A star Israeli-Arab journalist wants Jews to know the truth

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It’s soothingly quiet on the lawn outside of the Channel 12 News studios in Neve Ilan, about an hour and a half before the start of “Ulpan Shishi” (“Friday Studio”), the weekly newsmagazine of Israel’s most popular television channel. Here, outside Jerusalem, it feels like fall has come early, but Mohammad Magadli expects things to get hot.

“For me it’s a war zone,” says the channel’s new resident commentator. “When Jewish commentators come in, it’s their home court. They can allow themselves to be mistaken in their assessments, their information and their facts, and they’ll get away with it. But a mistake by me will never be forgiven. In an instant I can turn from being a journalist and a star into an enemy and a traitor. Definitely on a day like today, when you know how you’re going into it but have no idea how you’ll come out of it.”

It’s the fourth day since six Palestinian security prisoners escaped from a prison in northern Israel, hours before four of them will be caught. And indeed, not a minute passes before a woman from the program’s staff arrives and asks Magadli to go inside and prepare for a battle with his chief adversary on the panel of commentators, Amit Segal, an observant Jew whose analysis was prerecorded. Magadli dons headphones and listens to Segal badmouth the Arab lawmakers, particularly the leaders of the Joint List, who issued a statement calling for an end to the abuse of Palestinians incarcerated in Israel. According to Segal, the Arab Knesset members are effectively supporting the jailbreak.

“Well, did he rile you?” the program’s editor, Ron Yaron, asks, and prepares Magadli for another question that will be aimed at him during the broadcast, about the escapees being viewed as heroes by Israel’s Arab community. Magadli smiles. He may be the new kid on the panel, but he’s had a lot of experience playing the role for which he’s been cast. “I’m the guy who always shows up to refute what others say, and usually not to say what I think,” he says when we return to the lawn. “My starting position is defensive.”

Segal’s commentary doesn’t seem to present him with an exceptional challenge. “There are those who opine and those who inform,” Magadli chaffs, in his response. “The Joint List, in its statements, was referring to the collective punishment that was imposed on the other prisoners in the facility. From that to claim that they support the prisoners who escaped? One of the irksome things about the Hebrew-language media is the relentless search for internal enemies, a fifth column. How do [the authorities] explain a systemic failure in the Prison Service? ‘The Arabs are collaborators.’ What excuse do the police offer for their failure to deal with crime? ‘Feuds between Arab clans.'”

And there’s always someone who will publish those briefings verbatim.

“Listen, that’s a working method of certain journalists who espouse certain views. What bothers me, not only as an Arab but mainly as a journalist, is the imprecision – whether it’s deliberate or not. And what delights me is that whereas until not long ago, before my era, it would simply pass as is – today, no more.”

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Friday night at the studio. “It’s depressing that the most powerful people in the industry try to make you out to be a liar,” says Magadli. “When there’s an Arab on the panel, everyone competes over w
Emil Salman

The “Ulpan Shishi” staff seem to enjoy watching the sparks that fly between Magadli and Segal. The first flare-up occurred during the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip in May. Segal stated in the panel discussion that “there is no symmetry” between the violence of Jews and Arabs in the mixed cities, and that the events there were “pogroms that Arabs are perpetrating against Jews.” Magadli suppressed his anger when Segal alleged that Arabs were arriving by bus to reinforce the Arab population in Lod. But when Segal said that “the pogromists of Lod and Bat Yam need to count their dead,” he could no longer contain himself.

“I have worked in the international media and in the local media, and I never heard a journalist call for killing someone,” he said, initially in a quiet tone that rose in volume as the argument with Segal heated up. He also refuted the report about outside reinforcements.

Four months later, Magadli is still fuming: “I watched the segment recently, and I still don’t understand how a journalist can call for killing or revenge. Maybe it’s because most of the Jewish journalists in Israel did army service, so they have adopted a militaristic discourse. What worried me wasn’t that the opinion as such was expressed, but the report that there were 500 Border Police troops in Lod that day. All it would take is for one of them to decide that he’s heeding not his commanders but what he heard in the media, and for him to internalize [the idea] that the Arabs need to count their dead. And what then?”

