True Ugly Face of ARAB RACISM - even inside Israel

Submitted by Dee (United States), Dec 7, 2010 at 11:37

The following pieces are mere examples of the complete silence on ARAB RACISM - Not only outside Israel in the saturated-bigotry and Islamic apartheid world, but even inside Israel's democracy, by Israeli Arabs, their racism [like: constant Arabs attacking Jews and the 'off limits' for Jews in "Arab areas" (ethnic cleansing?), where Jews are regarded by racist Arabs as "intruders"] is usually minimized in the Israeli press as "hooliganism" or "nationalism." All the while Israeli Jews legitimate concern for their safety from bigoted Arabs' attacks are categorized so often as "racist."

OP-ED

The True Face Of Israeli Racism

By Steven Plaut

Posted Nov 24 2010

Allow us to introduce you to young Kochav Segal Halevi. The 26-year-old Israeli is receiving death threats. In fact, he had to go into hiding. His offense? He purchased an apartment in the Arab town of Ibillin, not far from Haifa.

The Arabs there do not like the idea of their town being polluted by the presence of a Jew. I mean, one Jew and there goes the neighborhood. Arabs who sell property to Jews have similarly been threatened and attacked. And of course the moderates from the Palestinian Authority routinely torture and execute Arabs who sell to Jews.

I mention this because the leftist media in Israel and in the world are, as usual, up in arms over supposed Israeli Jewish racism against Arabs.

Yes, there are Jewish closed communities in Israel, some of them religiously observant, where one must be accepted by admissions committees, and they tend to refuse membership to Arabs "to preserve the character of the community." (In religious communities, non-religious Jews get barred as well. Other communities, including kibbutzim, have age and marital status restrictions.)

But the reality is that, by and large, Israeli Arabs can live in just about any Jewish area in the country, while Jews cannot move into any Arab town, village or neighborhood. Jews cannot move into the Arab areas because they will be murdered if they move there. Every Israeli understands these unwritten "rules of the game."

In fact, Jews often risk their lives just passing through Arab areas, as a group of four Jewish Hebrew University students discovered during a recent weekend when they were almost lynched after making a wrong turn into an Arab neighborhood next to the campus.

Arabs from (Arab) Nazareth routinely buy housing in (Jewish) Upper Nazareth, but Jews from Upper Nazareth never purchase property in (Arab) Nazareth, knowing they'd be killed if they did. During the pogroms by Galilee Arabs in the summer of 2000, Arabs invaded Upper Nazareth and attacked Jews there. The Jews of Upper Nazareth did not attack Arabs in Nazareth. So who are the racists there?

More generally, the new party line of the radical Left is that, yes, Arabs must be permitted to live anywhere they want among Israeli Jews, but no, Jews must be prevented from ever moving into areas the Left regards as "Arab" - i.e., places where Jews do not belong. Hebrew University's tenured leftists and their jihadi fellow travelers have been leading the marches in Jerusalem to prevent Jews from moving into neighborhoods inside Jerusalem regarded by the Left as areas where Jews are regarded as "intruders."

Many parts of the Galilee today have Arab majorities. The Jews in Carmiel and Safed, to name but two towns, feel they are under demographic siege. Much of the local opposition to Arabs moving into those towns is based on the fact that violence and hostilities have broken out whenever significant numbers of Arabs moved to neighborhoods there. After all, we are in the middle of a war and the local Arabs, by and large, openly identify with the country's enemies.

The anti-Israel Left sees "racism" in calls to restrict Arabs moving into the Jewish towns of the Galilee, but has never expressed an iota of criticism about the violent threats that prevent Jews from moving into Arab areas. Those folks have had nothing to say about the plight of young Halevi. That's not racism, you see.

The Left also is completely silent about the violent attacks by Arabs against right-wing Jewish protesters who hold marches in some Arab towns, like Umm al-Fahm, the seat of the Israeli Arab pro-jihad Islamofascist movement (a movement that openly identifies with the Hamas). After all, those Jewish marchers are violating the anti-Jewish sensitivities of the local Arabs.

Of course, when gay pride marches are held in Jewish religious neighborhoods of Jerusalem (but never, mind you, in Muslim neighborhoods there), no leftist thinks those marchers should be expected to respect local sensitivities.

It is true that threats against Jews, which effectively prevent Jews from living in Arab areas in the Galilee and Negev and elsewhere, are not formal and officially proclaimed. Nevertheless, everyone in the country understands the threats of violence that operate against Jews seeking to live in Arab areas.

