CP24 reporter George Lagogianes is reporting from the protests outside the Israeli Consulate near Bloor and Avenue Road. He keeps alternating between calling it “the Israeli Consulate” and “the Jewish Consulate”. For his benefit, I now present a quick primer:
- An Israeli is a citizen of the country of Israel.
- A Jew is a member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group.
While Israel is a Jewish nation-state and three-quarters of Israel is Jewish, not all Jews are Israelis. According to Wikipedia, there are about as many Jews in the United States as there are in Israel.
Here’s a Venn diagram that should simplify matters:
Calling it “the Jewish Consulate” is like referring to the American Consulate as “the Christian Consulate” or the Indian Consulate as “the Hindu Consulate”. People at the homegrown TV news station of one of the world’s most multicultural cities should know better.
5 replies on “Memo to George Lagogianes: It’s the ISRAELI Consulate, Not the JEWISH Consulate”
CP24…news for retards….much like CityTV, likely the worst newscast in Toronto
While this person’s terminology is incorrect, the error is easily understood. Israel portrays it’s interests as being one and the same with Jewish interests. Moreover, a plurality of Jews both in Israel and elsewhere believe this to be the case.
Or to put it the other way, how long would it take a TV commentator to be shouted down if they had the audacity to say that there was something non-Jewish about Israel.
That’s not a Venn diagram, that’s more like an eclipse.
The state of Israel was created to be a homeland for Jews. It is likely the only state in the world that exists explicitly to be an exclusive home for one ethnic group. It has, however, always had people of other ethnic groups such as Arabs that are voting citizens. The majority of the government, composed mainly of Jewish parties, continues to explore ways to ensure a Jewish majority in Israel. The big problem being that other ethnic groups have much higher birthrates than Jews. It ends up being a fine line between ensuring the survivability of your ethnic group and reducing the democratic/human rights of other ethnic groups.
Recently the Arab parties in the Knesset were banned too. So it’s true that Israel doesn’t contain non-Jews, it’s just that they have no rights.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j_suGvYgZ4hwcMplsjmGbnqpmHJAD95LNB200