Wave of ethnic rage worries Israeli PM, activists

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"A wave of protests and discriminatory acts by Jewish Israelis against Arabs and Africans is worrying rights activists and has prompted an unprecedented appeal for calm from Israel's prime minister.

The past week alone has seen a string of passionate protests targeting "fraternisation" between Arab men and Jewish women and criticising the rising number of African migrants.

Also this week, Jerusalem police said they had arrested a gang of young Jews accused of multiple hate crime attacks against Arabs, shortly after the publication of a letter signed by dozens of Israeli rabbis, many of them state employees, calling on Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unusual step of addressing the incidents in a video message posted on his YouTube and Facebook pages.

"We are a country run by the rule of law, we respect all peoples, whoever they are," he said."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hzv8bjsozxpsHKzaHCHRKfFSbjAA?docId=CNG.8e3122d26f285f9098472daa98df0cd1.de1


Arabs flee home due to racist threats

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4003502,00.html

Four Muslims, Druze forced out of rented flat in Tel Aviv after neighbors, who say rabbi told them Arabs must leave, vandalize their home and threaten to attach explosives to their car. 'I felt humiliated by hatred,' says Abbas, who served in IDF. But residents claim Arabs were less than neighborly: 'At night we are afraid to walk around neighborhood,' says one woman

<snip>

"Five residents of the north, four Muslims and a Druze, were forced to leave their apartment in southern Tel Aviv due to threats and persecution by their Jewish neighbors, Ynet learned Thursday.

"I felt humiliated by the hatred," said Ganem Abbas, the young Druze man, who has served in the IDF.

Abbas, originally from Abu Sinan in the north, came to the center of Israel two weeks ago in order to work at a construction site in Jaffa, which he says is owned by the municipality. He and his friends decided to rent an apartment nearby, in Shapiro neighborhood in Tel Aviv.

But three days ago the friends returned home in the evening to see that their main water pipe had been broken. Gas bottles had been stolen.

"The landlady told me that people from the neighborhood had threatened to torch the house and attack her if we don't get out, because we're Arabs," Abbas said.

He also described a particularly humiliating moment. "The neighbors came out and started to yell that they don't want to see Arabs in the neighborhood, and that it is for Jews only," he recounted."


TA protest against infiltrators turns violent

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4002634,00.html

<snip>

"Hundreds of Tel-Aviv residents on Tuesday protested against African infiltrators under the banner "Enough with fear in the neighborhoods; send the infiltrators back home."

The protesters, who claimed they have been forsaken by the government, marched from the southern neighborhood of Kiryat Shalom to the market area in Hatikva neighborhood while calling out "Bibi go home."

<snip>

"The protest was attended by members of Knesset from several parties – not only of the right-wing. "I am here so that the radical voices are not the only ones heard," said MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima).

"All large parties need to battle together against this phenomenon and those who call us racists," he said, adding, "This is not the battle of radicals or racists. This is the battle of people who want to secure a Jewish state for all its citizens."

[Lost-in-FL]

1. Imagine that. nt

[T Wolf]

2. When your country is based on a bigoted premise, how can there be surprise when bigotry occurs? nt

[aranthus]

3. the premise that there is a Jewish people entitled to a state of their own is bigotted?

Thanks for clarifying. Do you feel that way about the idea of a Palestinian people? French? Japanese? Anyone besides Jews? Every nation based state?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. Yes, it's immensely bigotted. Statehood comes from geography, not ethnicity.

French, Japanese and Palestinian are all geographical. A person from or with ancestors from France, Japan or Palestine has a legitimate stake in those countries.

The equivalent of those is "Israeli", not "Jewish". People from or with ancestors from Israel have a legitimate stake in it, whether Jewish or not; non-Israeli Jews like me have no right to claim any connection to it.

Ethnic groups do not have rights to states, and demanding a state that gives your ethnic group special priviledges is bigotted.

[oberliner]

8. No, it absolutely is not. And statehood certainly does not come from geography.

Most of the people who are members of this board live in the United States.

Almost none of them are descendants of someone who is native to this land geographically.

Almost all of the founders of the United States were born somewhere else.

With respect to Israel, there is nothing "immensely bigoted" whatsoever involved unless you count the bigotry that the Jewish people dealt with in the period leading up to Israel's founding.

The equivalent of French, Japanese, and Palestinian is not "Israeli" - Israeli is term that did not exist until very recently. In fact, some of the descendants of the Jewish people who would now be called Israeli would have been called Palestinian in the time prior to Israel's founding.

