The Real News Network, repeatedly on the front lines living up to its name, brings us Israel’s New Generation of Racists. In this episode Producer Lia Tarachansky interviews Thair Abu-Rass, Director of the Fair Representation at The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel (Sikkuy).
The hate speech that follows, from a child no less, is unbearable, heart wrenching. Without further ado:
THAIR ABU-RASS, ASSOC. FOR ADVANCEMENT OF CIVIC EQUALITY: Look at it this way. If you’re an eight- or nine-year-old kid, a eight- or nine-year-old Jewish kid in Israel, and you see day-in, day-out, whether it’s through the different media outlets in Israel, whether it’s by the political leaders, beginning from the prime minister and all the way down, or by your own community leaders, whether it’s in your own synagogue or in your own community center, this kind of treatment towards the Arabs, denigrating the Arab minority in Israel, looking at them as the other, as the enemy that you should always be careful of, when you internalize these kinds of feelings, it only becomes normal.
TARACHANSKY: Following the growing number of incidents of racial and religious violence, the ministry of education this year ordered students across the country to address the subject with students. But street-level racism is only the symptom of the problem, according to the coalition against racism in Israel. Its report showed incitement to hate by public figures has nearly doubled in the past year.
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ABU-RASS: When it comes to budget distributions, or when it comes to introducing new laws to the country, it makes a difference whether you’re Arab or Jewish. If we take the last parliament, the last Knesset session, for example, which was the 18th Knesset, which was considered to be one of the most racist and anti-democratic parliaments, there were many legislative bills that most of them did not go through out of fear of more Israeli isolation, but the fact that they were introduced scares many, you know.
TARACHANSKY: Such as what?
ABU-RASS: For example, MK Danny Danon from the Likud who wanted to introduce or who introduced a bill that would want to prevent sexual relations between Arab and Jewish citizens in the state of Israel. A lot of that reminds us of the Nuremberg laws.
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TARACHANSKY: In a report to the UN commissioner for human rights, ahead of last year’s conference against racism, several Israeli rights groups outlined the extent of racism and incitement in Israel. Although there is an existing ban on hate speech, there are serious problems with enforcement. Over the years, the law has been used sparingly and has rarely been used on Jewish religious leaders, a group over-proportionately involved in racial incitement. Discrimination in Israel is based on what Oren Yiftachel of the Ben-Gurion University in the Negev terms ethnocracy.
OREN YIFTACHEL, BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV: A big part of the political geography of Israel-Palestine is actually shaped by the land system. Jewish expansion more or less ceased. The Zionist colonial settlements no longer continues to expand. The opposite. Israel starts to retract. It retreated from Lebanon. It retreated from Gaza. And I’m talking about the territory of Israel-Palestine. It retreated from the Palestinian cities. But this is not coupled with general reconciliation. This is not coupled with redistribution. This is not coupled with an attempt to give the Palestinian an equal status. So it’s a readjustment or consolidation without reconciliation. And that actually creates a process of radicalization on both sides.
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ABU-RASS: It’s about land and who owns the land in this country. Now, the Israeli government, through the Jewish federation, owns over 93 percent of the land in Israel. The Arab minority in Israel, which is about 20 percent of the population, owns less than 3 percent of the land. If we take all Arab towns in Israel, their land mass has not grown over the last 65 years, meaning a town that had, let’s say, a population of 10,000 people 30 years ago has still the same amount of hectares that it had then today, even though today it’s a town of 30,000 or 40,000.
If you’re a Jewish citizen in Israel, you have many options of housing. You can live in a kibbutz. You can live in a moshav. You can live in a city. You can live in a lonely farm, which is one farm for one family. But if you’re an Arab citizen, you don’t have much options. You’re most likely going to live in the same town that you were born in, your parents were born in, and your grandparents were born in.
TARACHANSKY: Why?
ABU-RASS: First of all, there has not been–the Israeli government has not built not even one single Arab city ever since the creation of the country in 1948.
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TARACHANSKY: Seeing widespread impunity, some citizens are taking action in their own hands. In February, a young couple and an elderly woman accosted Palestinian children in Jerusalem for speaking Arabic on the bus. The children were students at the only bilingual school in the city, a project of the Yad-be-Yad organization. Kifah Abdul Halim is Yad-be-Yad’s media coordinator.
KIFAH ABDUL HALIM, MEDIA COORDINATOR, YAD-BE-YAD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): This discrimination is not only systemic; it has rooted itself in all the systems, including the judicial and legal systems. In Israel, not only the cops but also the courts are tougher on Arab suspects, especially when talking about attacks of this kind. It’s safe to assume that an Arab who attacks a Jew will always be punished, and relatively harshly. But if a Jew attacks an Arab, it’s very possible he’ll get out clean.
