Jewish-Arab school in J'lem torched in suspected arson

[Israeli]

Firefighters contain fire that broke out in school in capital, later find anti-Arab slogans including 'death to Arabs' scrawled nearby.

Noam (Dabul) Dvir
Published: 11.29.14, 21:57 / Israel News

Firefighting teams were dispatched on Saturday to the Hebrew-Arab bilingual school in Jerusalem after a fire broke out in the building. The blaze was located in the premises of the preschool. After extinguishing the fire, the firefighters found anti-Arab slogans including "Death to Arabs", "Kahane was right" and other phrases against Israeli-Arab coexistence nearby.

Firefighter Arik Abulof said that four firefighting teams arrived at the scene after receiving a report about a fire in the school building. "We spotted thick smoke inside the entire structure. After extinguishing the fire, (the firefighters) found graffiti outside a classroom." Abulof said that the slogans included: "No to assimilation", "There's no coexisting with cancer", and "Kahane was right."

Shaanan Street, lead singer of popular Israeli hip hop band Hadag Nahash, whose children go to the school, expressed hope that "whoever did this act would be caught and pay for their actions."

Shuli Dichter, director of Hand in Hand, an Israeli organization that founded five bilingual schools in Israel, including the school in Jerusalem, said in response: "This is not the first act of harassment against the school and our establishment of civil partnership. Even if they manage to dirty the walls, they won't be able to destroy our project."

Continue reading with pictures @
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4597566,00.html

[shenmue]

1. :(

[Scootaloo]

2. I'm sure there will be deportations and house demolitions for everyone related to the perp

And a strident defense from the I/P regulars who support and endorse such measures.

[Israeli]

3. This is what tolerance and ....

a wish for coexistence , mutual respect and equality gets you today in Jerusalem :
........

'We will overcome': Arson and mourning at Jerusalem's bilingual school

The mixed Jewish-Arab school has been the target of racist attacks in the past, but for the parents, students and teachers of the ‘Hand in Hand’ school, this feels different. ‘This time, the fire was ignited inside our home.’


Firefighters in a classroom that was set on fire in the bilingual Hand In Hand school in Jerusalem, November 29, 2014.

The timing couldn’t have been more “perfect”: while I was still at a demonstration against the “Jewish Nation-State Law” outside the Prime Minister’s Office, I got a message saying that the bilingual school was set on fire. Here we were demonstrating against political arson, and not too far away someone is already doing it with gasoline and matches. This time, the fire was ignited inside our home.

The smell of fire is still very strong in the parking lot across from the school. Slowly slowly, parents, teachers, students and recent graduates begin to arrive. Nobody is in a hurry to go inside, as if we fear actually seeing what we expect there, all while we’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened and the extent of the damage. “A first grade classroom was completely burned,” somebody says, “and the other first-grade classroom sustained serious damage, too.” The blood drains from our faces. They burned the first-grade classrooms? The classrooms in which children for the first time in their lives scribbled letters into words: “love, friendship, respect?”

We later learn that the arsonists threw all of the books that they found in the classrooms into a pile and burned them. The image is too difficult to even fathom, and a part of me is relieved that firefighters and police have cordoned off the burned classrooms and aren’t letting anyone in. Who can rid such an image from their head — a burned first-grade classroom?



Within an hour the school is bustling with people. Among the police officers, firefighters, people from the Jerusalem education bureau and other officials, are the rest of us: teachers, students and school staff. You can see the shock on our faces. I recognize a student who graduated last year and who lives on the other side of the city; I ask her what she’s doing here. “Since the Gaza war and everything that’s been happening in Jerusalem recently, I feel like I’m losing hope. I felt like everything that we built here over the past 12 years has been destroyed in two months. But anyway, the moment I heard that the school had been burned, I ran to come here. That’s something that never changes, it seems. This is home. I grew up here. They’re destroying my home. We fight over the land but this is my land. This school is my land.”

An outsider wouldn’t understand it, the deep feeling of belonging. That’s how it always works here: when it gets tough, we want to be together. Jut like during the war when we marched along the light rail tracks every week, and when it was important to make sure that the sane voice of Jerusalem was heard, but also when we just wanted to be together. And also now, as we shake off the feelings of helplessness and get ready for action: preparing alternate classrooms for those that were burned, making colorful banners for the first graders to see when they arrive in the morning, hanging signs in the hallways, cleaning, organizing. Home

As we get to work, we are reminded of other episodes in our history in which the school faced harassment: that time that they went into the lower classes and covered with glue all of the desks that bore names of Arab children; or in the school’s previous building when they slid burning pieces of paper under the doors in a more symbolic act of arson. All of the hateful and garbled graffiti sprayed on our walls over the years. And despite all that, we understand that this time it’s different. The children wander around with their parents looking especially worried. “Nadia, will there be school tomorrow?” a young student asks one of the school’s co-directors. “Of course there will be,” Nadia answers confidently with a big smile. “Not only will there be school but you need to finish your homework!”

