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Palestinian women seeking to exercise in neighboring Israeli town are told to get lost

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From Sol Salbe’s excellent Facebook page. Hafrada means separation in Hebrew. Kochav Yair is famously home to retired Israeli brass, including political leaders Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz. Salbe:

Apologists for overt Israeli racism often point to the ultra-orthodox and poorer classes as being responsible. As this account tells us far from it. Residents of one of the wealthiest towns in the country are just as vehement about their racism and their desire for hafrada [separation; look it up in Afrikaans] from the country’s Palestinian Arab citizens.

The following Facebook post was posted in a thread on a friend of a friend timeline. While I cannot vouch for its accuracy I have a high opinion of my friend’s integrity.

Salbe translates a Hebrew message from Aviv Engler:

Untitled – I’d like to share with all of you something similar that I experienced a few days ago. I live in Kochav Yair [a secular, very well off township in central Israel]. It is the embodiment of pampered and satiated Israel. As befitting a town filled with such quality people, a high degree of sport consciousness has developed. Men and women go out every night for a brisk walk . Not far away is the [Palestinian] Arab village of Tira. In recent times there has been a phenomenon of Arab women coming to Kochav Yair and strolling around for their enjoyment. This phenomenon, the reasons for which I can only guess, is interesting and may tell us quite a bit of the subtle and hidden changes that are taking place in Israel.

A few days up a photo was posted on the local community’s Facebook page. The photo showed a note that somebody stuck on one of the Arab women’s vehicles which suggested that she and her friends buzz off away from the township. In addition I myself witnessed an incident in which a vociferous man swore and yelled at a group of Arab women in order to intimidate them and compel them to leave. That man only left the scene after my intervention and following a verbal stoush between us.

It should be further mentioned that, the note in question, which can be roughly translated to German as Juden Raus [Jews Out] received a flood of supportive and sympathetic comments on the community’s Facebook page. Most were racist comments masquerading in the guise of rational argument. It would be pointless to detail them here. Contrary to my usual habit, I responded to the insults thread and suggested (in all seriousness) that a joint walking group for Jewish women from the township and the visiting Arab women be established. I was rewarded with a deluge of comments which in the best case were cynical but on the whole were violent and abusive. I was also invited to leave the township and move to an Arab town….

I remind you: Kochav Yair is known as one of top communities in Israel. I’m sorry to report – none of the women in the community responded to my suggestion. Not a single woman in our community wants to stroll together with Arab women, even when they know these women are humiliated and threatened in public, just because they dare to do what they cannot do within the Arab community – to take care of themselves for a change. Pay attention all of you who practice violence, physical or verbal …. Count to ten.

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Good work Aviv Engler.

Aren’t these folks all Semites? Brothers and Sisters?

And yet, far too many vociferously deny that Apartheid exists and flourishes in Israel and by Israel.

Ptooey.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokhav_Ya'ir

Kokhav Ya’ir (literally “Ya’ir’s star”) was named for Abraham Stern, who went by the alias Ya’ir, the founder and leader of the Lehi group, a militant Jewish underground active during the British Mandate of Palestine. Stern is also German for “star.” Tzur Yigal (literally “Yigal’s rock”) was named for Israeli Knesset member Yigal Cohen.

Seems to be a very well off town.

What they did to the Arab women was NOT right.

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Can’t really be surprised, since they supposedly named the town after racist deluded sociopath Avraham Stern– or from his alias that everyone knows, anyways.

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RE: “Residents of one of the wealthiest towns in the country [Israel] are just as vehement about their racism and their desire for hafrada [separation; look it up in Afrikaans] from the country’s Palestinian Arab citizens.” ~ from Sol Salbe’s Facebook page

FOR THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS “HAFRADA” (I.E., SEPARATION), SEE:
“Rich People Just Care Less”, By Daniel Goleman, N.Y. Times, 10/05/13

[EXCERPT] . . . In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.
Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.
Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. Dr. Volkan remembers hearing as a small boy awful things about the hated Greek Cypriots — who, he points out, actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which exacerbates the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.
In contrast, extensive interpersonal contact counteracts biases by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew, a research professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup contact. Mr. Pettigrew, who was born in Virginia in 1931 and lived there until going to Harvard for graduate school, told me in an e-mail that it was the “the rampant racism in the Virginia of my childhood” that led him to study prejudice.
In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others” were “just like me.” . . .

ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/rich-people-just-care-less/

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A friend of a friend of a friend posted on facebook…
Oh dear me.

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