PALESTINE: Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel - Ali Abunimah

[sukant....@gmail.com]

Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Palestine Center

March 25, 2008

A prominent strategy of Israeli hasbara, or official propaganda, is to
deflect
criticism of its actions in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip by
stressing
that within the country's 1948 boundaries, it is a model democracy
comparable
to the societies in Western Europe and North America with which it
identifies
and on whose diplomatic support it relies to maintain a favorable
status quo.
In fact, Israeli society is in the grip of a wave of unchecked racism
and
incitement that seriously threatens Israel's Palestinian community and
the
long-term prospects for regional peace. This briefing examines
societal and
institutional racism and incitement by public figures against Israel's
Arab
population and considers some policy implications.

Background and Context

When Israel was established in 1948, most of the indigenous
Palestinian
inhabitants were driven out or fled from the area that became Israel.
Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained behind.1 Until 1966, these
Palestinians lived under martial law. Today, having increased in
number to
approximately 1.3 million or about one fifth of Israel's population
(not
including the Palestinian population of Occupied East Jerusalem), they
are
citizens of the State of Israel and can vote in elections for the
Knesset.
Despite this, most view themselves as second-class citizens. As
indigenous
non-Jews in a self-described Jewish state, they face a host of
systematic
social, legal, economic and educational barriers to equality. Israel
lacks a
constitution and has no other basic law guaranteeing equal rights to
all
citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin.2

One measure of the cumulative impact of these discriminatory policies
is
socioeconomic: while just 16 percent of Jewish citizens in Israel fall
below
the official poverty line, the figure for non-Jews is 50 percent.3

In October 2000, Israeli police used live ammunition against unarmed
civilians
demonstrating their solidarity with Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories.
Thirteen Palestinians, of whom twelve were Israeli citizens, were shot
dead. An
official commission, headed by Judge Theodor Or, was appointed to look
into the
events which came to mark a dramatic deterioration in Arab-Jewish
relations
inside the country. In 2003, the Or Commission confirmed that the
police used
"excessive" and unjustifiable force, reported that the police viewed
the
country's Arab citizens as "enemies" and documented a pattern of
"prejudice and
neglect" towards them by Israel's establishment.4

While the Or Commission recommended a number of measures to redress
the sharp
disparities between Jews and Arabs in the country, families of the
victims
regarded the report as a whitewash. The Commission failed to examine
the
forensic evidence in each of the killings, and none of the killers,
nor any
responsible official, were ever brought to justice.5 By 2007,
according to Elie
Rekhess of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, there
remained
"yawning" gaps between Jews and Arabs in Israel and "the bottom line"
is "that
the conclusions and recommendations of the 2003 Or Commission remain
conspicuously unimplemented."6

Amidst the increasingly precarious situation of Palestinian citizens
of Israel,
prominent and broadly representative leaders of that community
published in
2007 a series of documents setting out visions for Israel as a state
of all its
citizens with equality for all.7 The response of the Israeli body
politic was
overwhelmingly to view these initiatives as an unwelcome threat to the
"Jewish
character" of the state. Israel's Shin Bet secret police, responsible
among
other things for many "targeted killings" in the Occupied Territories,
went so
far as to warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups
that seek to
change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use
democratic means."8

Unlearned Lessons: The Jabal al-Mukkabir "Pogrom"

On March 10, a week after a Palestinian opened fire in the Mercaz
HaRav yeshiva
in Jerusalem killing eight students, apparently in revenge for
Israel's killing
of dozens of civilians in Gaza, a mob of hundreds of Israeli Jews
converged on
the Jabal al-Mukkabir neighborhood in Occupied East Jerusalem where
the
gunman's family lived. In what Haaretz termed an "organized,
synchronized
pogrom," the mob threw stones at Palestinian homes smashing windows
and
destroying water tanks, damaged cars and chanted "Death to the Arabs"
while
police did little to stop them.9 Haaretz observed that such an attack
"could
never take place in a Jewish neighborhood," and noted that while
"Israel and
the Jewish world raise a huge cry over every suspicion of an attack on
Jews
because of their ethnicity, it is intolerable that residents of the
capital
[sic] are attacked solely because of their nationality."10

Although the mob action had been planned and advertised days in
advance, the
Israeli police had done nothing to prepare for it. "The district
police didn't
need to be surprised," said the former Jerusalem district police
commander
Mickey Levy. "There was no need to collect intelligence, it was right
there in
their hand. Appropriate preparation was called for in order to prevent
the
violent demonstration."11

This event indicates that Israel's official institutions have failed
to learn
any lessons from the Or Commission report but also serves as a warning
sign of
worse to come, against a backdrop of highly tolerated public
incitement and
widespread racist attitudes towards Arabs.

