019-03-11T18:21:39","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T18:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34905"},"modified":"2019-03-11T18:21:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T18:21:39","slug":"wonder-woman-defends-arabs-against-netanyahus-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34905","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Wonder Woman\u2019 defends Arabs against Netanyahu\u2019s rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nJERUSALEM: Hollywood star Gal Gadot has leapt to defend a fellow actress who was chided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for challenging his party\u2019s treatment of Arab citizens.
Netanyahu and his Likud party have been accused of using scare tactics and demonizing Israel\u2019s Arab population ahead of April 9 elections in a bid to motivate their right-wing base.
\u201cLove your neighbor as yourself,\u201d Israeli-born Gadot wrote on Instagram late Sunday after popular Israeli model and television actress Rotem Sela received online abuse from the public and a personal reprimand from Netanyahu.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t a matter of right or left. Jew or Arab. Secular or religious,\u201d the \u201cWonder Woman\u201d star posted.
\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of dialogue, of dialogue for peace and security and of our tolerance of one toward the other.\u201d
Sela fired off an angry Instagram post late Saturday after watching right-wing firebrand culture minister Miri Regev on TV.
Regev stated the Likud\u2019s line, warning voters in the April election not to choose its main opponents because if elected it would form an alliance with Israeli Arab parties in parliament \u2014 a highly unlikely scenario.
\u201cWhen the hell will someone in this government convey to the public that Israel is a state of all its citizens and that all people were created equal?\u201d Sela wrote.
\u201cEven the Arabs \u2014 believe it or not \u2014 are human beings, and the Druze and the gays, by the way, and the lesbians and \u2014 shock \u2014 leftists.\u201d
Netanyahu answered with an Instagram message of his own, addressed to \u201cDear Rotem.\u201d
\u201cIsrael is not a state of all its citizens,\u201d he wrote.
\u201cAccording to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people \u2014 and only it.\u201d
He was referring to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people and downgrading Arabic\u2019s status as an official language.
He returned to the theme at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, where he called Israel a \u201cJewish, democratic state\u201d with equal rights, but \u201cthe nation-state not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.\u201d
Israeli Arabs make up around 17.5 percent of the population.
Netanyahu has continually warned that his opponents will receive the support of Arab parties and that they will make significant concessions to the Palestinians.
Arab parties would be extremely unlikely to be part of any coalition government after elections.
Arab Israelis are Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 creation of Israel and are largely supportive of the Palestinian cause.
Gadot\u2019s message showed a re-post of Sela\u2019s comment in the background.
\u201cRotem, sister, you\u2019re an inspiration to us all,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM: Hollywood star Gal Gadot has leapt to defend a fellow actress who was chided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for challenging his party\u2019s treatment of Arab citizens.Netanyahu and his Likud party have been accused of using scare tactics and demonizing Israel\u2019s Arab population ahead of April 9 elections in a bid to motivate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}