Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Israeli Jewish racism thread

One should not be afraid to call a spade a spade. Israeli Jews hate Arabs. But it's not a normal hate. It's a hate of cosmic dimensions. It's the hate of someone who can't even imagine the possibility of having anything to do with the Other.

Of course the statement above must be qualified. Not all Israeli Jews hate Arabs -- only an overwhelming majority that is fully supported by the State. And it's not a violent hate (except for the settlers and a few other groups), the reason it's not violent being that the State provides Jews with all the legal means to exclude Arabs from their communities.

There have been many recent examples of Israeli Jewish racism --from the statements of the housing minister that Jews and Arabs should not live together to the soccer player who apologized for suggesting that his team might hire an Arab--, so that I thought I might as well start a thread to gather information on the subject, which will be periodically updated with fresh racist outbursts from the Jews of Israel.

Just to start the database, allow me to report the case of Aadel Suad, an Israeli Arab who a few years ago had the weird idea of wanting to build a house in a plot of land he owned in a Jewish town. As usual, what followed is Kafkaesque:

Aadel Suad first came to the planning and construction committee of the Misgav Local Council in 1997. Suad, an educator, was seeking a construction permit to build a home on a plot of land he owns in the community of Mitzpeh Kamon. The reply he got, from a senior official on the committee, was a memorable one.

"Don't waste your time," he reportedly told Suad. "We'll keep you waiting for 30 years."

For Suad it's now been 12 years of fighting the committee's red tape to build a home on his own land. The reason, as far as he and his family are concerned, is singular: The local council doesn't want Arabs(...)

The Misgav Local Council rejected the accusations. The council said Suad's plot is located far from the other homes of the community and has no roads, sidewalks, lighting, water or sewer. All these would need to be connected through other plots, some of which are privately owned, the council said.

The council also said Suad's construction permit was conditioned on coming up with a plan to connect the plot to infrastructure, which he failed to produce in sufficient detail, or to accompany it with permits.

I.e., seeing that Suad's plot was far from the other homes, the Council imposed an ad hoc condition that wouldn't be required of a Jew and that would be next to impossible to meet precisely because of the plot's isolation. Read the whole story here. Be careful to notice the numerous measures taken by the Israel Land Administration to ensure that this particular Arab could not build a house on his own land.

25 comments:

  1. And it's not a violent hate

    Of course it is violent. It is not a "personal" violence. Instead it is an institutional violence. In fact that makes it more violent. Blood is not required for there to be violence.

    The effective delineation of sub-human by a state is an incredibly violent act.

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  2. I like your essay but I'm not quite sure what the point of starting such a thread really is. We know Zionism is a racist ideology and can see examples of that everyday. But what's to be gained by creating an endless list of racist incidents, what will we learn we don't already know?

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  3. Just go visit Lee John Barnes' website, or any number of other far right websites and you'll get the same antisemitic/Islamist tripe as here. Why don't you just join the BNP boy and stop the "human rights" pretense?

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  4. Gert, the key is that I don't preach to the converted. Although you and I know what Zionism is, there are people who take Zionists at their word. As I explained once, Israel enjoys a "credibility capital" that has nothing to do with its own record and everything to do with the Jews' achievements in the Diaspora.

    There are still masses who are prepared to believe that Jewish terrorists gave advance warnings of their attacks, because, you know, they can't have targetted women and children... the Jews don't do such things.

    It's important for those of us who want to amically debate the Zionists, or, euphemisms aside, troll their blogs, to have quick responses prepared for such outrageous claims. A lot of examples of Israeli Jewish racism is a good starting point.

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  5. 100% agree with Ibn Yusuf.

    Nice to see someone telling it like it is.:)

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  6. gert , write foxman

    We know antisemitism is racist and can see examples of that everyday. But what's to be gained by ADL creating an endless list of antisemitic incidents, what will we learn we don't already know?

