Tonight’s message is almost entirely reports and commentary about Israeli racism. Even the first item, which is about a massacre, can ultimately be posited under Israeli racism.
Items 2-4 are reports about racist incidents. Item 5 is commentary that furnishes background. Item 6 is satirical. When Israeli racism becomes material for satire, we know not only that it really exists, but also that it has become extreme.
Dorothy
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1.The report below about the Kfar Qassem commemoration leaves out more than it relates, namely the details of the massacre. In brief, it occurred when a curfew was imposed on the village by the military government, at which time many of the villagers were in their fields and unaware of the curfew. When they returned the border police mowed them down—women, children, elderly, as well as men. For those of you who would like more details, the internet has much on the incident. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafr_Qasim_massacre
Ynet,
October 29, 2010
Arabs mark Kfar Kassem massacre anniversary
MKs, Arab leaders and some Jews remember those killed by Border Police officers 54 years ago, call out against current government’s ‘racist discourse’
Hundreds of people gathered in Kfar Kassem Friday morning to mark the 54th anniversary of the massacre which took place in the Arab village.
“Unfortunately, the anniversary of the massacre is relevant more than ever before. The idea of a (population) transfer, which was the guiding principle of the massacre, has become the official discourse of the Israeli government,” Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh told Ynet.
The massacre was carried out by Israeli Border Police officers and resulted in the death of 49 Arab civilians.
During the memorial service, MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) referred to the controversial loyalty oath, saying, “Our weapon is our loyalty to our homeland and clinging to the land. Jews must join our fight against racism for the sake of democracy and equality.”
MK Barakeh added, “We sense the danger but do not fear the racists. We will defeat them one day.”
Friday’s rally, held just two days after a rightist march in Umm al-Fahm triggered Arab riots in the northern town, was attended by Arab lawmakers, leaders of the Israeli-Arab community and a number of Jews, who called out against “fascism” and the government’s “violent and racist discourse.”
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee called for a city-wide strike in Umm al-Fahm in condemnation of “excessive police violence” during the rioting.
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2. Haaretz,
October 29, 2010
Segregation of Jews and Arabs in 2010 Israel is almost absolute
For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes.
Under the guise of the deceptively mundane name “Amendment to the Cooperative Associations Bill,” the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee this week finalized a bill intended to bypass previous rulings of the High Court of Justice. If indeed this legislation is approved by the Knesset plenum, it will not be possible to describe it as anything other than an apartheid law.
Ten years ago, the High Court of Justice ordered the town of Katzir to accept the family of Adel and Iman Kaadan, Arab citizens of Israel, as members of the community. Seven years later, the court issued a similar ruling against the Galilee village of Rakefet, which, like Katzir, is Jewish. Now, however, the legislature has come up with a proper “Zionist” response to the justices: If it becomes law, the amendment will give acceptance committees of communal villages the authority to limit residence in their towns exclusively to Jews.
Using polished and sanitized language, the bill would allow such committees in small rural suburbs to reject applications from families that “are incompatible with the social-cultural fabric of the community, and where there are grounds to assume that they will disrupt this fabric.”
In other words, if admissions committees were previously forced to exercise some degree of creativity if they wanted to hide their national-ethnic grounds for rejecting Arabs, now, as Rabbi Akiva said, “All is foreseen, and freedom of choice is granted” (Pirkei Avot 3 ). Arabs? Not here. Sorry, the law is with us on this.
Those who feign innocence, including some from the center of our political map, will say, “The bill is not intended to keep out Arabs. What’s wrong with supporting the right of communities to protect their unique way of life?”
Indeed, what is wrong with that? There’s no argument that the vegetarians of Moshav Amirim, in the Galilee, have a right to defend themselves against an invasion of carnivores, just as the practitioners of transcendental meditation at Hararit, in the Misgav region, need to be able to meditate without interruption, but those communities are genuinely unique in character. This is not the case for the dozens of yeshuvim kehilati’im (literally, “community settlements” ) all over Israel, whose principal cultural feature is the fact that their residents are Jewish and Zionist – hardly a population under imminent threat, whose unique way of life needs protection.