He goes on, “Setting aside the call to kill, the argument with Amit was not between an Arab and a Jew, but between two journalists over factual accuracy. There is no doubt that there was violence on the part of Arabs, including mob violence and damage to property. But to turn the picture over completely and claim that buses that came from [the settlements of] Yitzhar and Ofra in order to ‘protect’ the Jews of Lod were actually buses with Arabs – that is simply not correct. No bus with Arabs went to Lod or any other city. I checked it, I was there, I spoke to the people. There is no documentation supporting that allegation. And to say so easily, just because you’re in front of a camera and you have power, that buses with Arabs are arriving in Lod? As far as I’m concerned, it’s just like [then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 remark that] ‘the Arabs are flocking to the polls in droves.'”

Segal’s comment drove you up a wall.

“It’s very hard to make me lose my cool. What drove me up the wall most of all is that there are seven Jews on the panel, and they don’t let the one Arab they invited finish a sentence. How much is too much? I can accommodate all views, but let me present the reality, let me talk about the facts. But I’m not proud of what happened there, it’s not my style.”

The clash with Segal may have been unusual in its ferocity, but since Magadli joined Channel 12 as a commentator this past spring, he has traded barbs several times with veteran journalists. For example, he claimed that Boaz Bismuth, the editor of the free newspaper Israel Hayom, and a regular panelist on the Friday show, was disseminating fake news. “When I’m asked where I get the courage to respond to someone like Bismuth – an editor-in-chief, who has interviewed American presidents – I reply that I am just as successful a journalist as he is,” he says.

“It’s true that I’m only 28,” he continues, “but I didn’t start my media career yesterday. I have 13 years of experience, including with many stations in the international media. So, with all due respect to my friends in the Israeli media, I have chalked up no less experience – and experiences – than them. The fact that you in [Jewish] Israel are only now getting to know me doesn’t mean I didn’t exist before. The failure is on your part, not mine. I am not the story – there are plenty of talented Arab journalists whom the Israeli media doesn’t notice.”

Journalist Amit Segal.
Tomer Appelbaum

‘I fled’

Mohammad, the son of a former cabinet minister, Raleb Majadele (Labor), still lives with his parents in the northern city of Baka al-Garbiyeh, but has quite a bit under his belt already. At age 15 he was among the founders of a local news site; afterward he was an editor and news anchor at the Jaffa-based i24 News, which broadcasts in French, English, Spanish and Arabic; he founded the news department of the Palestinian television station Musawa; was a correspondent for Turkish Arabic-language TV; and has been a guest news analyst on foreign networks like Al Jazeera and CNN Arabic as well as producing documentaries for them. Two years ago he cofounded al-Nas, an Arabic-language radio station, whose news division he heads today.

Israel’s Hebrew-language media was never a goal. “I fled from it, I didn’t even agree to come to studios to be interviewed,” he says. “Here’s a scoop for you: The first time I watched ‘Ulpan Shishi’ was when I participated in the program. All these years I tried not to be a part of that. I knew that if I were to watch newscasts in Hebrew and see how lacking the professional Arabic voice was on them, I would want to be there. And I didn’t want that. I was against it.”

The roots of that recoil lie in his adolescence: “My rift with the Israeli [Jewish] media began in the ninth grade. I remember watching [Arab affairs commentator] Zvi Yehezkeli explaining on Channel 10 [the predecessor to today’s Channel 13] that the Mossad assassinated some unfortunate leader of a terrorist organization whose name was like that of the beautiful bird, the hud-hud [in Arabic], the hoopoe. But his last name was actually Wadud, one of the names of God. There’s a resemblance, but it’s faint. I remember myself looking at the screen and saying, ‘Hold on, if the Arab affairs commentator doesn’t know the difference between a hoopoe bird and God, why should I listen to his analysis? Why would it be credible?'”