Racist Statements and Incitement by Religious and Political Leaders

One of the most blatant examples of public incitement in the days
before the
attack on Jabal al-Mukkabir was a circular widely distributed and
posted around
Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements. Signed by a long list of
rabbis, it
called for acts of revenge on Palestinians in retribution for the
Mercaz HaRav
shooting: "Each and everyone is required to imagine what the enemy is
plotting
to do to us and match it measure for measure."12

Among the signatories was Rabbi Ya'acov Yosef, son of Rabbi Ovadia
Yosef, the
former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of Shas, a
party in
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition government. The younger Yosef
is himself
a former Knesset member representing Shas. Another signatory, Rabbi
Uzi
Sharbav, was one of a group of extremists who murdered three
Palestinian
students at a school in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron and set
off bombs
that maimed the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah in the early 1980s.
Sharbav
served a short prison sentence for the murders but was pardoned and
freed along
with other extremists by Israel's president in 1990.13

Other statements have been aimed at delegitimizing, intimidating and
threatening with expulsion Palestinian citizens of Israel exercising
their
democratic rights. In early March, thousands of Palestinian citizens
of Israel
staged a peaceful rally attended by several Arab members of the
Knesset to
protest Israel's military attacks in the Gaza Strip. In the Knesset,
former
cabinet minister Effie Eitam accused the Arab legislators of "treason"
for
participating in the rally adding, "We have to drive you out, as well
as
everyone else who took part" in the demonstration.14 Days later,
Olmert's
former Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeated the ethnic
cleansing
threat in the Knesset, telling Arab members, "You are temporary here,"
and "One
day we will take care of you."15

Israeli extremists appear to be getting the message. Representatives
of three
Arab parties have reported that their Knesset members have been
receiving death
threats in the mail daily. A spokesman for one Knesset member said,
"We have
always received threats but they have recently escalated to the point
where we
are growing truly concerned."16

Several rabbis have used the excuse of "security" in the wake of the
Mercaz
HaRav shooting to issue racist halakhic (religious) rulings against
Arabs.
Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the rabbinical council for settlers in
"Judea and
Samaria" (the West Bank), decreed that "It is completely forbidden to
employ
[Arabs] and rent houses to them in Israel. Their employment is
forbidden, not
only at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."17

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, considered a world-wide Orthodox authority on
Jewish
law, held "that it is completely forbidden to hire Arabs, especially
in
yeshivas; there is a concern for endangering lives." Indicating that
security
might not be the only motivation for this ruling, Kanievsky added that
Jews
should refrain from hiring any non-Jews, "unless there exists a huge
disparity
between the costs of the labor," in which case non-Jews could be hired.
18

While these are recent examples, Mossawa, an Arab civil rights
advocacy group
in Israel, documented dozens of instances of racist declarations by
public
figures and thousands of examples of incitement on the Internet in
2007
alone.19

Silence is Consent

Leaders in the Palestinian community in Israel worry that the
escalating
incitement will provoke further violence against them. A spokesman for
Muhammad
Barakeh, an Arab member of parliament, said that the recent upsurge in
death
threats had been reported to Knesset security, "But we have seen
nothing
happen. I do not feel they are taking this threat very seriously."20
Another
Arab Knesset member urged Israel's two chief rabbis to condemn the
rabbinical
calls for revenge, fearing that these statements might incite the
assassination
of community leaders.21 There are no reports that the chief rabbis
responded to
this plea. Indeed, while a handful of Israeli Jewish voices have been
raised in
protest, it was most often to decry the deafening silence.

