Israel’s new ambassador to Belgium, David Saranga, has demanded a correction and an apology from Flemish broadcaster VTM over what he described as misleading coverage of Israel's parliamentary elections.
In an open letter sent to VTM Nieuws on Tuesday, Saranga criticised a report broadcast during Monday’s lunchtime news bulletin, which featured a sign stating that “7.5 million Palestinians do not have the right to vote.”
The ambassador described the claim as misleading. He explained in the letter that approximately two million Arab citizens of Israel have the right to vote in Israeli elections, while around five million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank generally do not hold Israeli citizenship and therefore cannot vote in Israeli parliamentary elections.
Saranga also questioned why the broadcaster had not mentioned that Palestinian parliamentary elections had not been held since 2006.
“A news organisation has a duty to present the facts accurately, comprehensively and in context. I fear this was not an innocent simplification,” he wrote in his letter to VTM’s editorial management.
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VTM acknowledges error
VTM Nieuws agreed to correct the information during its Tuesday evening news bulletin, acknowledging that the figure used in its original report was inaccurate.
According to Belga, the broadcaster stated: “We said yesterday that we wanted to know what the 7.5 million Palestinians who do not have the right to vote in these elections thought about it. We were referring to people without Israeli passports who live in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. But that figure is incorrect. There are fewer of them.”
Saranga officially took up his position as Israel’s envoy to Belgium on 7 October, succeeding Idit Rosenzweig-Abu.