In protest of the apathy of officials from the city and the Egged bus company, the children’s parents decided to personally accompany the students on the bus, inviting the media.
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): There it was that one [who attacked us].
~~~
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): I hate Arabs and I support racism.
TARACHANSKY (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Why?
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Who doesn’t?
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): What why?
TARACHANSKY: Why do you say that?
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Because I hate Arabs.
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Leave him alone.
TARACHANSKY: I really don’t know if you’re serious or you’re joking.
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): I’m totally serious.
TARACHANSKY: Why do you hate Arabs?
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Because they shouldn’t be in this country. It’s one country, for one people. They’re terrorists, and may God burn them all.
~~~
CHILD (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): It’s very scary. I don’t even know. They’re not even willing to listen.
TARACHANSKY (ENGLISH): The state’s unwillingness to prosecute Jewish perpetrators of hate crimes was crystallized when a group of youth who recently beat Palestinian teenagers so severely one of the vicims’ heart stopped were given exceptionally light sentences. The same day of the attack, settlers in the West Bank threw a Molotov cocktail at a Palestinian taxi, burning the six passengers inside, including a four-month-old baby. They were acquitted.
~~~
INTERVIEWER (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): How do you think you’ll be received at school tomorrow?
INTERVIEWEE (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Fine.
INTERVIEWER: Like a hero?
INTERVIEWEE: Yes, like a hero.
~~~
TARACHANSKY: For The Real News, I’m Lia Tarachansky.
They’re not even willing to listen. From the mouths of babes, we have our work cut out for us.
From Simra Vigoda a American emigre to Israel in todays times of Israel
“This summer, after nearly 20 years in Israel, I took my four children (14, 13, 10 and 5) to the United States for a year. My husband remains in Israel for work. Luckily, my own work in resource development at an Arab-Jewish NGO was transferable. The temporary relocation was not an easy decision and the decision to extend our stay another year was even more difficult.
People on both sides ask us why we are here. I answer these inquiries by declaring that we are on a mission. “A mission?” they ask. “What sort of mission?”
The answer is complex, almost unexplainable. Sometimes, it seems unjustifiable. A family choosing to live (temporarily) on two sides of the ocean is indeed strange. I want my kids to improve their English, but then again, who doesn’t? I want my kids to experience a different culture. I want my kids to get to know my family. But while these most apparent benefits of our adventure do indeed exist, our mission is significantly more complex.
I arrived in Israel in 1994, drawn to the idea of a strong Jewish people and the blessings of self-determination. I arrived with deeply ingrained values of progressive Jewish America – of tolerance, of inclusion, of tikkun olam – repairing the world. Gradually, I understood that my values were not considered mainstream in Israel and the idea that self-determination comes with social responsibility toward the country’s minorities was a fringe concept, reserved for “those leftist radicals.”
I married, had my children, chose my friends and found work that was in line with my values and all was well – for a while. Slowly, I began to see that my teen boys who attended a public school in a pleasant middle class suburb in the south of Israel were becoming the type of Israeli Jew that I could not identify with: xenophobic, racist, nationalistic, and macho. Their admiration of American culture was limited to consumerism and the values of the progressive American Jewish community were as foreign to them as the cultural heritage of any other nation, be it China, Japan, Kenya or France. So, I packed up and left on a mission to embed great Jewish and progressive values into my Israeli children.
Nice to know my tax dollars are funding young Jewish brownshirts in Israel. So this is what the menorah symbolizes these days…not to mention the star of David. Who needs David Duke or Farakan, when we multicultural Americans have Israel?
If these videos were shown on western televisions,..rest assured the support for Israel would decline heavily.
And just look at that Youtube still:
“I hate arabs”
Thats kind of ironic when you look like one.
On topic:
Racism is fundamental part of colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
Apparently racism is not seen as something bad by these people, and obviously its not a few “bad apples” as Israel likes to portray problems in their society but as poll have shown, that there is support for apartheid policies among israelis.
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2012/10/following-poll-on-israeli-support-for-apartheid-gideon-levy-says-making-peace-would-be-an-almost-anti-democratic-act.html
Israeli Jewish society as a unit loses in terms of tolerance and in intellectual capacity as time goes on and the population increases. Less money is spent on education, more on YESHA .
The Haredim are essentially uneducated. They represent a larger chunk of the population. The results are pretty obvious. You don’t get educated thugs like Peres. You get ignorant thugs like Danon. You see the memes coarsening. And it is not going to end well.
Danny Danon wants Israel to outlaw sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews?