RACISM SANS FRONTIERES ~~ IT’S NOT JUST ARABS THAT ARE TARGETED « Desertpeace

Recent rabbinical decrees in Israel have sparked a ‘go-ahead’ for racism to run rampant in the streets of every major city in Israel. Those decrees with the encouragement of the racist government itself are both responsible. it’s not only Palestinians that fall victim to these beasts, it’s the foreign worker, the foreign tourist and homosexuals as well.
Racism and other forms of cancer have no bounds as can be seen in the reports posted below…..

 

Police are also investigating the possibility that the gang is responsible for assaulting a tourist, Chilean citizen Jose Toledo, six weeks ago.

In addition to Arabs, or people they thought looked like Arabs, the gang also sought to attack persons they identified as homosexuals.

Upsurge in racism as protesters take to the streets against Arabs, migrant workers

Tel Aviv protesters called on government to deport aliens and refugees, and on local landlords to refrain from renting them apartments.

Just weeks after several dozen state-employed rabbis ignited a major controversy by issuing a letter calling on Israeli Jews not to rent or sell their homes to non-Jews, and one day after an anti-Arab demonstration in Bat Yam, Tuesday saw two more incidents in the rising tide of hatred and racism that appears to be sweeping the country.

In Jerusalem, police said on Tuesday they had arrested nine members of a suspected youth gang that has been targeting Arab passersby in the center of the city in recent months. Police officials also released information on the arrests, which were carried out over a two-week period.

The suspects, who are reportedly residents of Jerusalem and nearby settlements, have been released under house arrest until the completion of the investigation.

Meanwhile, in south Tel Aviv, hundreds of residents demonstrated on Tuesday against the presence of foreigners in their neighborhood. Holding signs declaring “We’ve been afraid long enough, send the infiltrators home,” among other demands, protesters called on the government to deport aliens and refugees, and on local landlords to refrain from renting them apartments.

Several dozen right-wing activists who do not reside in Tel Aviv were said to have joined the demonstration as well.

Attacks coordinated via Facebook

Police investigators in Jerusalem believe the nine suspects under house arrest had been members of a gang that used a 14-year-old girl to trap their victims. Police suspect that the girl would approach Arab men and ask them to smoke a cigarette with her or take a walk with her. She would then lead them to the gang members, who were waiting to attack.

The gang allegedly assaulted its victims with stones, bottles and tear gas. And the attacks were said to be coordinated though Facebook, text messages and phone calls.

Police believe the youths to be responsible for more than 10 attacks on Arabs in recent weeks. Some of the victims required medical treatment in hospital after being assaulted. Most of the incidents took place on Thursday and Saturday nights.

Police are also investigating the possibility that the gang is responsible for assaulting a tourist, Chilean citizen Jose Toledo, six weeks ago.

In addition to Arabs, or people they thought looked like Arabs, the gang also sought to attack persons they identified as homosexuals, Haaretz has learned.

Though the investigation is ongoing, police officials said they are quite certain that the leader of the gang was a 14-year-old and that the attacks were motivated by nationalism.

According to Haim Shmueli, a senior officer with the Jerusalem District Police who briefed reporters yesterday: “Those involved admit to the allegations against them. Some have also linked their actions with those of others and additional arrests are expected. They did this for nationalist reasons – that’s why it involves members of minority groups. Some of the suspects said they were acting out of vengeance because family members had been injured in terrorist attacks. Some of them participated due to peer pressure.”

One victim, 21-year-old Annan Yaghmour from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, told Haaretz about the gang’s attack on him a month ago. The attack occurred on a Saturday night while he was making his way home with a family member, he said.

“Suddenly a girl showed up and asked me for a cigarette and asked me to go with her,” Yaghmour claimed. “I thought there was something odd about it, and I told the boy [my relative] to wait and I went with her. Suddenly I saw two [guys] behind me and eight in front of me. I stopped and said I didn’t want to go any further, but as I tried to walk away the two behind me jumped on me.

“I tried to run but one of them tripped me and I fell and then they all began to hit me,” he continued. “I tried to tell them that I was Israeli and they shouted ‘Where is your ID?’ When I couldn’t find it they shouted ‘Arab, Arab,’ and one of them sprayed tear gas in my face.”