Several months ago, we were given a glimpse of just how quickly the new law will be implemented, when several such villages, anticipating the Knesset’s action, hurriedly established bylaws that effectively barred Arabs. In the communities of Yuvalim and Manof, in the Misgav area, applicants are now required to declare their allegiance to the Zionist vision, while in Mitzpe Aviv, a bit to the south, applicants must declare their identification with the values of Zionism and the definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
It’s not as if Arab families are standing in line to move to these gated communities, which were established mainly in the 1970s and ’80s by Zionist organizations like the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund for the purpose of “Judaizing” areas like the Negev and the Galilee. No one ever expected these towns to provide the answer to the horrendous housing shortage faced by Israel’s Arab population. For them, not a single new town has been established since 1948, with the exception of a few impoverished Bedouin settlements in the Negev. Nor has the central government seen fit to assist or give approval to the existing Arab municipalities in the drawing up of master plans that would allow them to implement a program of growth and development to meet the needs of a growing population or mitigate their poor quality of life.
And this is without even mentioning cities like Upper Nazareth, Safed or Carmiel, where a variety of statements have been made – sometimes by the most senior municipal officials themselves – that are designed to push Arabs out or prevent their integration into these cities.
Segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel of 2010 is almost absolute. For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes: segregated education, segregated businesses, separate entertainment venues, different languages, separate political parties … and of course, segregated housing. In many senses, this is the way members of both groups want things to be, but such separation only contributes to the growing mutual alienation of Jews and Arabs.
Several courageous attempts – particularly in mixed cities and regions – have been made to change the situation, bridge the rifts and promote integration. These range from efforts to develop mixed educational frameworks, to joint economic ventures and other interventions intended to foster good neighborly relations based on equal opportunity. Until now, these attempts addressed a situation of de facto segregation. From today, however, segregation will be de jure, to the shame of Israel.
Amnon Be’eri Sulitzeanu is the co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, an organization that promotes coexistence and equality between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.
Attack reflects rising tension over the growth in the Safed’s Arab population, mostly students.
Some 20 youngsters from Safed attacked several Arab students who live in an apartment in the town’s center last weekend. Nobody was hurt. The police arrested three suspects in the assault, including one border policeman.
The attack is seen as a reflection of the rising tension over the growth in the Arab population in Safed, mostly students at Safed College who are residing in the city.
About two weeks ago, the town’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, and other prominent rabbis called not to rent or sell apartments to non-Jews.
The rabbis also held what they called an “emergency gathering” whose speakers said the college was enabling the influx because most of its students are Arabs.
Eliyahu called to keep Arab students out of Safed College some eight years ago, after a suicide attack on a bus at Meron junction, after an Arab student had reportedly been warned of the attack by one of the terrorists.
Eliyahu was indicted for incitement to racism for this and other statements he had made at that time. But the indictment was revoked about four years ago, following an agreement in which he promised to publish a clarification of his statements. (Eli Ashkenazi )
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4. Haaretz,
October 29, 2010
Shas spiritual leader may back ban on renting to Arabs
Former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef cites centuries-old interpretation of halakhic ruling barring the sale of land to non-Jews.
A former chief rabbi of Israel on Thursday backed a centuries-old interpretation of Jewish religious law barring the sale of land to non-Jews.
Days after a group of rabbis urged Safed residents not to rent apartments to Arabs, former Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef reiterated a 500-year-old halakhic ruling barring the sale of land in the Land of Israel to non-Jews – a move that appeared to be a show of support for the other rabbis.
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, center, has a history of making controversial comments.
Photo by: Tomer Appelbaum
With an increasing number of Arab students enrolling at Safed College, the city has also seen a rise in Arab students renting apartments there.
Rabbi Yosef’s comments on Thursday were made at a beit midrash, an institution for religious studies, and contradicted remarks he made last Saturday night to a more general audience in Jerusalem.
Yesterday he addressed halakha, Jewish religious law, in greater detail.
Rabbi Yosef, who has been known to make controversial comments in the past, cited rulings based on the Book of Deuteronomy related to the Jewish people’s inheritance of the land, the presence of other peoples on the land, and that the Jews should not make a covenant with them “nor show mercy unto them.”
According to Yosef, this has been understood to mean barring the sale of land to non-Jews, based on an interpretation by Rabbi Yosef Caro, the 16th-century author of the codification of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef did not, however, explicitly address the issue of renting apartments to non-Jews.
In yesterday’s lesson, he said “selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won’t let them take control of us here.”
The former chief rabbi is the spiritual leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which refused to comment on his remarks.
In recent months, some rabbis and right-wing activists have campaigned against the sale of apartments to Arabs, particularly in mixed Arab-Jewish towns.