A spokesman for the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism
condemned an
"ever growing phenomenon of racist incitement that distorts Judaism
and is also
illegal." The group called on Israel's attorney general to "shake off
his
apathy" and begin to enforce anti-incitement laws.22 Haaretz
complained that
"the continued inactivity in the face of acts of incitement and
violence by the
extreme right is shared by all the law-enforcement authorities-the
police, Shin
Bet, State Prosecutor's Office and the courts."23 A Haaretz reporter
noted "the
dizzying increase in incitement, curses and insults leveled" at Arab
Knesset
members, "a spike that has gone almost without protest or the
involvement of
the Knesset Ethics Committee."24 Another commentator in the same
newspaper
observed that "as long as no one demonstrates whenever a Knesset
member curses
Arabs; and as long as the number of people who rent apartments to or
hire Arabs
can be counted on one hand, Israeli society cannot be absolved of the
sin of
racism."25

A Society in Crisis

"Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism," said Sami
Michael, one of
the country's most celebrated equality advocates and president of the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).26 A growing body of
research
indicates that racist sentiments are not the preserve of the right-
wing fringe
but increasingly prevalent across Israeli Jewish society.

One particularly disturbing indicator is that the chant "Death to the
Arabs" is
voiced not just by mobs of right-wingers angered by this or that
Palestinian
attack. Rather, "in the late 1990s and onwards," writes Amir Ben-
Porat, a
professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben Gurion
University,
"'Death to the Arabs' became a common chant in almost every football
[soccer]
stadium in Israel." Ben-Porat, who authored a study on the use of the
chant,
says that because of the importance of soccer in Israeli society and
its high
profile in the media, "This chant is heard far beyond the stadium."27

In its 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, the Israel Democracy Institute
found that
87 percent of all Israeli citizens rated Jewish-Arab relations in the
country
as being "poor" or "very poor."28

In addition:

* 78 percent of Israeli Jews opposed having Arab parties or ministers
join
Israel's government.29

* Just 56 percent of Israeli Jews support full equality for
Palestinian
citizens of Israel and an identical number agreed that "Arabs cannot
attain the
Jews' level of cultural development."30

* 75 percent of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement that "Arabs are
inclined
to violent behavior" (as compared with 54 percent of Palestinian
citizens of
Israel who had an equivalent view of Israeli Jews).31

* 43 percent of Israeli Jews agreed that "Arabs are not intelligent"
and 55
percent agreed that "the government should encourage Arab emigration
from the
country."32

A recent Haifa University survey found that half of Israeli Jews
object to
Arabs living in their neighborhoods (56 percent of Arabs supported
residential
integration with Jews).33 Similarly, ACRI reported that 75 percent of
Israeli
Jews surveyed said they would not agree to live in the same building
as Arabs.
The same survey found that more than half of Israeli Jews felt that
Arabs and
Jews should have separate recreational facilities.34

There are two consistent trends among all these surveys: both
Palestinian
citizens of Israel and Israeli Jews hold some prejudices towards each
other,
but on almost every measure, Israeli Jewish views of Arabs are more
negative
and extreme than Arab views of Jews; second, the negative trends have
risen
markedly in recent years as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has
intensified.
Between 2005 and 2006, there was a 26 percent rise in racist incidents
targeting Arabs, and the number of Israeli Jews reporting they felt
"hatred"
towards Arabs doubled to 30 percent.35

While the conflict is undoubtedly the overarching context for these
sentiments,
an important contributing factor may be the consistently dehumanizing
and
denigrating stereotypes of Arabs that have for decades been presented
to
Israeli Jewish schoolchildren in their textbooks and media.36

Discrimination against United States Citizens

An outgrowth of the institutional and societal racism against Arabs in
Israel
is mistreatment that some United States citizens have received at the
hands of
Israeli authorities.

The State Department recently warned travelers that "American citizens
whom
Israeli authorities judge (based on their name or other indicators)
may be of
Palestinian origin are likely to face additional, and often time
consuming
questioning by immigration and border authorities."37 The warning adds
that the
"United States Government seeks equal treatment for all American
citizens
regardless of national origin or ethnicity," or as State Department
spokesperson Sean McCormack put it, "You have a blue American
passport, you
should be treated like an American citizen."38

Yet, while Arab American civil rights advocates have reported dozens
of such
cases of discrimination to the U.S. government,39 American citizens
who are
considered Jewish by Israel are accorded special treatment, including
free
Israeli-government sponsored "Birthright Israel" trips and enticements
to
emigrate to the country. This is a long-standing problem; in 1987, the
State
Department lodged an official protest over the mistreatment of African
Americans and Palestinian Americans traveling to Israel.40