Yaghmour lost consciousness as a result of the attack and was taken to Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem, having suffered injuries over his entire body.

Adam Sabih had a similar story to tell, having fallen victim to an attack on October 31, near the same location as the alleged assault on Yaghmour.

“I was walking in Haatzmaut Park, and was speaking on the telephone with my sister in Arabic,” he recalled. “Then someone came along and asked me whether I had a cigarette. I said ‘no’ and continued walking. Suddenly I saw 20-30 guys wearing kippas [skullcaps worn by Orthodox Jewish men] coming at me.

“They asked me what my name was and I told them ‘Adam,’” he continued. “Then they asked me for my last name and I told them ‘Sabih.’ I had not finished saying it when one of them shouted ‘Kill this Arab.’ I don’t know how God gave me the strength to escape and I ran all the way to King George Street.”

“There is law and justice,” Annan Yaghmour’s father said yesterday. “I am glad they caught them and they need to pay for their crimes. My son was beaten badly and nearly killed. I hope this doesn’t happen again. Arabs should not attack Jews, and Jews should not attack Arabs.”

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Related article

Is this not racism?

“I felt that God brought back my son from the dead,” said Fatema, mother of Gamal Nassar who attends college in the city of Safad in northern Israel. She hugs him tight after checking to make sure he was not hurt by the firebombs that targeted his car as he left his rented apartment in Safad on Friday. It was not a surprise attack, since it’s part of spiralling violence by Jewish youth against Arab students who come to attend college from villages surrounding the city. The town’s rabbi, Samuel Eliyahu, recently issued an edict banning Jewish settlers from renting homes to Arab students.Salam Aghbaria, 20, was praying in the flat he rented in the town when the walls shook violently after Jewish youth threw a number of firebombs into the apartment. Aghbaria miraculously survived. Many of Nassar and Aghbaria’s Arab classmates quickly left their rentals and returned to their families. Now they commute the long distance daily to attend college because it is too dangerous for them to rent flats in town.

What upset the students, their families and leaders of the Palestinians of 1948 is that the Israeli government did not lift a finger against the racist instigator-rabbi, and no measures were taken against the Jewish terrorist groups targeting Arab youth. While some 1948 Palestinians wait for an official response by Israel, tens of senior rabbis in Israel are signing an edict prohibiting Jews from renting or selling their homes to non-Jews, including Arabs and foreign workers.

The Israeli news website Walla! stated that the rabbis are justifying the edict out of fear of inter-marriage between Jews and gentiles. They are also concerned about a drop in the price of residential units where non-Jews live. The edict stated: “Any Jew who sells or rents their home to non-Jews must know that he is costing a loss for his neighbours.” The rabbis further called for a boycott of any Jew who sells or rents his home to a gentile, instructing other Jews to ostracise him, not trade with him, and ban him from entering Jewish holy sites until he revokes the sale or rental to a non-Jew.

The portal noted that all senior rabbis of major cities, who all receive salaries from the state, signed the edict despite the fact that they come from across the religious spectrum. The decree is the last in a series of racist proclamations by Jewish rabbis; an earlier one banned 1948 Palestinians from nominating themselves in the Israeli elections, and another prevented Jews from donating blood to gentiles.

It seems that the political and legal environment in Israel encourages racist killings, as demonstrated by the case of Rabbi Isaac Shapiro, director of the Youssef Hai Religious School in the settlement of Har Brakha, north of the occupied city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. Shapiro recently issued a book justifying the killing of Palestinian men, women and babies. In Law of the King, Shapiro published tens of references from the Torah and Talmud justifying the killing of babies of people who are enemies of Jews.

Haaretz and Maariv newspapers published excerpts of the book noting that Shapiro had stretched the interpretation of killing the infants of gentiles if they were in a place to harm the Jews. Another stretch is Shapiro’s assertion that the children of the leaders of enemies should be murdered to influence the morale of their fathers: “It is acceptable to harm the child of any leader to prevent [the father] from evil acts… We found that jurisprudence justifies the murder of the children of non-Jews in anticipation of the danger they pose in the future if they grow up to become evil like their fathers.”