Magadli also scorns Yehezkeli’s series of reports in which he posed as a Palestinian journalist in order to enter mosques in Europe. “If the Israeli public believed that nonsense, it shows inferior intelligence of a whole country, and excuse me if that sounds condescending. It’s not that I’m against the concept of a Jew covering the Arab world. Ohad Hemo [of Channel 12 News], my good friend Eran Singer [of public broadcaster Kan] and also Hezi Simantov [from Channel 13 News] are doing professional work, without provocations and without nonsense. So come off it, what is this theater? Any Arab kid speaking with Yehezkeli would see in a second that he’s clueless.”

Zvi Yehezkeli “undercover” as a Palestinian journalist.
Screenshot from Channel 10

For years Magadli and the Israeli media operated like parallel lines, but in the past two years he started to contemplate a convergence. “I realized that if I wanted to do something for the Arab public, it wouldn’t help just to talk to it and from within it,” he says. “What I mean is that you need two legs to exert influence externally, too.”

The turning point was Netanyahu’s visit to Nazareth during the election campaign of March 2021. “I saw how it was framed in the Hebrew-language media, in a way that was far from reality, and I felt an urgent need to make the truth known. I wrote on Twitter, ‘Is this the place where Jews talk about Arabs? So let’s eliminate the middleman, I’ll talk about Arabs myself.’ I was surprised by the impact it generated. I discovered that the assumption that most Jews don’t want to hear about Arab society is mistaken, but they just don’t understand what’s going on there. When someone comes with the real story they do want to listen.”

Magadli turned up on the podcast of Dafna Leil, was a guest on Channel 12’s election night broadcast (“When all the exit polls showed the United Arab List not crossing the election threshold, I said that according to my indications they were going to cross bigtime”) and within a short time was added to the roster as a permanent commentator (“Channel 12 News commentator, not Arab affairs commentator,” he emphasizes).

His first significant report came this past June, when he revealed to “Ulpan Shishi” viewers that secret contacts were underway between Netanyahu and UAL Chairman Mansour Abbas. Magadli reported that Abbas had paid several visits to the prime minister’s residence on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street and had spoken with Netanyahu about political affairs, but the heart of the story was juicy behind-the-scenes reportage.

Mansour Abbas.
Ofer Vaknin

Magadli related that the prime minister gave his guest a tour, during which he showed him the famous damp, peeling walls. He also talked about how Sara Netanyahu had joined the tour and “was sorry” she couldn’t invite Abbas to dine in the official residence because of the Ramadan fast. The report made waves and was widely quoted in the media, but Magadli wasn’t pleased. “I left the studio and I was ashamed,” he says. “It wasn’t the best journalistic work I’ve done. It’s true that the editors praised me to the skies, but I remember driving home and asking myself all the way, ‘Hold on, what’s the journalistic story here?'”

What are you talking about – the story is that for the first time in the Netanyahu era, the leader of an Arab party…

“Enters Balfour. Period. Now imagine if I had made do with that. Without the damp walls, without Sara. Would it have caught on? No. Would the Israeli public have been interested? No. Was it serious? Also no. It’s not quality, it’s gossip. Broadcasting reports like that in the Arab media is not done. There might not be freedom to say everything, but the discourse is a lot more professional.”

Magadli perceives that moment as evidence of the “Israelization” that is sweeping over the Arab media in the country, reflecting the dual identity of Arab society here. As an Arab commentator who reports in Arabic, that duality confronts him with dilemmas on a daily basis. “You’re constantly facing the question of who am I faithful to here, to the Arab public or to my profession? Should I be a representative of Arab society and convey its voice, or mediate the truth even when it’s not comfortable, and talk about domestic violence, the status of women, LGBT people? Those are tough quandaries.”

We meet at the a-Nas radio station, which is presented as broadcasting from Nazareth but is actually situated in the penthouse of a hotel in the adjacent city of Nof Hagalil (formerly Upper Nazareth). The sophisticated equipment, the spacious offices and the many young employees at the commercial station add up to an exceptional spectacle for the media market, evoking the atmosphere of a hungry startup.

Launched just two years ago, the radio project immediately gathered momentum. Its staff aspire to foment a fundamental change in Arab media coverage in Israel. “Until a-Nas Radio, Arab society dealt mostly with itself,” says Magadli. “I said I have no intention of dealing with this shit – local government, community centers. You have to get to the root of things. Which is why we transformed the discourse and made it political.”

