Sarah Tuttle-Singer: The Voice of the Arab People (Judean Rose)

Sarah Tuttle-Singer, new media editor at the Times of Israel, has 19,000 followers on Facebook who hang on her every word. One imagines they see her as a credible source of information. The sad truth, however, is that her posts are never truthful. She can be depended upon only to defend the Arab narrative in which Israel is always the villain. This is what she had to say, for instance, about the recent demonstration in Rabin Square against Israel’s new Nation State law.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer
August 12 at 1:52 AM ·
Two things.
First, let’s be clear: Thr demonstration organizers IMPLORED the attendees not to wave the Palestinian flag.
Some did.
WOW.
Shocker.
This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told?


Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .
And let’s also remember this: Our government straight up told the Arab citizens of Israel that they’re less equal than Jews and they’re not really part of the Jewish state.
Raise your hand if you’d find that insulting and want to stick that ruling in their eye in a non-violent way.

You’re damn right.
Please.
We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?

Let’s unpack this, shall we?

First off, it’s not true that the protesters were “implored” not to wave the “Palestinian” flag. Here is a post from Balad, the party that represents Arab nationalist aspirations within the Israeli Knesset. (Can you imagine a Balad counterpart in Jordan? One that represents Jewish nationalist aspirations within Jordan? Ha!)

Balad Facebook post urging protesters to wave "Palestinian" flags.

An excerpt of the post translated into English:

The demonstration in Tel Aviv is a demonstration by Arab society in conjunction with Jews who oppose the [Nation State] law.
Israeli flags will not be waved at this demonstration and it’s not true that the [Arab] Higher Monitoring committee asked that the Palestinian flag not be waved.
Such declarations and statements do not coincide with the follow-up committee's official stance.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s all caps assertion that Arabs were “IMPLORED” not to wave “Palestinian” flags, is demonstrably false. Far from being implored not to wave those flags, the powers that be actually urged Arab and Jewish protesters to wave those flags. And wave them they did as they sang “With blood and spirit we shall redeem Palestine.”

In Tel Aviv now, at a protest against the Nation-State Law, demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and chanting "with blood and spirit, we will redeem Palestine."

Tell me more about how Israel isn't democratic, how there's no free speech 🙄 pic.twitter.com/6stk7yyjWT

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) August 11, 2018

The very fact that the protesters waved those flags and nothing bad happened to them proves that Israel is a democracy with freedom of expression the likes of which exists nowhere else in the Middle East. One cannot, for instance, wave an Israeli flag in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Lebanon, and stay alive. Which is precisely why Israel needs the Nation State Law. The law prevents Israel from becoming the 23rd repressive Arab state in the Middle East.

“This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest,” says Tuttle-Singer. But that’s exactly what Balad, the Arab party, did. It told Arabs and Jew-hating Jews how to protest. And oh boy did they ever acquiesce.

Tuttle-Singer goes on to infantilize the Arab people, comparing them to small rebellious children. She asks us to imagine how we were at that age. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told? Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .”

If I were an Arab, I would find this wildly insulting. She’s basically saying that Arabs are unruly children. I would never label a people in this manner. It’s patronizing, rude, and racist.

Tuttle-Singer finishes up with “We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?”

Leaving aside an editor who cannot spell, I take great offense at her characterization of the Nation State Law. We have sown no division. We have only said that we are the Jewish State, that Hatikva is our national anthem, and that Hebrew is our national language.

As the Jewish State, we offer freedom of religion to all. Arabs and Jews mingle freely in Israel, except in Arab villages, from which Jews are banned. It is in the Arab states that freedom of religion is not practiced and in which Jews and Arabs are not free to mingle. It is in preserving the Jewish character of our state that we preserve Jewish values like freedom of religion and freedom from bigotry.

“What else do we expect?”

We expect gratitude that Israel does not permit gays to be hung or thrown off buildings. Or how about recognition of the fact that Arabs can sit, unmolested, next to Jews on Israeli buses? Perhaps some appreciation that Arabs are allowed to pray in their holy spaces anywhere in Israel?

We expect thanks for not throwing them out in 1948, for giving them autonomy in their cities and villages, and for expelling our own people from Gaza to give them Judenfrei territory. Why wouldn’t we expect something other than public cries for our blood when we have held out the hand of peace again and again? Why would they not laud us for giving aid to the people of Gaza even as they burn thousands of acres of our farmland and send our children into bomb shelters in the middle of the night? We’d expect that with all the compassion and equality we offer them that Arabs would refrain from calling for Jewish blood in our public squares.

The fact that there are Arab parties in Knesset, Arab doctors treating Jewish patients in Jewish hospitals, Arab journalists criticizing Israel in the media, and Arab judges sitting judgment in Israel’s High Court makes a mockery of Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s crocodile tears for the Arab people.

What is really absent in Tuttle-Singer’s diatribe against her own people is any sense of fellowship with them. Why does she always plead the case of those who are against the State of Israel? Why does she never defend Israel and the rights Israel offers to its Arab population? Why does she plead the case of those who call for Jewish blood and the destruction of Israel? Why does she make apologies for terrorists, but never say a word in defense of their victims?

Why doesn’t Sarah Tuttle-Singer think the Jews have a right to a state of their own, a place where Hebrew is the official language, a place where Hatikva is the national anthem? And why on earth does she think that having these things somehow discriminates against anyone at all, when the proof that Arabs are part of our society is as plain as the nose on her face?

#jerusalem

A post shared by Sarah Tuttle-Singer (@tuttlesinger) on Aug 12, 2018 at 1:14pm PDT

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