Meanwhile, statements of condemnation and support start to come in, and people begin organizing various rallies in solidarity and support for the next day. We go home knowing that we will meet here again in just a few hours.

This morning, we knew we better arrive early ahead of the tumult that would certainly await us at the entrance of the school. Indeed, hordes of reporters and photographers assembled at the entrance. A burned school is a big story, it seems. We manage to usher the children into the school and then wait outside for the supporters who were supposed to arrive. Somebody mentions that it feels like a shiva (a Jewish mourning ritual) — receiving mourners, awaiting consolation calls.

And they came. Throngs of them came. The wonderful people from anti-racism group Tag Meir arrived, students and representatives of some other schools in the city also came, people from wider social circles, and other women and men who chose to spend their morning with us, in solidarity. An especially touching moment was when we saw a large group of youths chanting as they approached, and after our initial instincts — based on experience — made us shrink into a moment of fear, they got closer and we heard what they were chanting: “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.” It turned out that the neighboring “Rainbow School” canceled its classes so its students could come and support us. It’s hard to describe just how touching it was.

And the politicians came too, of course: MKs Nahman Shai and Erel Margalit, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who condemned the crime and called to restore routine to the city.

I appreciate that Mayor Barkat came to visit the school — and I say that without any cynicism. It was the right thing to do and it was necessary. Once upon a time, during the weekly protests in Sheikh Jarrah, we used to say, “there’s nothing holy in an occupied city.” Today I want to tell Barkat: there isn’t anything routine in an occupied city. A routine of occupation and violence is a routine of iniquity. You can condemn the torching of a school as much as you want, but when 40 percent of the city’s residents under your jurisdiction live a daily war zone, there’s nothing routine about that. When the daily routine of over 350,000 people in the city you run is a routine of daylight robbery, of violent police raids, of sponge-tipped bullets and arrests, of “skunk” trucks that spray putrid water on homes and schools, that’s not a routine we want to adopt. When the students in our school must leave their homes two hours before school in order to travel a distance that should take only 20 minutes because their neighborhood is barricaded and blocked with concrete blocks, when our students breath in tear gas in their homes each week and come to school from a daily war zone, we won’t join your calls to restore routine.

The routine in your city is one of iniquity, Mr. Barkat. Our school’s community is strong and vibrant. We demand, of course, that you and your leadership provide our students with protection from the increasing violence. But like always, we will be doing the repairs and rehabilitation by ourselves, with the strength we draw from our moral high ground and the civil and social solidarity we’ve built. We will overcome. You, Mr. Barkat, go see to the well being of the city you have been entrusted with managing. And if you need inspiration — moral, ethical or from the community — you are always welcome to come visit the bilingual school. We will keep going it alone here, free from fear and hatred.

This article was first published on +972′s Hebrew-language sister site, Local Call. Read it in Hebrew here.

Source: http://972mag.com/we-will-overcome-arson-mourning-at-jerusalems-bilingual-school/99428/

[Israeli]

4. Someone would rather burn my son's school than let Jews and Arabs coexist

The graffiti on the Jerusalem school will be washed away, and classes will go on; the students' own message will live on: We refuse to be enemies.

By Ilene Prusher

Someone didn’t want my son to go to school this morning.

Someone would rather my child stay home than be a Jew learning in a classroom with Arabs.

Someone – some group, in fact – hates the idea of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence so profoundly that they would prefer to set my son’s pre-school classroom on fire, sending the kids’ artwork, books and toys up in smoke, destroying their home away from home – and destroying their parents’ sense of security about where they send their children every day. If someone has no qualms about trying to burn down a school on a Saturday night, what would stop someone from attacking it in broad daylight?

Like other parents of the 600-plus children who attend the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School, we registered our son hoping that he would be part of a generation of kids for whom Arab-Jewish coexistence would be second nature. Kids who would be bilingual, and would be less likely to fear and hate “the other,” because this other would be the very friends and teachers they have come to know under normal circumstances, as part of their everyday lives – as equals.

But someone, it turns out, very much wants me and my children to fear and hate. Someone not only tried to burn down the school from the inside – they ultimately got the first-grade classrooms and not the pre-school – but they also left behind clear messages on the walls. “There is no coexistence with cancer,” one read. And then two that we’ve been accustomed to seeing in the places of these anti-Arab attacks: “Death to Arabs” and “Kahane was right.”