How is that reflected in the broadcasting?

“We monitor the Arab lawmakers, we follow their moves. When we first came on the air, they didn’t understand what was going on here. Suddenly they were being asked to go on the air all the time, to provide answers.”

Magadli also has a force multiplier effect through his access to the Hebrew-language media. When a radio interview generates a headline, he immediately translates it and sends it to N12 (Channel 12’s news website), or he tweets it. His interviewees aren’t always happy about that. “One of the things I changed is that the era when an Arab politician could speak in two voices is over. There’s no such thing [anymore] as saying one thing in Arabic and another in Hebrew. I am the mediator. And they internalized it. I also do it even if there’s a chance that what the lawmaker said will end his career.”

For example?

“On the day after the Citizenship Law [the family-unification law that prevents Palestinians who marry Israelis from acquiring Israeli citizenship] was voted down, Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Freige [of Meretz] went on the air to justify his vote in favor. How? By means of inaccuracies. He said he had received a promise that between 3,000 and 5,000 families would be unified. And I hear what he’s saying and I know it’s far from reality. I confront him [in Arabic] with the facts, give him an opportunity to retract, but he insists. He wants to undo the damage done to his image among the Arab public, but there is no way I can’t inform the general public about [what Freige said]. So I broadcast the gist of it [in Hebrew] and it sparked a holy row. The right attacked the government over a supposedly secret deal, Interior Minister [Ayelet] Shaked immediately stated that it [what Freige said] wasn’t true. In the end, Esawi had to issue a clarification.”

Mohammad Magadli at the “Ulpan Shishi” desk.
Emil Salman

It seems like you frequently attack Freige.

“I’ve known Esawi for many years, he’s a good friend of the family and is considered close to my father. That’s one of the reasons I don’t let him off the hook. Substantively, I think that in quite a few cases he’s not doing his job. It’s inconceivable that in this so-called government of change, the minister of labor and social affairs [Meir Cohen of Yesh Atid] will visit Morocco and the regional cooperation minister [Freige] will not. He was also not on board for the visit to the [United Arab] Emirates. He’s not being allowed to do anything.”

What is your take on the type of representation being provided by Labor’s Ibtisam Mara’ana?

“She represents maybe two people in Tel Aviv. Check how many Arabs voted for Labor; Likud got more votes. Her extremism in this or that direction isn’t clear, either. One time she calls for erasing Jewish cities from the map, another time she prays for the wellbeing of the soldier who was shot in Gaza. In general, Arab lawmakers in Zionist parties usually espouse no position; they have no ideological backbone.”

Knafeh, of course

We’re driving in Nazareth, circling the bustling city center a number of times in a futile search for a parking space. Finally Magadli suggests entering a parking lot near a restaurant that’s famous for its knafeh, a traditional Arab sweet pastry. “An interview with an Arab has to include knafeh,” he jokes. But when we take our seats on the terrace, facing the street, there’s a palpable change in his mood. He looks tense.

“I feel more secure in Tel Aviv than in Nazareth,” he says. “Not long ago I spoke about crime organizations, and when I left the studio I saw I had received a few calls from a blocked number. A few minutes later someone called and said, ‘You should take care of yourself.'”

Magadli says he’s used to receiving threats, but that in most cases it’s impossible to trace their source. “When you publish an investigative report about someone, you know whom you hurt. But I talk about so many things that I don’t even know who my enemies are,” he says.

Indeed, he adds, “I have no doubt that after this article is published I will get threats, too. The people in crime organizations are media consumers. When I talk about their apparatus and their economic clout, they’re concerned that someone will damage their business model. It’s black or white. Either you work with the crime organizations or you work against them; and anyone who is against them is a potential, and [from their viewpoint] legitimate, target.”

Not to mention the fact that of the 82 Arabs who have been murdered this year in Israel. Some simply found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“There is not a single person in Arab society who doesn’t suffer from this. Everyone you speak to has a brother or an uncle who was a victim. People are afraid to write a post on Facebook, afraid to open a business, afraid to leave the house.”

