Israeli Government Eventually Admits that Mohammed Is the Top Baby Name - The Intercept
▻https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/24/mohammed-most-common-baby-name-in-israel
Are Palestinian babies actually babies? That’s been a surprisingly thorny question for the Israeli government this week, when the Population, Immigration and Border Authority at first declared the Hebrew name “Yosef” the most popular baby name for the past year, and then was forced to admit that the nation’s most popular name was actually “Mohammed” — assuming one includes Arab babies.
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It was against that political backdrop that the government released a list of popular baby names this week that included only Hebrew names. After publishing the initial rankings, the Haaretz newspaper asked government officials why there weren’t any Arab names on the list. It turns out they had been excluded, and a new list was given to Haaretz. The Israeli government told the publication that its original decision to effectively exclude Palestinian babies from its list, released just ahead of the Jewish new year, was not done with any ideological intention in mind and that, “contrary to the assumptions of the Haaretz newspaper, there is no plot to deliberately hide information.”