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  7. At least Israel did fulfill one UN resolution- 'Zionism is Racism' resolution of 1975.

    sass

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  8. It isn't that clear what you mean by "hate," but it seems to come down to exclusiveness. Are hate and exclusiveness the same thing? Leftists, I have noticed, use the word "hate" for a wide variety of things. Attitudes towards Arabs among Israeli Jews probably vary with the person's politics in a way which resembles attitudes towards minority populations in other Western or Westernized countries. We once talked about the point of view at Ha'aretz and you dismissed it as only representative of a small number of Israelis. How about Ynet?
    Did you see this?

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3820473,00.html

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  9. 'We don't hate the Arabs. We just don't want them going to school with our kids, marrying our daughters, living in our blocks of flats, neighbourhoods, cities, country.'

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  10. Yitzchak! I paid homage to you in this post, but you didn't even notice.

    I don't believe attitudes towards Arabs in Israel are similar to, say, attitudes towards Paraguayans in Argentina. While it's true that an awful lot of people wouldn't like to have a Paraguayan neighbor, in practice there's little they can do. They have no legal tools to keep them away from their communities.

    This is not the case in Israel. In Israel, the State actively collaborates with the Jewish population in keeping them separate from the Arabs. The Housing Minister himself has declared that this is a desirable state of affairs.

    In other words, whereas in other countries discrimination against minorities is a personal choice frowned upon by most of the society and severely punished by the legislation, in Israel anti-Arab racism is the social norm and is upheld by the legal system.

    I had read the Ynet article you cite and I agree with it; I think the Abbas administration has a lot of positive things that are not being acknowledged by Israel. See here. But probably you point to the article as proof that there exist people beyond Haaretz who don't hate the Arabs. Yes, but they're a thin, and shrinking, slice of the Israeli Jewish society.

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  11. But probably you point to the article as proof that there exist people beyond Haaretz who don't hate the Arabs. Yes, but they're a thin, and shrinking, slice of the Israeli Jewish society.

    How do you know? Here is an article from the Jerusalem Post:

    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261244345829&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

    The point of view in the Ynet article is something you approve of. Why do you keep implying that anything else is "hate"? Is there anything to the right of your own point of view that you would not characterize that way?

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  12. Yitzchak! I paid homage to you in this post, but you didn't even notice.

    I did, by the way.

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  13. How do you know?

    Several polls have confirmed that Israeli Jewish racism against Arabs is on the rise.

    The point of view in the Ynet article is something you approve of. Why do you keep implying that anything else is "hate"?

    I didn't say "anything else." I gave concrete examples of very racist attitudes on the part of Israeli Jews.

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  14. Several polls have confirmed that Israeli Jewish racism against Arabs is on the rise

    That doesn't exactly prove that leftists who feel that the editorials in Ynet and Ha'aretz speak for them are a "thin and shrinking slice." There is an apples and oranges aspect to this also. I think many of the people who gave the "racist" answers to the poll questions actually feel an affinity for the Ha'aretz point of view. Life is complicated. Your vocabulary for dealing with paradoxes of this sort seems to be extremely limited.

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  15. Life is complicated. Your vocabulary for dealing with paradoxes of this sort seems to be extremely limited.

    See my post Murderers, freedom-fighters and "complex situations". Zionists cite paradoxes to excuse Israeli behavior. But they don't accept the possibility that the Palestinians may also be "paradoxal" (e.g. Abbas cracking down on Hamas in the WB while making ouvertures to Hamas in Gaza).

    I think many of the people who gave the "racist" answers to the poll questions actually feel an affinity for the Ha'aretz point of view.

    Why, that's exactly the point. Israeli leftists who defend Palestinian rights overwhelmingly do so because they think that giving them a viable state (as opposed to the fragmented Bantustans that have been offered so far) is the best way to ensure that they won't call for a binational state, which is the true anathema.