The most shocking of this year’s murders was that of Magadli’s friend Saher Ismail, an adviser to the education minister, who was shot to death in the Galilee town of Rameh in early August. “You don’t understand what it did to me,” Magadli says, his eyes moistening. “The evening before, he called me and shared his future plans. He spoke energetically, enthusiastically, confidently. He didn’t know it was going to happen. After he was murdered I asked myself: Maybe I’m next? Everyone who is sitting here is a potential murderer or a potential victim.”

You have said that the crime organizations work in cooperation with the police.

“It’s true, I said the criminals are connected to the police and to ‘other bodies.’ I didn’t want to say Shin Bet [security service], in order not to sound deluded. And then, a few days later, [Channel 12’s police reporter Moshe] Nussbaum reported a quote from a senior figure in the police saying that most of the heads of the crime organizations are Shin Bet collaborators.”

So the law enforcement agencies are cultivating the crime organizations?

“I wouldn’t say cultivating, because the problem today is so acute and existential, but I think that for two decades the authorities were part of the problem and even intensified it. When the police try to locate missing persons and are aided by crime organizations, because they can get to places that are blocked to the police, they legitimize those organizations.”

What can to be done immediately to restrain crime?

“It’s very simple. To decide that a police officer stationed in Rishon Letzion or Netanya must operate the same way when he’s in Baka [al-Garbiyeh]. In other words, if he spots a suspicious car in which there might be weapons, he will stop it even if that could cost him his life. That’s not happening today. The police won’t be accused of racism if they decide to act. The Arab public wants them to use force.”

You reported recently that some Arab mayors are even demanding that the Shin Bet be brought into the picture. Is the Arab community capable of accommodating that?

“That’s like asking a diabetic whether he prefers to have his leg amputated or to die. The choice is clear. My personal opinion is different. In my view the Shin Bet should not involve itself in civilian life.”

1,000 poems

Magadli is fond of poetry and says he knows at least a thousand Arabic poems by heart. As he drives back to Nof Hagalil, he recites one of them. “Mahmoud Darwish wrote that identity is inborn, but it is also a work that is composed of your talent and ability to reshape it, not to make do only with what you received as an inheritance. In that sense, my Arab identity consists of several circles – Israeli citizenship, Palestinian existence and religious affiliation – which are constantly intersecting.”

For Magadli, the identity crisis that every young Arab faces became an existential Gordian knot because of his father’s political ascent from within a Zionist party (Labor) and the huge controversy that ensued in March 2007 upon his appointment as the science, culture and sports minister in Ehud Olmert’s government.

“I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad,” he says, recalling the day his father took the oath of office. “What mainly made me as a media person was the need to cope with the criticism that came from Arab society and to clarify in depth what I think of my father. So I found myself sitting and reading at a very early age while my friends were going out to have a good time. What a member of Knesset is, what a cabinet minister is, what it means to be an Arab in Israel. Actually, who is my father? I wanted to prove to myself, and afterward to everyone, that my father did a good thing.”

Former cabinet minister Raleb Majadele.

And did you succeed?

“I started to understand the situation but not always to accept it. My father was a revolutionary. The first [Muslim] cabinet minister. The first [Muslim] branch head in the Histadrut [labor federation]. But I would have preferred him to be from an Arab party, not a Zionist party. On the other hand, I also understood why he was there. He wanted to exert influence, and at that time no Arab party was willing to take that step. He always explained that in another 10 years what he was doing then would become accepted. He was right.”

But as an adolescent, those predictions didn’t always convince Magadli that his father was doing the right thing. The tension between the minister and his son peaked during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009. “I demanded that he resign,” Magadli reveals. “I told him: ‘You can’t stay in a government that is doing things like this.’ I led a rebellion against him at home. He looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘I’m proud of you.'”

