Conclusion

Abstract

At a conference in 2001 organised by the Citizens’ Accord Forum between Jews and Arabs in Israel, various scholars were asked to discuss the subject, ‘Loaded Words and Offensive Language in the Hebrew and Arabic Media’. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University and a former lieutenant colonel in Israeli Military Intelligence who is known as an Israeli expert in Arabic, was one of the main speakers. Drawing on his research on the Arab mass media, Kedar ‘highlighted, in a rather one-sided way, a series of malicious words used by the Arabic press’.¹ He was followed by Salem Jubran, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a poet and the former editor of the Literary Arabic journal Al-Jadīd. Jubran began his lecture with a personal comment. He said: ‘It is a pity that you [the majority of Israelis] do not know Arabic. And, as for you, Professor, it is pity that you did study this language.’²