    When living side by side with another people is considered a catastrophee, you've got the exceptional racism I talked about. Hindus may despise Muslims, but no one in India is suggesting that Kashmir should be turned over to Pakistan. In Israel, by contrast, it has been proposed that parts of the country be annexed by a future Palestinian state in order to get rid of the Arabs. You need to hate a lot to get to that point.

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  16. In Israel, by contrast, it has been proposed that parts of the country be annexed by a future Palestinian state in order to get rid of the Arabs. You need to hate a lot to get to that point.

    Israeli Jews advocate the "two-state solution," and a preconditon for doing that is to "hate a lot." Is that a fair statement of your position? So the following is a particularly hateful post?

    http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2009/12/terms-of-compromise.html

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  17. Sorry Yitzhak but you just got destroyed.

    And what was with the world war 2 reference?

    I'm sorry but trying to justify Israeli hate is a pretty tough cliff to climb.

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  18. Israeli Jews advocate the "two-state solution," and a preconditon for doing that is to "hate a lot." Is that a fair statement of your position?

    Hmmm, no, that's not my position. My position is that it's racism that leads most Israelis to advocate a two-state solution. (I don't say that racism is a precondition for advocating that solution; in fact, certain people advocate it because of practical considerations, etc. But in the case of most Israelis, it's racism.)

    So the following is a particularly hateful post?

    Yaacov is a very good writer who is very careful not to make outragoeus statements.

    Still, he has never come up with a clear answer when I've challenged his assertions about the Arabs. For instance, he depicts the Palestinians as uncompromising. I pointed to the water agreements, in which the Palestinians accepted for Israel to use West Bank water under very generous terms (which the World Bank has now called unfair to the Palestinians themselves). His answer was, more or less, that since I don't live there I can't talk.

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  19. Yaacov is a very good writer who is very careful not to make outragoeus statements.

    Why does it require great care not to make them? Because he secretly harbors "outrageous" thoughts?

    My position is that it's racism that leads most Israelis to advocate a two-state solution.

    You started out with the term "hate of cosmic dimensions." I think that Israel is basically going along with what the world advocates in the hopes that it will end the conflict. I am ascribing a different motive to most Jewish advocates of the two-state solution than you are. How do we determine which one of us is correct?

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  20. I'm afraid you're not ascribing any motives to Jewish advocates of the two-state solution. You're simply stating that what they advocate is coincident with what most of the world advocates, which is true; but you don't explain the reasons for that advocacy.

    As for Yaacov, he has a lot of weird ideas I don't know what to make of. But yes, I think he's racist. He doesn't make outrageous statements about the Arabs like Elder of Ziyon does, for instance. But you can detect racism in his subtle statements and omissions. For instance, one of his constant themes is that you can't speak about Israel if you don't know Hebrew. However, he speaks a lot about the Palestinians without knowing Arab. And he lives in an Arab-Hebrew bilingual city!

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  21. I'm afraid you're not ascribing any motives to Jewish advocates of the two-state solution.

    I wrote "in the hopes that it will end the conflict." I could spell out more what that would mean, but I think you know. Ideally, an end to the conflict would mean that Israel is recognized, secure, established, freed from all the disabilities of being stuck in a low-level war, no longer fearful of a repeat (or worse) of the full-fledged wars of '48 or '67 or '74, no longer ruling over people who don't want to be ruled over--a true end to the conflict. Are those things actually available to Israel for any price? That's a different topic.

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  22. When ending the conflict means "There will be no Arab kids wanting to go to school together with my kids," that's racism.

    I have a hard time taking this seriously. You think it's all about having exclusive schools? That's the only reason you can think of that somebody might not want to be fighting a war anymore?

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  23. Racism exists everywhere. There are hate-filled people in all cultures and societies. Alas, we will never be rid of racism. However, through the structure of international law we can obliterate institutionalized racism, otherwise known as "Apartheid." It is a known fact that Israel is an Apartheid state that also inflicts an Apartheid regime on an occupied population living outside its borders. We all have the responsibility to educate people about Israeli Apartheid. Ibrahim is doing just that. Carry on, brother!

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