Conclusions and Implications

Anti-Arab racism and incitement are persistent and growing problems in
Israel
and symptoms of hyper nationalism that seeks to consolidate and
justify the
state's "Jewish character." For decades, the mistreatment of
Palestinians in
Israel has been virtually ignored by Palestinian national leaders, as
well as
by international policymakers and organizations under the doctrine of
non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Yet, the precarious position of Palestinian citizens of Israel is
closely
linked to the fate of Palestinians under military occupation in the
West Bank
and Gaza Strip and refugees outside the country. It stems from the
same set of
historical events 60 years ago. All three categories of Palestinians
are
targets of discriminatory or abusive Israeli policies intended to
preserve
Israel as a "Jewish state." In the context of a "solution" to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some Israeli politicians increasingly
speak of
population or territorial "exchanges" that would strip Palestinian
citizens of
Israel of their citizenship and otherwise violate their fundamental
human
rights. Palestinian citizens of Israel have raised the alarm about
this growing
existential threat, but they have received little international
solidarity.

Israel's official institutions have failed for decades to demonstrate
any
willingness or capacity to treat Palestinian citizens as equal to
Israeli Jews
either in law or in practice. Israeli police act, in effect, as a
uniformed
sectarian militia protecting Jewish privilege rather than as an
impartial
police service for a modern, democratic state.

Although most international actors are not yet ready to do so, it is
inevitable
that the situation inside Israel will eventually have to be
internationalized.
A good example of the successful internationalization of an "internal"
situation is the role external actors played in overseeing the
transformation
of the Royal Ulster Constabulary from a uniformed sectarian militia
into the
present-day Police Service of Northern Ireland and otherwise
supporting the
Northern Ireland peace process. There must also be external pressure
on Israel
to curb and punish racist incitement and to launch broad public
initiatives,
particularly in schools, to combat hateful stereotypes of Arabs.

As Israeli politicians and parties increasingly propose "solutions"
that treat
all Palestinians, whether citizens or not, as equally inferior,
Palestinians in
the diaspora, the Occupied Territories and inside Israel must urgently
engage
with each other to formulate common strategies to protect and advance
their
human and political rights.

Ali Abunimah is a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC. He
is an
expert on Palestine, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the
author of One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author
and do
not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

1 See Ilan Pappe; The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld
Publications,
2004; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Revisited,
Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

2 For an excellent overview of legal discrimination against
Palestinian
citizens of Israel see Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The
Unmasking of the
Jewish and Democratic State, Pluto Press, 2006.

3 Asher Arian, Nir Atmor, Yael Hadar, The 2007 Israeli Democracy
Index, The
Israel Democracy Institute, June 2007, p. 63
(www.idi.org.il/english/article.asp?id=31052007141057"
target="_blank">http://www.idi.org.il/english/article.asp?
id=31052007141057).

4 James Bennet, "Police used excessive force on Israeli Arabs, panel
says," The
New York Times, 2 September 2003.

5 See Jonathan Cook, "Still no justice for October 2000 killings," The
Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2008
(http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9329.shtml).

6 Elie Rekhess, "Israel and its Arab Citizens - Taking Stock," 16
October 2007,
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv
University
(http://tau.ac.il/dayancenter/Israel%20and%20its%20Arab
%20Citizens.pdf).

7 The four documents are: The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs
in Israel
published by The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local
Authorities
in Israel (www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/dec06/tasawor-mostaqbali.pdf"
target="_blank">http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/dec06/tasawor-
mostaqbali.pdf);
The Democratic Constitution published by Adalah: The Legal Center for
Arab
Minority Rights in Israel (http://www.adalah.org/eng/
constitution.php); An
Equal Constitution for All? On a Constitution and Collective Rights
for Arab
Citizens in Israel published by Mossawa Center - The Advocacy Center
for Arab
Citizens in Israel
(http://www.mossawacenter.org/files/files/File/An%20Equal
%20Constitution

%20For%20All.pdf); and The Haifa Declaration
(www.mada-research.org/archive/haifaenglish.pdf"
target="_blank">http://www.mada-research.org/archive/
haifaenglish.pdf).