When Magadli completed high school, his father summoned him for a conversation. “It was a dramatic moment, not something commonplace. He asked me what I wanted to study, and when I replied, very hesitantly, communications and political science, he gave me a half-angry look and said, ‘I don’t want you to also be in this place.’ I explained that I wanted to be in the media, to do what others hadn’t succeeded at. He said, ‘I’m not sure you know what you’re talking about,’ and suggested that I go to Germany to study economics and business administration. I asked him to trust me. He said, ‘Fine, but the first time you fail, I will intervene.’ Since then I get up in the morning knowing I am not allowed to fail. Fortunately, I have my mother, who supports me and doesn’t let me fail. That’s the whole story since then, a constant race in which on one side I have to prove to my father that I’m not failing, and on the other side I rest on the warmth and love of my mother.”

His mother, Huda, is a “learned aristocrat,” he says. She attended a prestigious Orthodox Christian school in Nazareth, completed a degree in sociology and communications, and joined the management of health maintenance organization clinic in Baka al-Garbiyeh, but devoted most of her time to managing the household and raising the couple’s four children. “If not for my father and his career, she would definitely be in a different place,” says Magadli. “She is the reason I am still living at home, even though I could move. To return every night, to look her in the eyes and feel that she is proud of me – that fulfils me.”

Shots fired daily

Back to Neve Ilan, where it’s half an hour to broadcast time. Some people here remember Magadli as an inquisitive boy who would accompany his father to the station – among them strategic consultant Ronen Tzur and veteran journalist Amnon Abramovitz, who is something of a mentor for him at “Ulpan Shishi.”

Abramovitz points out that Magadli is on the panel not because he’s an Arab but because of his qualities. But the impression one gets from the others is that he’s occupying a slot that was set aside for representing the country’s minorities. “We have Arabs, we have Ethiopians, you’re no longer anything special,” military commentator Nir Devori tells him teasingly, adding, “Be careful, you’ll soon have to prove yourself for real.” Magadli chuckles.

“To be a Jew in the media is easy,” Magadli told me earlier. “People are ready to accept [far-right lawmaker Itamar] Ben-Gvir, but aren’t capable of accommodating an Israeli citizen who says he’s a Palestinian. It’s totally insane.”

Nonetheless, Magadli views this basic inferiority as an advantage. “Jewish commentators don’t live in Baka [al-Gharbiyeh], they don’t hear shots being fired in the air every day, which include shots that sometimes hit their targets,” he explains. “They don’t know what it’s like to live in circumstances where crime organizations have taken control of your life. The organizations also approach my family regularly, in order to employ them or threaten them. Jewish commentators don’t understand what it is to be sitting with friends in a cafe, a normal place, and then some masked guy shows up, shoots every which way and by mistake hits one of them.

“They can’t understand a situation where you call an ambulance and it takes 50 minutes to arrive, while your friend next to you is sprawled unconscious. The same with the Palestinian arena. The Jewish commentator may have sat with Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas], but I lived in Ramallah for two years. My car was stolen there, I got sick there, I experienced the Palestinian Authority’s health care system. My aunt married a man from the West Bank, speaking of the family unification law. I have relatives in Gaza. I worked in the international media in the Arab world. I have a perspective that a Jewish commentator can’t have.”

Magadli’s phone rings. He’s asked to confirm that he’ll be attending the wedding of former Joint List lawmaker Jamal Zahalka’s daughter. “Alone,” Magadli says. “Who do I have to go with?” Lately the expectation in his close circle is for him to settle down. “When my sister calls, I already know what she wants to say. It will always be, ‘There’s a woman I want you to meet, can I give you the number?’ No. The most crazy time was when the director of a department in a hospital called and wanted to introduce me to one of the doctors in his department.”

Magadli with veteran journalist Amnon Abramovitz.

Well, why not?

“Because I’m a serious person in everything I do, and relationships are a serious thing. I lead a very busy life and I want to be there for the person who is with me.”

Like your father wasn’t?

“He did his best, but yes, I don’t want to be in that place.” Marriage, apparently, will have to wait.