Again, the leftist knee-jerk response to Jewish "invasions" of areas where "Jews do not belong" has been to demand that the Jews be evicted. Arabs routinely move into many Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa and there have been virtually no incidents of violence against them. Meanwhile the Left keeps insisting that any peace deal with the Palestinian Authority must involve the complete eviction of all Jews living in the West Bank. Arabs will be free to live in Israel after any such "peace deal," but Jews must be prohibited from living in what could become "Palestinian areas."

So who are the real racists? Where is the real apartheid?

http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/46191

Racism: The reality whose name we do not speak‎ Jerusalem Post - Seth J. Frantzman - Nov 2, 2010

[...]
The absence of discussion about Arab racism is a phenomenon of the old Western postcolonial view that only the minority suffers racism while the majority is always the perpetrator. Racism by the minority is "resistance," "authentic," "spontaneous," "hooliganism" or "nationalism."

I WAS witness to the "hooliganism." Walking to a bus stop across from the Hebrew University, I saw four Arab youths walking in the middle of the street. Every time a car driven by Jews passed, they would jump in front of it, make menacing gestures, laugh and then let it pass. The same day a 57-year-old Jew was stabbed in the Old City by two 20-year-old Arabs who, according to police, went there to stab a Jew.

In mid-October in the village of Deir al-Assad in the Galilee, a Jewish woman on leave from the IDF drove into the neighborhood with her Jewish friends looking for a bakery. She was immediately sexually harassed – what the police described as "teased" – by young Arab men. While attempting to leave, a stone was thrown through the car window, fracturing her skull. The police subsequently arrested an Arab man "on suspicion that the [he] was driving the car at the time of the incident and was involved in the assault."

The police concluded that "there is no evidence indicating the assault was motivated by anything other than hooliganism." The mayor of the village condemned the attack "and underscored the good relations between" its residents and the Jews in nearby Karmiel.

Of course it's not the only story in the news regarding hooliganism and racism. On October 8 Arab children gathered in Silwan for what had become a daily event. Lookouts were posted to watch for cars driven by Jews. When they arrived, the children threw stones at them. On that day, for some reason, a number of cameramen were invited to watch the ritual and good footage resulted. An accident resulted in which a Jewish driver, David Be'eri, struck two of the children.

Of course this rock throwing takes place against a backdrop of tensions in east Jerusalem between Jews wishing to live there and Arabs who see their neighborhoods as being invaded by settlers. The "hooliganism" is a daily occurrence, whether it's in the Negev or Route 65 that runs through Umm el-Fahm.

In Jerusalem the Jewish victim of the stoning is called a "settler."

But what is more interesting is a third term that crops up from time to time: "nationalist motives." In 2007 French-Jewish immigrant Julian Soufir "decided to murder an Arab."

He lured taxi driver Taysir Karaki to his apartment in Tel Aviv, slit his throat and left his body in the apartment.

The head of the Yarkon District police investigation unit "suspected that there was a nationalistic motive behind the murder."

MK Ahmed Tibi noted that an "atmosphere of incitement, hatred of Arabs and escalating racism in the country are fertile soil for this crime."

On August 15, 2009, six Arab men from Jaljulya and their Jewish girlfriends, one of whom was a soldier and another a minor from Petah Tikva, went to Tel Baruch beach, north of Tel Aviv. Arik Karp, his wife and daughter were out for a stroll. One of the Arabs harassed them, "baiting them by asking the father to fix him up with one of the women."

Then two others came and assaulted the Jewish women, who managed to escape. The Arabs then beat Arik Karp, whose dead body was found later on the beach, purchased more alcohol and went to a forest where they lit a fire and danced through the night. The case against them is ongoing more than a year later.

There was no outcry about racism in the Karp murder.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemned what he called "domestic terrorism."

In the end it is all semantics. There are no "nationalist" motives. There is no "hooliganism."

There is only racism.

The one deciding factor in each case was race.

Had Arik Karp been Khalid Musa or Taysir Karaki been Ben Cohen they would be alive today, and had David Be'eri or the Jews from Karmiel been Arabs entering an Arab neighborhood no one would have harassed them. In many communities here the evils of the American Old South are alive and well, and the police seem to distort the nature of the crimes in the name of "quiet."

Tibi is right, there is escalating murderous racism, and a lot of it is in his own community.

Until we address the truth rather than covering it over with semantics and "coexistence" initiatives, the racism will only grow. Those who put themselves in charge of talking about racism rarely witness its manifestations, and those who know it firsthand will never accept the pie-in-the-sky slogans about ending it.

Is there one positive note to this whole story? When the Arab youths on Mount Scopus were harassing Jewish drivers, they were approached by a woman who shouted at them that they should be ashamed: "You are the reason people say terrible things about Arabs!" The woman was Arab.

The writer is a PhD researcher at Hebrew University and a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=193733

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