UPDATE: ON SUNDAY, ISRAELI NEWSPAPERS ARE REPORTING THAT A NEW REPORT INDICATES A DRAMATIC RISE IN ANTI-ARAB RACISM — Haaretz reported that “Racism against Israel’s Arab citizens has dramatically increased in the past year, including a 26 percent rise in anti-Arab incidents, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s annual report. Author Sami Michael, the association’s president, said upon the release of the report that racism was so rife it was damaging civil liberty in Israel. “Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy,” Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday”…
Haaretz adds that “According to the June 2007 Democracy Index of the Israel Democracy Institute, for example, only half the public believes that Jews and Arabs must have full equal rights. Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government. According to a Haifa University study, 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are ‘unclean’. The ACRI says that bills introduced in the Knesset contribute to delegitimize the country’s Arab citizens, such as ones that would link the right to vote and receive state allowances to military or national service. They also include bills that require ministers and MKs to swear allegiance to a Jewish state and those that set aside 13 percent of all state lands owned by the Jewish National Fund for Jews only. ‘Arab citizens are frequently subject to ridicule at the airports’, the report states. It says that Arab citizens ‘are subject to ‘racial profiling’ that classifies them as a security threat. The government also threatens the freedom of expression of Arab journalists by brandishing the whip of economic boycott and ending the publication of government announcements in newspapers that criticize its policy’.” The Haaretz report can be read here.
Israel’s YNet news website carries a report saying that “The Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s (ACRI) report on civil rights in Israel paints a bleak picture: Increasing racism, restriction of personal freedoms and discrimination even within the Knesset walls – and that’s just scratching the surface. Published Saturday, the report reveled that Israeli youths are bombarded with stereotypic, racist imagery, and their opinions have developed accordingly: Over two-thirds Israeli teen believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fear Arabs all together. The report becomes even grimmer, citing the ACRI’s racism poll, taken in March of 2007, in which 50% of Israelis taking part said they would not live in the same building as Arabs, will not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not let Arabs into their homes. Fifty percent of those polled also said they believed Israel should encourage its Arab citizens to emigrate. Racism in Israel is on the rise, said the report: in 2006 there was a 26% increase in racist incidents towards Arabs and the general sense of hatred towards them has doubled. The media, said the ACRI, played a major part in fanning the flame, intensifying the Arab image as negative and terrorizing. The Knesset was not absent from the report as well, as it allows bills which delegitimize Israel’s Arabs citizens before the plenum, preconditions social rights in IDF or national service and make its Arab MKs swear allegiance to a Jewish State. The report devotes a special section to the recently-approved JNF bill, which allows Jewish National Fund land – which make up 13% of all State owned land – to be allocated to Jews only [n.b., this was the actual practice, now it is being encoded in a law]. According to the report, Israeli Arabs are subject to constant racial proofing, which defines them as a security threat; resulting in demeaning and degrading treatment at airports and public venues. Furthermore, in the Second Lebanon War, some 40% of the citizens killed were Israeli-Arabs, mostly due to a severe lack of shelters, but still – the rehabilitation and fortification of Arab towns remains, according to the report, ridiculously low” … The YNet report is here.
Ellen Davidson wrote from Nazareth today that “From 1948 until 1966, Palestinians inside Israel were subject to military law, while Jews lived under civilian law. During that time, 66 percent of Arab-owned land was confiscated … Today, Israeli Palestinians, 20 percent of the population, own 2.5 percent of the land. Discrimination inside Israel falls broadly into four categories, according to Mohammad Zeidan, general director of the Nazareth- based Arab Association for Human Rights (AHR): laws that give different privileges and rights to Jews and non-Jews; indirect discrimination not specifically linked to religion; institutional discrimination, such as allocation of municipal funds; and racism in public life, including cultural discrimination”. Ellen Davidson’s article can be viewed here.