While Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies on the far right were castigating an amusement park called Superland for separating Jewish and Arab children, they were busy backing a bill that will give Israeli Jews who serve in the army a whole raft of extra rights in land and housing, employment, salaries, and much more. Superland’s offence pales to insignificance when compared to that, or to the decades of state-planned and officially sanctoned discrimination against the country’s Palestinian minority.
racism
Youths attacked an Arab cleaning man working for the city of Tel Aviv as he was emptying garbage cans. They broke a bottle over his head. The man, covered with blood, asked them why they were doing this to him. “Because you’re an Arab,” they shouted.
IOA Editor: Although not without several shortcomings, this article is important in that it is an example of mainstream European media finally beginning to cover ‘domestic’ Israeli racism towards Palestinian Arab citizens.
With Europe’s most talented young footballers preparing for the kick-off of the under-21 championships on Wednesday, Israelis are celebrating the biggest footballing coup in their history… Last week Desmond Tutu, the leading South African anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel peace laureate, threw his weight behind the campaign. In a letter published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Tutu and other prominent human rights activists argued that UEFA was acting to “whitewash” Israeli racism.
A recent report in the Haaretz newspaper, on an Israeli Jew who grows Christmas trees commercially, noted in passing: “hotels – under threat of losing kashrut [Kosher] certificates – are prohibited by the rabbinate from decking their halls in boughs of holly or, heaven forbid, putting up even the smallest of small sparkly Christmas tree in the corner of the lobby.”
IOA Editor: Merry Christmas, Israel!
A brilliant work by Shimon Tzabar (1926, Palestine – 2007, London), an artist, writer, poet, satirist, amateur mycologist, and a vocal fighter against the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel. As relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1968, well before the term ‘racial profiling’ was known.
Sami Michael: “Israel is in danger unless its leadership understands it isn’t located in Europe’s tranquil north but in the Middle East’s seething center,” said Michael. “We may lose everything. Israel could be a transient construct, like the First and Second Temples.”
Jerusalem anti-Arab activist: “A booklet with a list of places that employ Arabs will be published soon. That will be followed by hanging up posters and signs with these lists in the streets – just so that the public will know and be cautious.”
Two years after participating in a Taglit-Birthright tour, Harald Fuller-Bennett was denied entry into Israel. The Shin Bet claimed he had links to terrorists and suspected him of no longer being Jewish.
Last Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of Israeli youth marched along the Green Line to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual commemoration of the Israeli occupation of the city in the 1967 war. The organization of the march was done under a Zionist banner. Three days later, thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv in support of the Two State Solution. While many organizations participated, the overall slogan was “Netanyahu says no, Israel says yes to a Palestinian state”.
RELATED Jerusalem Day 2011 by Just Jerusalem
Minister of Science and Technology Daniel Hershkowitz awarded Eliyahu with the prize for “his actions, effort and devotion to the Jewish nature of the Land of Israel.”
IOA Editor: The “devotion to the Jewish nature of the Land of Israel” is the same racist devotion to keep away the Palestinian people, dispossessed from the very same land, including Israeli citizens, even as short-term renters (e.g., Palestinian students in Safed). Ethnocentric Israel, a rapidly diminishing democracy-for-Jews only, now officially awards members of its ruling tribe often described by fellow Israeli-Jews as ‘racist’ and ‘extremist’ for their “devotion” to racist discriminatory laws and practices. Ethnic cleansing — “dunam here and dunam there,” bit by bit, one student and one family at a time — whether in Safed, or in Silwan, or elsewhere.
Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: “It is necessary to see this struggle as action completing the Law of Return and the declaration of a Jewish state, as a continuation of the redemption of lands by the founders of the state and as action completing the government’s decision on Judaizing the Galilee.”
[The Nakba Law is] the latest in a growing list of disgraceful legislation whose entire purpose is to discriminate against Israel’s Arab citizens, intimidate them and deny them their rights… The people directly responsible for this process are the [ones] … who sponsored the bills [and] voted for them. But the 60 MKs who did not take part in the vote are no less responsible… [Including] Kadima leader Tzipi Livni … Ehud Barak … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Culture Minister Limor Livnat.
IOA Editor: As is all too often the case, this is yet another example of the lack of material differences between Israel’s “extreme-right” and the presumably non-extreme “center-right.”
Israeli civics teacher: “When we have a discussion in class about equal rights, the class immediately gets out of control. The students attack us, the teachers, for being leftist and anti-Semitic, and say that all the Arab citizens who want to destroy Israel should be transferred… It’s very sad, but the students justify the [Kafr Qasim] massacre and say, ‘A good Arab is a dead Arab.'”
RELATED Israeli Humor: Hope Kindergarten
A brilliant skit from the Israeli comedy show “Eretz Nehederet” (“Wonderful Country”) on Israel’s Channel 2 TV showing anti-Arab racism introduced to young Israeli children very early in life.
IOA Editor: If you think that this is some sort of an abstract humor, think again. For the latest, see Student’s answer on civics test: Death to Arabs
When people comment on [Israel] venomously around the world, we object almost instinctively and say, no, that is too much already. It is only anti-Semitic hate propaganda. But with a hand on the heart — are we not becoming, from year to year, more and more like our monstrous caricature, which is drawn by our worst enemies? For really, where are we going? Think for yourselves, as unpleasant as this may be: Are we becoming more or less racist? More or less democratic? More or less decent?
IOA Editor: It is good that Mr. Dankner has finally awakened from his self-inflicted vacuous state of mind, as former editor of Maariv, one of Israel’s two most popular rags. Unfortunately, the extent of his appreciation of Israel’s decline is remarkably limited. Indeed, very little and very late. Yet, the fact that a figure who spent decades at the heart of Israel’s propaganda machine expresses regret and disappointment in the state of Jewish State is somewhat reassuring, despite the repulsive feelings one is overwhelmed by when reading his statement.
Currently the fight against [Arab-Jewish] intermarriage is spearheaded by the Yad L’Achim organization . Not long ago its chairman, Rabbi Shalom Dov Lipschitz, wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, warning of “a fundamental failure in the Jewish education and values in the secular education system in Israel.”
IOA Editor: This is traditional racism at its very best: such attitudes – the separation of couples on racial grounds – are well known in European and North American history, and elsewhere. This news story is important because in the “advanced” countries that Israel would like to associate with and be treated as an ally of, such behavior would be rejected, and is generally outlawed. One would think that such blatantly racist practices are not in Israel’s self-interest, yet it involves organizations which benefit from government support, possibly involving high level government officials.
A million and a half Arab citizens cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. They want it to be “a state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others. They also claim with reason that Israel discriminates against them, and therefore is not really democratic.
A million and a half Arab citizens cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. They want it to be “a state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others. They also claim with reason that Israel discriminates against them, and therefore is not really democratic.
A complaint of racism and incitement has been lodged against an Upper Nazareth city councillor who called for Arabs to “disappear,” in an Independence Day greeting to local residents… Upper Nazareth is a sister city to Nazareth, the largest Israeli Arab municipality in Israel.
IOA Editor: Referring to Upper Nazareth as a “Sister City” to Nazareth is quite remarkable: Might the Haaretz editors mean the younger sister who sneaked up behind her older sibling, stabbed her and grabbed her jewelry?