8 Yoav Stern, "Arab leaders air public relations campaign against Shin
Bet,"
Haaretz, 6 April 2007

9 Nadav Shagrai, "Right-wing demonstrators try to storm home village
of Mercaz
Harav gunman," Haaretz, 17 March 2007

10 "Limp police in the face of a pogrom," Haaretz editorial, 18 March
2008

11"Top police officer slams police response to E. Jerusalem clash,"
Haaretz, 17
March 2008

12 "Rightist rabbis urge 'measure for measure' revenge on foes,"
Haaretz, 12
March 2008

13 See "Israel frees 3 Jewish radicals Killers of Arabs served less
than 7
years of life sentence," Associated Press, December 27, 1990.

14 Shahar Ilan, "MK Eitam to Arab MKs: One day we will expel you from
Israel,"
Haaretz, 5 March 2008

15 Shahar Ilan, "Lieberman to Arab MKs: One day we will 'take care of
you,'"
Haaretz, 10 March 2008

16 Sheera Claire Frenkel, "Death threats to Arab MKs on the rise," The
Jerusalem Post, 14 March 2008.

17 Nadav Shagrai, "Top Yesha rabbi says Jewish law forbids renting
houses to
Arabs," Haaretz, 20 March 2008

18 Neta Sela, "Prominent rabbi to yeshiva heads: Don't hire Arabs,"
Yediot
Aharonot, 17 March 2008

19 Press release, "Mossawa Center releases racism report detailing
over 169
cases," Mossawa, 19 March 2008
(www.mossawacenter.org/default.php?lng=3&dp=2&fl=25&a mp;pg=1"
target="_blank">http://www.mossawacenter.org/default.php?
lng=3&dp=2&fl=25&pg=1).

20 Sheera Claire Frenkel, "Death threats to Arab MKs on the rise," The
Jerusalem Post, 14 March 2008.

21 Yoav Stern, "Arab MK to chief rabbis: Slam rabbinic calls to harm
Arabs,"
Haaretz, 17 March 2008

22 Nadav Shagrai, "Top Yesha rabbi says Jewish law forbids renting
houses to
Arabs," Haaretz, 20 March 2008

23 "Limp police in the face of a pogrom," Haaretz editorial, 18 March
2008

24 Shahar Ilan, "The vision of an Arab-free Knesset," Haaretz, 24
March 2008

25 Avirama Golan, "Racist? Us?", Haaretz, 19 March 2008

26 Yuval Yoaz and Jack Khoury, "Civil rights group: Israel has reached
new
heights of racism," Haaretz, 9 December 2007

27 Amir Ben-Porat, "Death to the Arabs: the right-wing fan's fear,"
Soccer &
Society, Vol. 9, No. 1, January 2008, pp. 1-13.

28 Asher Arian, Nir Atmor, Yael Hadar, The 2007 Israeli Democracy
Index, The
Israel Democracy Institute, June 2007, p.61
(www.idi.org.il/english/article.asp?id=31052007141057"
target="_blank">http://www.idi.org.il/english/article.asp?
id=31052007141057).

29 The 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, p.64.

30 The 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, pp. 66-67.

31 The 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, p. 67.

32 The 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, p. 68.

33 Fadi Eyadat, "Poll: Half of Jews oppose living in neighborhoods
with Arabs,"
Haaretz, 13 March 2008

34 Bachar Awawda and Attorney Alla Heider, "Index of Racism for 2006:
Racism
against Israeli Arabs - Citizens of the State of Israel," The Center
Against
Racism, April 2007, cited in The State of Human Rights in Israel and
the
Occupied Territories, 2007 Report, Association for Civil Rights in
Israel
(ACRI), p.14 (www.acri.org.il/pdf/State2007.pdf"
target="_blank">http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/State2007.pdf).

35 ACRI, p.14.

36 For an important and systematic study of this phenomenon, see
Daniel Bar-Tal
& Yona Teichman, Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict:
Representations of
Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society, Cambridge University Press, 2005. Bar-
Tal is
Professor of Social Psychology at the School of Education, Tel Aviv
University.
Teichman is Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of
Psychology,
Tel Aviv University.

37 State Department, "Travel Warning: Israel, The West Bank and Gaza,"
19 March
2008 (http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_922.html).

38 "U.S. to Israel: No bias vs. Arab-Americans," Associated Press, 20
March
2008.

39 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), "ADC Sends First
Hand
Accounts of Israel's Entry Denials of U.S. Citizens to Secretary
Rice," 20
March 2008 (www.adc.org/index.php?id=3290"
target="_blank">http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=3290).

40 Dan Fisher, "Israel will review its border control practices," The
Los
Angeles Times, 18 July 1987.