Two focal points of this effort are the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev, where followers of Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg of the Yitzhar settlement have been active, and Safed, where a group of rabbis claimed two weeks ago that the call not to rent to Arabs is supported by halakha. The latter event unleashed a storm of controversy in the Knesset, and led to stone-throwing last Saturday at Arab students’ apartments in Safed.
The Abraham Fund Initiatives, which promotes coexistence between Jews and Arabs, condemned Rabbi Yosef’s latest remarks, describing them as racist and having deepened the alienation between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
The organization said that the leader of a Sephardi-based movement, a community the Abraham Fund said had suffered from neglect and discrimination for many years, would be expected not to lend a hand to incitement, but instead work to promote tolerance.
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5. [Thanks to Ran Greenstein for calling attention to this.]
October 29 2010Independent commentary from Israel & the Palestinian territoriesCategories
How and why Zionist discrimination against non-Jews is made legal
Our story begins with a middle class couple, who wanted to build themselves a house in a country settlement. The time was the early 1990s, and the couple was facing one major problem. ‘Aadel and ‘Iman Q’aadan were not, as their names attest, good Jews. The plot they wanted to build on, in Katzir, was government land which was leased to the Jewish Agency.
The JA is a relic of the pre-independence period, and one of its main functions ever since the creation of Israel is to assist the government in assuring only Jews can buy land in Israel. The government has, for years, used the practice of leasing its lands to the JA, because its charter forbids it from selling land to non-Jews. The state could thus play the innocent and say well, it’s not our fault Arabs can’t live there; don’t look at us, talk to the Agency.
The Q’aadans appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice, citing the obvious fact that this practice amounts to discrimination in allocating state assets. They filed in 1995; and the Court did anything possible to steer clear of this booby-trapped petition, asking the sides to reach a settlement. Finally, in 2000, the Court was left with no choice and produced the only possible verdict. Aharon Barak, that great liberal, wrote at the time he was fearful of what his decision meant for Zionism; but when forced to choose between Zionism and equality, he chose = not without effort – to side with equality.
The saga doesn’t end here. Armed with the decision of the Court, the Q’aadans went back to Katzir and asked for the plot of land. The local committee took a few minutes to look into the issue and then informed them, obviously with great anguish and gnashing of teeth, that the Q’aadans “did not fit the character” of Katzir, and therefore the committee has no choice but to deny their request. The committee did not bother to explain its decision. The Q’aadans had to go appeal to the Supreme Court once more, the latter dragged its feet again, and it was only in August 2007 – seven and a half years since the original court decision, and 12 years after the original appeal – the Q’aadans finally got their land. The received assistance from the ACRI, who wrote to the Court (Hebrew) that while the government was waving its 2000 decision as a proof of its commitment to equality, it was doing all it could to prevent its execution.
The Q’aadan decision exposed Israel’s great bluff: for decades it pretended to be devoted to equality, all while acting to deny 20% of the population of its share in public assets – assets which, tragically, were often enough confiscated from that population. To use a less polite yet more accurate phrasing, the Zionist establishment is trying to keep its stolen property, even if, in the process, it will have to show the claim that Israel is a democracy to be an empty lie.
Why do I bother you with old news? Because it’s not old, not really. Yesterday, the Law and Justice Committee of the Knesset approved (Hebrew) a new bill, whose unofficial name says it all: “Q’aadan bypass bill”. According to the bill, settlements with less than 500 families may create sorting committees; the latter may prevent a candidate from living there if he “does not fit the criteria of the settlement’s character”. They will become, in law as well as in effect, segregated communities.
What are the criteria? Certainly you can guess some of them by yourselves. The local council of Misgav, for instance, demands that a candidate “be a Zionist” and “observe the Israeli [read: Jewish] holidays”. The goal of these criteria is rather clear – to prevent future Q’aadans from applying – but there are others. In the Kfar Akhim moshav, for instance, all applying couples must have married in the rabbinate. This means that heretics, divorcees, one-parent families and certainly gay couples need not apply.
The new bill also allows the committees to prevent anyone who doesn’t seem to have the money to build a house from living in the settlements. So, the government takes public lands, and then distributes them in a way that denies them not just to the 20% of non-Jews of the population, but also to anyone who isn’t rich enough to build a country house. Which seems to cover most of the population.
So, to sum up, a small group of well-to-do people will get much more territory, on condition that it serve as the door guard of the Israeli government, who will prevent Israeli Arabs from living beyond their Pale.