One of the most dangerous decrees is one signed by a large number of rabbis in the Association of Rabbis of the Land of Israel headed by Rabbi Dov Lior, which urged the Israeli army to indiscriminately bomb Palestinian residential areas. A number of religious officials in Olmert’s former cabinet used this edict to support the purposeful killing of Palestinians during the last war by Israel against the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008. The proclamation stated: “Jewish law permits the bombing of Palestinian civilian targets, and the Torah allows launching missiles in the direction of fire, even if there are civilians there.”

The signatory rabbis went as far as saying that the army does not have to warn civilians before shelling begins.

Rabbi Eliyahu Reskin, a leading settlements rabbi, mocked calls for dialogue between Jewish rabbis and religious officials in the Arab world. Reskin believes the only form of dialogue between Muslims and Jews should be with “bullets”, and asserts that without convincing the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that a settlement cannot be imposed on Israel by force, there is no point in such a dialogue.

It is clear that racist incitement by rabbis succeeded in embedding racist sentiments among the Israeli population. According to an opinion poll by the Israeli Institute for Democracy published last week, 83 per cent of Jews in Israel believe that Israel’s Jewish character is more important to them than it being a democracy. Meanwhile, 86 per cent believe that decisions on the future of the state should only be taken by a majority of the Jewish vote only. Some 62 per cent assert that as long as there is conflict with Arab countries, Tel Aviv should not take into consideration the positions of 1948 Palestinians, while 53 per cent say that the state has the right to encourage 1948 Palestinians to emigrate.

Another 76 per cent of Jews think the state should not allow first-degree relatives of Arab Israelis to come to Israel as part of any family reunification schemes. Also, 55 per cent want the state to allocate more funds to Jewish residential compounds than to Arab ones. Meanwhile, 46 per cent said they don’t want an Arab worker fixing their house and 39 per cent did not want to use a foreign handyman.

A study by the dean of social studies at Haifa University, Sami Smouha, revealed that 65 per cent of Israelis refuse to share residential areas with 1948 Palestinians, while 67 per cent of 1948 Palestinians are willing to share living districts with Jews. According to the findings, 65 per cent of Jews believe that 1948 Palestinians represent a danger for Israel because of their natural growth, and the possibility of rebellion and civil disobedience in support of the plight of their brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A report, issued by the Citizen’s Rights Society, an Israeli human rights group, revealed that hatred levels against Arabs have risen by 100 per cent. But it isn’t only Jewish society that is racist against Arabs, so are the politicians. An article by Moshe Feiglin, a leading member of the ruling Likud Party, published in Maariv on 5 December notes: “The Arab is not the son of the desert but the father of the desert. The Arab brings desert with him wherever he goes … The Arabs are rooted in the culture of thievery. The Arab mind suffers from lack of innovation; there is no good or bad in Arab culture, but only strong and weak.”

There are indicators, however, that the increasing hatred is not only against the Arabs but everything foreign. A mass rally on 9 December in Tel Aviv attended by secular and religious figures called for expelling all foreigners from Israel’s largest city under the motto, “We have become trash dumps because of foreign workers.” Suzy Cohen, an activist in the city who organised the rally, did not hesitate in saying: “I don’t care if they call me a Nazi, as long as we throw out the foreigners.”

The Israeli anti-Zionist thinker Gideon Levy is upset with the rising racism, which he describes as “a cancer quickly spreading through Israel’s body. From the southern most point of Eilat to Tabaria in the North, one Israeli city after another announces ‘I am racist’,” stated Levy. In an article published last week, he condemned the silence of the government and state apparatus regarding expressions of racism. “We are surrounded by silence. There is no government in Israel. There is no one to point out that Arab students have rights in their country,” Levy wrote.

“Foreign workers from Africa are human beings we should respect,” he continued, noting that Israel at the core is a country of “refugees and Holocaust survivors, yet discussion of the fate of foreign workers is limited to demonic solutions where Israelis are competing for the most gruesome remedies. Some suggest building a wall to prevent the illegal entry of foreign workers, while others suggest collective incarceration of foreigners or their expulsion. Meanwhile, the rabbis do not express any sympathy for these wretched foreigners who are part of the human race.”

 

RACISM SANS FRONTIERES ~~ IT’S NOT JUST ARABS THAT ARE TARGETED « Desertpeace.

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