Magadli says he sleeps only three hours a night due to his intense schedule: Wake up at 5:30 A.M., drive to the radio station, anchor the morning news show. Then a meeting with his fellow editors, help preparing the noon broadcast, then getting ready for the a-Nas evening news. In the late afternoon he will deliver a lecture or go to Neve Ilan, and betwixt and between he writes a weekly column for the Hebrew-language business newspaper Globes. He devotes the first watch of the night to preparing the morning broadcast, and finally, if his mother is still awake, he will spend some time with her. He hits the hay around 2 A.M., until a new day begins some three hours later.

“Every morning, when I have a double espresso with soda water in a Baka cafe, I encounter a group of 10 workers and truck drivers who who will tell me, ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it,’ ‘you were accurate’ or ‘you weren’t accurate.’ They’re the true sample who ensure that I don’t get bedazzled. They remind me where I live.” As an observer-participant, Magadli discerns hidden, in-depth processes that are unfolding in Arab society. For example, he is convinced that the outburst of violence in the mixed cities in the late spring was not a one-time eruption. “The ugly May will return to strike us again,” he predicts.

What makes you say that?

“The Israeli media failed to understand this uprising. We need to distinguish between its two elements. The first type consisted of those who tried to perpetrate mob violence and damage property. They belong to crime organizations in Arab society. When they couldn’t collect protection money and create an atmosphere of existential threat around them, they aimed their weapons at the Jews. But among the detainees there were also students, regular young folk. I saw them in the courts.” This is the other side of the protest.

“I met one of them after he was released,” Magadli recalls. “A 19-year-old software engineering student at the Technion [Israel Institute of Technology], from a well-established family. I asked him: ‘What did you do there?’ He said, ‘In the Technion I sit next to a Jewish guy. My grades are higher, I’m more popular than he is, I’m better-looking, so why, in the big picture, is he better then me? Just because he’s Jewish? If so, then f–k your nation-state law and your police and your government. Either I am a citizen all the way or I go into the streets and the world blows up.’

“And then I understood that a new generation has grown up here that doesn’t apologize and doesn’t prettify things, a very brazen generation. They’re not ready for compromises, because they don’t have the complexes of the past that my father and grandfather had. They’re not afraid of a Nakba, aren’t afraid of being sent into exile, they didn’t even experience the intifada. They see themselves as 100 percent Israeli in their civil identity, and 100 percent Palestinian in their national identity, without a contradiction between the two. And they won’t make do with less than that.”

Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism) said that the real danger of legitimizing the UAL is that the Arab public will develop an appetite and its electoral turnout will go up to 70 percent.

“Can I say a good word about Smotrich? He understands Arab society pretty well. I was surprised to hear that analysis from him, because in the UAL they actually said the same thing in backrooms: ‘We’ll enter the government even at the price of making a pact with the devil – meaning Netanyahu – we’ll gain influence and in the next election we’ll get 10 to 12 seats.’ [The party won four seats this past March.] [Mansour] Abbas succeeded in duping even [the influential religious Zionist leader] Rabbi [Haim] Druckman. After their meeting, Druckman was convinced that Mansour was his brother. And then Smotrich came out with his analysis and persuaded him that this one-time validation would cost the right-wing bloc dearly.”

Don’t you see an opposite scenario, in which Abbas fails to achieve anything, the Arab public is disappointed and the electoral turnout plummets?

Israeli Arabs protest in Jaffa against the war in Gaza, May 2021.
Tomer Appelbaum

“That’s also a possibility, and Abbas is aware of it. He said, ‘It all depends on what I will bring [for the public’s benefit].’ And I say that the Arab public will not feel the budget of 35 billion shekels [promised to it in the coalition agreement]. The situation is so bad and the gaps so deep that even if you invest hundreds of billions, the money will disappear. The Arab citizens will not feel it. But they are sensitive – and this is Likud’s most serious mistake – to the status Abbas has acquired. When Likud dubs him ‘Prime Minister’ Mansour Abbas in order to belittle [Prime Minister Naftali] Bennett, you don’t understand the effect that has on Arab citizens. They see Netanyahu, until not long ago the great and powerful prime minister, treating Abbas like that, and they say, ‘Wow, what power that man has, what a tremendous success.’ In essence, Likud is ruining things for itself and playing into Abbas’ hands.”

How revolutionary is Abbas’ entry into the coalition?