Israel, as a country, was created specifically in response to the oppression of the Jewish people who were living in various places around the world but still, in many cases, had a shared national identity.

Many states have been formed along ethnic rather than geographical lines with previous borders drawn arbitrarily by past colonial powers being replaced by those which more accurately reflect those distinctions.

Attempting to annihilate the entire Jewish community of Europe was bigoted. Helping to create a state for what remained of that community and for others with a shared Jewish identity around the world seems to have been the very least the international community ought to have done in the face of those atrocities.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. Everyone is native to somewhere else if you go back far enough.

Right to an area stems from the length of time since the last illegitimate transfer of ownership. This is why founding Israel, the US, New Zealand etc were crimes against humanity, but by now so would destroying them be.

And please spare me the bullshit that the holocaust justified the nakba. Two wrongs do not make a right; the correct response to the holocaust was to protect the rights of Jews to live safely in their own states and to give those from states which continued to persecute them asylum.

The one thing shared Jewish identity was not, and is not, is national - the Jews are an ethnic group; we are not a nation state.


A state whose raison d'etre is discrimination on grounds of ethnicity is, ipse facto, bigotted.


Are you seriously claiming that the fact that I could immigrate to Israel despite having no connection to it whatsoever, whereas Palestinians who were born there and whose ancestors lived there for many generations cannot, is not bigotted?

[shira]

9. Singling out and condemning Jewish self-determination is itself immensely bigoted. n/t

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. But condemning self-determination for all ethnic groups is not. N.T.

[aranthus]

12. Right. Archie Bunker wasn't a bigot. He hated everyone. n/t

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. Neither true nor relevant. N.T.

[mudplanet]

14. I might buy that except I opposed Christians doing the same thing

and especially doing it with my tax dollar.

I don't think much of 'religiously defined' or 'racially defined' statehood, period.
Don't expect me to pay for it.

Next we'll hear that I'm a bigot because I oppose making America a "White, Christian Nation."

Bigots get upset when they get called out on their bigotry.

[mudplanet]

13. Yes. But what's really wrong is using my tax dollars to build that religious state

on land that belonged to the people being persecuted

[mudplanet]

17. I was unaware that Jewish was a nationality

I'm certainly against spending my tax dollars to support a religious state

[aranthus]

18. Now you are. n/t

[mudplanet]

19. Wow. Can non-Jewish be a nationality, too? America, the Christian nation?

End US support of Israel.

[aranthus]

20. Of course Americans are a nation.

What do you think we are, chopped liver?

[mudplanet]

21. A "Christian" nation?

Israel is a religious state. America is a secular state which has a code prohibiting the establishment of a state religion and discrimination against people based upon their religion (or absence of religious identity).

I'm an American. Propping up a state that defines itself religiously goes counter to my beliefs and nature. If Israel want's to be a "Jewish state" it ought to try to do that without US support.

[Igel]

4. I'd put it another way.

When your country is based in a bigoted neighborhood, what's the surprise when it rubs off on the newcomers?

"Humiliated" but not "afraid." Not the motivation I'd choose.

[shira]

5. Zionism isn't racist. It's a response to anti-semitism.

Singling out and condemning Jewish self-determination is itself a form of racism.

Besides, as Alan Dershowitz once wrote; "A world that closed its doors to Jews who sought escape from Hitler's ovens lacks the moral standing to complain about Israel's giving preference to Jews".

[jimmie]

15. Of course its a form of racism

some things never change.

[azurnoir]

6. How is this any surprise? The Likud Charter states

"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting."

Therefore annihilating the slightest chance of a two-state solution.

On Palestinian self-rule it says:

"The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs."

Therefore annihilating any chance of seeing a Palestinian sovereign state.

On Jerusalem:

"Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem, including the plan to divide the city presented to the Knesset by the Arab factions and supported by many members of Labor and Meretz."

Therefore annihilating any chance for future peace negotiations because east Jerusalem as capital of a future Palestinian state is non-negotiable for any Palestinian.

http://muslimvillage.com/forums/topic/49631-likud-charter-does-not-recognize-palestine/

it should be remembered that Likud is a '3rd generation' renaming of Irgun which changed its name to Herut and then later to Likud

the YNet article refers to African not as illegals, not as migrant workers, or even as illegal migrant workers bur as infiltrators, a term usually reserved for enemy personal that 'sneak' into ones territory for the purpose of destruction