Was it meant as an epic parody or an insult to his audience’s intelligence? It was hard to tell.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to apologize for last year’s notorious election-day comment, when he warned that “the Arabs are coming out to vote in droves” – a reference to the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian.
In videos released last week in English and Hebrew, Netanyahu urged Palestinian citizens to become more active in public life. They needed to “work in droves, study in droves, thrive in droves,” he said. “I am proud of the role Arabs play in Israel’s success”.
Pointedly, Ayman Odeh, head of the Palestinian-dominated Joint List party, noted that 100,000 Bedouin citizens could not watch the video because Israel denies their communities electricity, internet connections and all other services.
Swiftly and predictably, the reality of life for Israel’s 1.7 million Palestinians upstaged Netanyahu’s fine words.
In a radio interview, Moti Dotan, the head of the Lower Galilee regional council, sent a message to his Palestinian neighbours: “I don’t want them at my [swimming] pools.” Sounding like a mayor in the southern United States during the Jim Crow-era, he added: “Their culture of cleanliness isn’t the same as ours. Why is that racist?”
Dotan was no extremist, observed the liberal newspaper Haaretz. He represents the Israeli mainstream. Notably, Netanyahu did not distance himself from Dotan’s remarks.
At the same time, Samar Qupty, star of a new film on Palestinians in Israel called Junction 48, was questioned for two hours and then strip searched at Ben Gurion airport and denied her hand luggage before being allowed to fly to an international film festival.
Stories of state-sponsored humiliation at the airport are routine for Israel’s Palestinian academics, journalists, actors and community leaders – in fact, for any Palestinian active in the public sphere.
The list of restrictions on Palestinian citizens is long and growing. A database by the legal group Adalah shows that some 60 Israeli laws explicitly discriminate against non-Jews, with another 18 in the pipeline.
Two laws passed last month intensify the repression of dissent. An Expulsion Law is designed to empower Israeli MPs to oust Palestinian lawmakers whose views offend them, while a Transparency Law stigmatizes human rights groups working to protect Palestinian rights.
Recently leaked protocols reveal that the police have secretly awarded themselves powers to use live fire against Palestinian protesters in Israel, even if they pose no danger. Yet another law threatens jail for any Palestinian citizen who tries to dissuade another from volunteering in the Israeli army.
Growing numbers of Palestinian citizens, including poets and writers, are being jailed or put under house arrest for posts on social media the Israeli authorities disapprove of.
Defence minister Avigdor Lieberman recently compared the work of the Palestinians’ national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Darwish is banned from school curriculums.
The culture minister, Miri Regev, meanwhile, has tied state funding for theatre and dance companies to their readiness to perform in Jewish settlements, illegally located in the occupied territories in the West Bank.
In his video, Netanyahu said: “Jews and Arabs should reach out to each other, get to know each other’s families. Listen to each other.”
And yet his officials have just halved funding for the training of Palestinian student teachers, though not Jewish ones, to deter the former from pursuing teaching careers. Jewish schools face severe staff shortages, but Israel’s educational segregation is so complete that Palestinian citizens cannot be allowed to teach Jewish children.
Netanyahu also extolled his government for a promise to increase funding for Israel’s near-bankrupt Palestinian local authorities. He forgot to mention, however, that he had conditioned the money on the same councils demolishing thousands of homes in their jurisdiction. For decades Palestinians in Israel have been routinely denied building permits.
Israel’s Palestinian citizens were not fooled by Netanyahu’s video. But as their leaders noted, they were not the intended audience. The video was a cynical PR exercise aimed firmly at the Europeans, who have been discomfited by Israel’s increasingly repressive climate and the government’s regular incitement against its Palestinian minority.
Netanyahu is worried about a backlash in the West, including growing support for the boycott movement, European efforts to revive peace talks, and potential moves at the United Nations and International Criminal Court.
Palestinians in Israel have known worse repression than they currently endure. For Israel’s first two decades they lived under military rule, locked into their towns and villages and largely invisible unless they agreed to do and say as they were told. Palestinian MPs could be elected to the parliament but only if they were first approved by Zionist parties like Netanyahu’s.
The Israeli right sounds ever more nostalgic for that era. Slowly the ethos of the military government for Israel’s Palestinians is returning – and the perfume of Netanyahu’s soothing words about ending “discord and hate” will not cover the stench.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
It’s a farce.
The Adallah “list” has long been debunked. I invite anyone who cares enough to be bothered to actually read the list for oneself and apply critical thinking skills.