“Abbas didn’t bring anything new. The grass roots compelled him to adopt that policy. In 2015, when the Joint List was founded, they conducted in-depth surveys that showed that about 80 percent of Arab society wanted them to enter the government. That’s what prompted [Joint List leader] Ayman Odeh to say he was ready to join the coalition. Mansour fulfilled Ayman’s dream and thus made him the tragic hero of Arab politics. The difference between them is not ideological, but stems from one thing alone: Ayman didn’t succeed in taking his party in, and Mansour did. Mansour learned from the Jews. He was able to signify an external enemy and frighten people about it. What you [Jew] are doing with the Iranians or the Arabs, Mansour did with communism [meaning the Hadash faction of the Joint List] and LGBT people in order to unite the base around him.”

The UAL did in fact run a sharply anti-LGBT campaign. Are its consequences felt?

“The UAL’s occupation with that issue was purely for political purposes, to differentiate them from the Joint List [which is outspoken in its support of LGBT rights]. I know Abbas’ opinion of LGBT people. His position is moderate, even positive. I’ll give you another scoop: Next month, the opening of the first shelter for Arab LGBT people will be announced. It’s all thanks to Abbas’ floating the LGBT issue in the public discourse. The LGBT activists should send him a certificate of appreciation.”

No ‘five-star hotel’

That week, the “Ulpan Shishi” commentators talk almost exclusively about the escaped prisoners. Magadli, who is given the floor last, shoots down the arguments put forward by his colleagues, one by one. On this point, Magadli’s having joined the panel looks not revolutionary but necessary. In the short time allotted to him, Magadli quite persuasively pulls apart the myth of the “five-star hotel” associated with the security prisoners’ facilities and tries to rebuff two fellow panelists’ assessments that the escapees were aided by Israeli Arabs. Within a few hours it will become clear that Arab citizens in fact helped bring about the prisoners’ capture. “Let’s talk facts, not assessments,” Magadli says in real time, in response to the mistaken briefings from government officials.

A commercial break. The feeling in the control room is that Magadli was excellent, but he looks overwrought. “It’s depressing,” he said after taking time to choose his words, “that the most powerful people in the industry try to make you out to be a liar. When there’s an Arab on the panel, everyone competes over who’s the biggest patriot.

“At a highly charged time like this, I get up in the morning and think: Why me? What do I need this for? I could be in a much better place, instead of responding to all the nonsense that’s hurled at me. And then comes the spur of ‘the Arabs are helping the prisoners.’ I’m outraged, and tell myself: ‘Yallah, you have a role here, stop whining.'”

Surprising, odd, incorrect allegations

Ibtisam Mara’ana stated in response: “It’s true that I do not represent conservative Arab society. I was not elected with the support of political functionaries, and I am not in a guaranteed slot that was earmarked for me. I was elected in a democratic election as an opinionated, liberal feminist woman, one who represents a new generation in Arab society, to which I believe Magadli also belongs.

“I will fight my battles, even if in return I will get [only the] two votes of Arab LGBT people who found a city of refuge in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. I was very surprised that a young and promising journalist is echoing his father’s words, and I wonder whether the reason is a settling of political accounts. I still believe that if he examines my views in depth he will find the clear line of my ideological backbone.”

Esawi Freige responded, with regard to the family unification law: “I have no reservations about the compromise we arrived at, with a commitment to grant temporary residency status to at least 1,600 people. My assessment, as mentioned in the interview, was that in the course of an examination of those with permits, we might arrive at [a figure of] 3,000 who are eligible for this status, perhaps even more. It is very odd to be criticized by a senior journalist for not going abroad enough. I am in contact with representatives of the countries in the region, I meet with ambassadors and ministers who visit Israel, and I am furthering a series of joint projects.”

Zvi Yehezkeli did not respond to a request for comment.

The Channel 12 News Company stated in Amit Segal’s name: “We reject the allegation that reports without a factual foundation about the riots were voiced in the studio for political reasons, and we stand behind the report. In addition, the allegation that the working method of journalists in the News Company is imprecise for political reasons is incorrect.”