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Racism is part of the landscape in the southern Israeli town of Dimona (Updated)

Update:

Less than 24 hours after the publication of this article, the “Death to Arabs” graffiti on a sign at the entrance to Dimona was painted over. While this is a positive first step , the “We hate the N*****s” and “Death to Arabs” graffiti  – both directly visible to young children – remain.

I posted a link to the original article on the City of Dimona’s official Facebook page, however, the post was immediately deleted.

Sign at the entrance to Dimona, with "Death to Arabs" graffiti painted over
Sign at the entrance to Dimona, with “Death to Arabs” graffiti painted over Photo: Dan Cohen

Original Post:

To American sensibilities, the Negev town of Dimona in Israel recalls the Jim Crow south. Throughout the town of 33,000, racist graffiti can be seen in abundance on signs, walls and buildings. “Death to Arabs” is a common sight, and stickers promoting Lehava, the state-funded anti-miscegenation group, are posted around town.

Known for Israel’s nuclear reactor, Dimona is home to many Jewish Israelis of North African descent, as well as the African Hebrew Israelites, a group of African-Americans who immigrated to Israel believing that they descend from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

On the highway sign marking the town’s main entry point, next to a public art installation, “Death to Arabs” is scrawled. Dimona resident and journalist David Sheen contacted the local city hall to have the graffiti removed, but his request has been ignored. The graffiti remains two months after it appeared.

"Death to Arabs" written on the sign at the entrance to Dimona. Photo: David Sheen
“Death to Arabs” written on the sign at the entrance to Dimona. (Photo: David Sheen)

“When I called city hall, they reacted with incredulity,” Sheen said. “The person I spoke to asked me, ‘How did you even find this phone number?’ After explaining the inappropriate nature of the sign, Sheen received a lackadaisical response. “They said they’d get back to me, but they never removed it nor did they contact me.”

Instead of the graffiti being removed, an advertisement for a tire repair shop was put up directly below it, though it has since been moved. “Racism is so pervasive that it’s accepted or invisible to people. It doesn’t even show up on people’s radars as something that is problematic,” Sheen remarked.

Recently, while the mayor of Dimona, Beni Bitton, was visiting Dimona’s sister city of Andernach, German journalist Martin Lejeune confronted Andernach’s mayor about the racist graffiti. Still, nothing happened.

This was not an isolated incident. “Death to Arabs” is painted across the street from the local bakery on an apartment building. Around the corner on another face of the building, a large advertisement for the realtor hangs, facing the street.

Only a couple meters away from the apartment building is preschool where two- and three-year-olds use a playground directly across from the “Death to Arabs” graffiti.

The graffiti is not limited to an anti-Arab racism.

At a Jewish kindergarten a few blocks away, “We hate the N*****s” is scrawled on the adjacent building, visible from the playground. Sheen and I asked teachers about the graffiti, but they told us the kids weren’t able to see over the wall and couldn’t read it anyway. However, as illustrated in the photo, kids who weren’t tall enough to see the graffiti stood on chairs, and it is questionable whether kids were able to read the graffiti.

Shot from the kindergarten playground, the graffiti reads "We hate the N*****s"
Shot from the kindergarten playground, the graffiti reads “We hate the N*****s”
Children peer over the wall as the "We hate the N******s" graffiti."
Children peer over the wall as the “We hate the N******s” graffiti.”

The climate of racism in Dimona peaked last summer during the war on Gaza, Sheen recalled. “When I walked down the street to the local bakery, there were adult men sitting outside the entrance openly speaking of mass-murdering leftist Israelis. They spoke without inhibition from making these statements aloud in one of the most popular public spaces in the city.”

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But, textbooks!

This is the attitude of the people who make Israel’s nukes.

A feeling of limitless entitlement (and, of course, of societal support and entire impunity and immunity) certainly encourages people to let all their aggressions hang out! Ain’t it wunnerful? And of course it’s not just the people (the “street”) — it’s also the gummint.

Israel has a fairly cohesive Jewish sub-society, by now, cohering to a right-wing racist standard. The sometimes-“liberal” Ashkenazi leaders of yesterday might not have felt entirely comfortable had they predicted this outcome, but they set it all in motion.

The Beinart’s of the world can ponder this if they like. Or hide from it. And when they think about the Israeli Army, let them think about the Israeli Army of today, as it actually is, doing what it actually does.

How does a society get to be this way?
In my view, this essay goes a long way towards explaining:

The populace is “educated” at schools and the universities staffed with submissive, and cowardly teachers and professors.

The populace is “informed” by hundreds of thousands of servile journalists and “analysts”. There is almost no deviation from the official narrative.

Congratulations, Western Empire! You have succeeded where others tried but failed. You have achieved almost absolute obedience and discipline, a total servility.

And more than that most of the people actually think that they are free, that they are in control. They believe that they can choose, that they can decide. They are confident that theirs is the greatest civilization ever built on Earth!…..
The extreme degree of compliance of the majority of men and women living in our societies makes old books like “Fahrenheit 451” and “1984” only moderately disturbing. Our reality of “2015” is much more psychedelic, bizarre and appalling… as well as shameful!

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/the-west-spreads-intellectual-idiocy/

This proves that BDS is the logical way to expose this Apartheid State and hold it accountable for its war crimes.

Israel is Jim Crow personified