Here is a thoughtful report: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/adalah_s_database_of_laws_imagining_racism_to_demonize_israel_/
See also: below
“Adalah’s legal database promotes the false and demonizing allegation that Zionism is racism, and labels all references to the Jewish connection to Israel, including use of the Hebrew calendar or menorah symbol, as racist,” Bar- Ilan University Prof. Gerald Steinberg, head of the Jerusalem- based NGO Monitor, told the Post on Tuesday…
“Furthermore, almost half of these so-called ‘racist laws’ are actually fringe legislative proposals that were not approved by the Knesset,” he said. “Misleading readers by presenting draft proposals as approved legislation is not only dishonest but also totally distorts Israel’s vibrant democratic process.”
The report, titled “Adalah’s Database of Laws: Imagining Racism to Demonize Israel,” takes aim at the database, launched in March 2013 on the Adalah’s website and promoted by it on Facebook with the more provocative name “Racist Laws.”
The report notes that the database is a list of 101 laws and proposed legislation that never became law, which Adalah considers to “discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, including their rights to political participation, access to land, education, state budget resources, and criminal procedures. Some of the laws also violate the rights of Palestinians living in the 1967 OPT [‘Occupied Palestinian Territories”] and [of] Palestinian refugees.”
NGO Monitor said one of the reasons it analyzed the database is that it spreads false information that has been used by various pro-Palestinian activists and cited in leading publications such as The New York Times.
“Adalah does not define its selection methodology or describe systematically how each law is considered discriminatory,” stated the report.
“In addition, although the database is in English, Adalah does not provide English translations of the laws. Instead it offers descriptions that are occasionally inaccurate or misquote the law.”
In addition, Adalah “ignores the language in some laws that specifically promotes or protects ethnic minority groups in Israel.”
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Adalah-list-of-discriminatory-laws-is-faulty-meant-to-demonize-Israel-report-382839
And
Flag Law
For example, the advocacy group Adalah cites the 1949 Flag and Emblem Law as an exemplar of what it calls “20 laws that discriminate against the Palestinian minority in Israel.”
This claim is transparently absurd. Israel’s flag law asserts that the
“State flag” means the flag which the Provisional Council of State, on the 25th Tishri 5709 (28th October 1948), proclaimed as the flag of the State of Israel, or a flag, of any size whatsoever, similar in design to the said flag and includes any object bearing the design of the State flag.
To say that the law discriminates, presumably because the flag includes a Star of David, is akin to saying that the U.S. flag, with its 13 stripes, discriminates against the 37 states that were not among the 13 original colonies — never mind the crosses depicted on the flags of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Iceland, New Zealand and others. It is simply not a serious allegation…
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2253
And this is the creepy repulsive QuasiNazi who Hillary Clinton will invite to Washington in her first month if elected President. Proof that compulsive liars are attracted to each other?
BOYCOTT UGLY APARTHEID ISRAEL
SUPPORT BDS
TELL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS ABOUT BDS
QUESTION YOUR POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES ABOUT ISRAELI BREACHES OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND YOUR COUNTRY`S SUPPORT FOR A STATE WHICH DEFIES INTERNATIONAL LAW AND IS IN BREACH OF THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS
POST THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAELI “DEMOCRACY” ON SOCIAL MEDIA
WRITE TO YOUR MSM NEWSPAPERS HIGHLIGHTING THE DAILY BRUTALITY AND OPPRESSION WHICH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE ARE BEING SUBJECTED TO
“Was it meant as an epic parody or an insult to his audience’s intelligence? It was hard to tell.”
Not hard at all. What else could one possibly expect from the parody of a PM who cannot grasp the concept of basic diplomacy and statesmanship.
As for JC’s second suggestion — considering netanyahoo’s sadistic papa, it would appear that Jr. is projecting the dead man’s contempt for humanity and his own spawn. There is also netanyahoo’s earlier cringe-worthy performance at the UN with the drawing of a bomb.
This silly man is either exhibiting signs of creeping senile dementia or is unhinged and, considering his position, should seek professional help. Stat.
Why did he need to remind Israeli Arabs that 20% of Israel is Arab? And why’d he need to do that in English?
He not only erased the millions of “Arabs” i.e. Palestinians that have been banished to the hell that is the refugee camps, he has millions more under military occupation. The only “Arabs” that appear to matter are the ones who have been granted the illusion of citizenship, and Mr. Netanyahu managed to whitewash the sheer brutality of the police services against them while audaciously suggesting that the real issue is not enough stormtroopers. Good riddance!