Restricting Israel's Arab minority

[mudplanet]

Legitimacy of Israeli democracy threatened as racism increases under discriminatory laws against Palestinian minority.
by Mel Frykberg

A number of recent incidents discriminating against Israel’s Palestinian minority has prompted Israeli Knesset (parliament) members to debate whether Israel is becoming increasingly racist.

Ronit Sela from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri) has no doubts. "Israel’s democracy is under threat as an increasingly large racist element raises its collective head. A number of racist occurrences have taken place in a climate conducive to racism. This wouldn’t have happened prior to the current right-wing Israeli government," Sela said.

Recently an organisation called Jews for a Jewish Bat Yam (a suburb near Tel Aviv) held a protest against "assimilation of young Jewish women with Arabs living in the city or in nearby Jaffa."

"It's a local organisation of Bat Yam residents, because the public is tired of so many Arabs going out with Jewish girls," explained one of the organisers, Bentzi Gufstein. "In addition to the protest, we will hand out pamphlets explaining the situation."

For all the fear of "being swamped by the Arabs", the amount of social, political and public interaction between Israel’s Jewish majority and its Palestinian minority remains restricted.

Prof. Shlomo Hasson from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem argues that relations between the two communities are largely influenced by social and economic interaction.

"There is very limited integration between Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens. Unemployment amongst Israeli-Arabs is much higher than amongst Jewish citizens," said Orna Cohen from Adalah, The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

read the rest at http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011129344413792.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Right wing government in Israel, Britain and USA...

what other countries am I missing here? Germany?

It all sounds so ...coordinated.