Kahane’s party Kach, to refresh memories, was banned by the Israeli government in 1988 as racist and anti-democratic. Among other things, he suggested that Arabs be encouraged to emigrate and be compensated for their property, or stay in Israel without voting rights. If they refused both options, they would eventually be removed by force. The euphemism of the day was transfer, but in reality, it was a plan for state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.

More than 25 years later, it is not a fringe political party making similar suggestions, but Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. On Friday, he published an updated platform for his party, Yisrael Beiteinu. It included a “peace plan" which calls on the government to encourage the gradual transfer of Israeli Arabs to a Palestinian state by offering them “economic incentives.” For several years now, Lieberman has been suggesting that Arab towns near the Green Line, such as Umm el-Fahm, be transferred to the Palestinian Authority in any peace agreement.

All of this is building in a common direction. Politicians don’t need to light small fires in schools; they’re busy lighting much bigger ones. The government’s attempts to pass some version of a “Jewish nation-state law” have only added to an already-acrid atmosphere. It is a movement which serves as a slap in the face to people who have for years been working towards Arab-Jewish equality. The slap says, you’re wasting your time – you’re even part of the problem.

In an equally stunning development Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked his Likud party’s faction chairman, Yariv Levin, to come up with an action plan on terrorism following the horrific terror attack in a Jerusalem synagogue on Nov. 18. His eight-point proposal includes the following: “Anyone convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails or fireworks will have their citizenship or residency automatically revoked.” An Arab’s citizenship in this country, we are clearly being told, is not only worth less, but can be stripped overnight.

I have to admit that the attack on my son’s school has me stunned – but not entirely surprised. Since the war between Israel and Hamas this summer, since the deaths of four innocent teenagers whose faces none of us can forget, I have started to worry about our decision to sign our child up for the bilingual school, simply out of fear that it could become a target.

But the graffiti will be washed away, and classes will go on. The message that will stay up, the one that I pass every day, is on a banner the students made this summer, and which you can see from the main road. Their message in Hebrew and Arabic, inspired by a popular Facebook campaign, is bigger than this one school, or this one troubling event: “We refuse to be enemies.”

After we dropped our son off at school this morning, there was a demonstration next door called by Tag Meir, the umbrella organization that holds gatherings in opposition to Tag Mechir –anti-Arab attacks by right-wing extremists. Labor MKs Erel Margalit and Nachman Shai were there, as were many local Jerusalem city council members. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua) showed up as well, and was the only member of the government to do so. It would have been reassuring if the same politicians pushing for this Jewish nation-state law were to come out to in person to condemn the attack on our children’s school. But they were nowhere to be found.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.629200

[eridani]

5. J Street email on attack on Max Rayne Hand in Hand School

We are profoundly outraged and saddened by the weekend arson attack on the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education in West Jerusalem. The Hand in Hand program is a beacon for tolerance and understanding between Jews, Christians and Muslims in Israeli society, where co-existence is now under extreme duress.

Many of us in the J Street family have personal connections to the school where 600 students--Jews and Arabs--study together in Hebrew and Arabic, learn about each other’s cultures and become friends. Jewish extremists are strongly suspected to be behind the attack. Although there were many security cameras on the site, police have yet to make any arrests.

The details of the attack bear witness to the degree of hatred that has clearly infected a segment of Israeli society. If this was not clear last summer when Israeli extremists tortured and murdered 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of three Israelis, it cannot be denied now. Truly, as Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said, a “racist demon” has emerged in Israel. If not
confronted, it will eventually eat away at the country’s democracy from within.

The arsonists piled up Hebrew and Arabic schoolbooks in two first-grade classrooms, poured flammable liquid on them and set them alight. They used children’s crayons and drawings as kindling for the blaze and scrawled racist graffiti on the walls of the building. One of the classrooms was completely destroyed.

What kind of minds would do such a thing? What kind of education produced those minds? It is hard to think of any action more out of keeping with Jewish values than to burn books in a school. Those who committed this cowardly act were literally attempting to burn prospects for peaceful co-existence in Israel.

We admire and applaud the parents and students who showed up for school on Sunday and have refused to be intimidated. But they cannot win this battle alone. All the resources of the State of Israel – police, judicial, education and social – must be brought to bear to fight this phenomenon, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

In fact, the entirety of the Jewish people – in Israel and abroad – needs to stand as one to convey clearly that there must be no place for racism in the homeland of a people who have suffered its effects so horribly throughout history.

This attack should be seen against the background of a series of violent incidents in Jerusalem, including the heinous attack last month on a synagogue in which two Palestinians murdered four worshippers and a police officer. The ever-escalating tensions are being fanned by a constant stream of statements by Israeli and Palestinian leaders designed to whip up nationalist feelings instead of calming them.