This way of establishing land robbery seems acceptable both to the government and the new landowners. As for the rest of the population, those who don’t have and won’t have the money to buy a house in an exclusive settlement will always be calmed down by being told that do doing so denies land to the Arabs. As for the Arabs, the government never took any account of them anyway.
As for equality, well, it’s a nice practice if you’re a democracy, but it hardly fits Jewish countries, does it?
Update: According to ‘Adalla, the law center dealing with discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, should the bill pass, 81% of public lands will be denied (Hebrew) to Israeli Palestinians.
Read more from +972 Magazine’s contributors on the reception ==========================
6. Haaretz,
October 29, 2010
Three cheers for Israel’s right
Because the right has been so phenomenally successful in its wise strategies, we can be pretty sure that it will continue to aggravate the world even further.
At this point the Western world is looking at Israel with a complete lack of understanding. Is it just a banana republic, something like a failed state? Or is it just behaving like a spoiled child, as Tom Friedman lately argued? Or is it an ethnocracy that, unsuccessfully, tries to hide ethnic cleansing and colonial ambitions behind protestations that it is under existential threat?
Israelis, in turn, feels misunderstood: After all, their country faces very real threats: Iran keeps calling for Israel’s destruction, and may become a nuclear power. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth with rockets, and it has shown that it is willing to use them against Israel’s population centers. Hamas rules Gaza, and its official position is that it will never accept Israel’s existence. So why doesn’t the world understand us?
The answer is, in the end, quite simple. It is the great achievement of Israel’s right to have made Israel’s fears utterly unbelievable to the world. Its other great achievement is that it has managed to confuse a large part of Israel’s constituency. It is therefore of the essence to celebrate this immortal achievement, because Israel’s right is about to score a further, valuable victory: After 62 years, Israel may soon cease to be a democracy, and finally be a Jewish state without excuses.
So let’s see how they’ve done it. For starters, they have intensely studied successful right-wing groups that have succeeded in the past. They have realized that these parties have always made use of the same three tricks: First, take a real danger and blow it out of proportion. Second, conflate it with some other, imaginary dangers, so it looks even greater. And third, act in a way that reinforces the imaginary danger by doing everything possible to invite criticism from abroad.
The first point is easy, because Israel is under real threat from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. There is also another, real problem: The Palestinians as yet have to state explicitly that they renounce the right of return to Israel inside the 1967 lines.
The phenomenal creativity of Israel’s right truly shines by mixing these real dangers with a few others. First, we are told that Israeli Arabs are a fifth column and will tear Israel apart. Then say that the world no longer accepts Israel’s existence. Make sure to conflate Ahmadinejad and Hamas with France, Britain and the European left. The former deny Israel’s legitimacy; the latter just want us to stop building settlements, to get out of the settlements, and to let the Palestinians have a state. Just keep the distinctions blurred so you can fan hysterical fear.
Now it’s really important to act in a way that reinforces your point. Build settlements; evict Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah; expropriate Palestinian property in Silwan and Judaize Jerusalem. Just to make sure the world won’t like us, demand a loyalty oath for gentiles who want Israeli citizenship. That may not be enough, so let’s make sure our foreign minister offends high-ranking French and Spanish officials, and runs wild at the UN. Oh, and it will truly help if Rabbi Ovadia Yosef also says that Gentiles were only created to serve Jews.
Now the world really hates us. What a relief! The rest is easy, because now you can discard every rational policy Israel could choose to defuse the real dangers. It could, God forbid, accept the Arab League peace initiative, and along the way make peace with Syria, thus weakening Hezbollah and Hamas dramatically, and isolate Iran.
Hope and constructive thinking have never been good for the right, so make every effort to prevent Israelis from knowing how effective Salaam Fayad has been in building institutions and a viable security force in the West Bank, and that Israelis are having coffee by the thousands in Jenin.
If the right is lucky, the voices in the world that argue that Israel has gone nuts and that Israel doesn’t intend to reach an agreement with the Palestinians will grow ever stronger. As a result, they will use the UN to recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. Then we can also say that the world as a whole hates us and that the language of international law and of human rights has been designed specifically to hurt Israel.
Because the right has been so phenomenally successful in its wise strategies, we can be pretty sure that it will continue to aggravate the world even further. And this will lead to the right’s ultimate triumph: Because after all, not only Israeli Arabs endanger Israel. So do leftist professors, writers and artists. Soon the right will get public opinion to the point where it will be acceptable to shut up all these disloyal people. Democracy, after all, is a Helenistic invention and very un-Jewish. So why not just drop the fiction of ‘Jewish and Democratic?’