The past week alone has seen a string of passionate protests targeting “fraternization” between Arab men and Jewish women and criticizing the rising number of African migrants.
Also this week, Jerusalem police said they had arrested a gang of young Jews accused of multiple hate-crime attacks against Arabs, shortly after the publication of a letter signed by dozens of Israeli rabbis, many of them state employees, calling on Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unusual step Wednesday of addressing the incidents in a video message posted on his YouTube and Facebook pages.
“We are a country run by the rule of law, we respect all peoples, whoever they are,” he said. “I insist that citizens of Israel do not take the law into their own hands, not through violence nor through incitement.”
Earlier this month, Israel’s attorney general began investigating whether the rabbis’ letter broke the law against incitement to racism. But despite the investigation and an outpouring of criticism over the letter, right-wing activists planned a rally in support of the rabbis in central Jerusalem Thursday.
Ronit Sela of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel said there was a growing climate sanctioning discrimination, nurtured by the formation almost two years ago of a coalition government embracing the Jewish nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party and the ultra-Orthodox Shas. “We definitely see a connection between these different instances, most of them targeting either Arab citizens or non-Jewish people living in Israel,” she told AFP.
Sela said muted condemnation by those in power, coupled with “racist and xenophobic” declarations by Israeli lawmakers and their promotion of discriminatory legislation, encouraged hatred.
In October, ACRI wrote to Netanyahu and Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin warning that legislation including a bill compelling non-Jewish citizens to swear an oath of allegiance to Israel could damage Israeli democracy.
And Israeli-Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi said Thursday the current Parliament was “the most racist ever,” claiming its house committee had for months blocked an equal opportunities bill, Israeli news site Ynet said.
In the blue-collar Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam Monday, demonstrators at a “keeping Bat Yam Jewish” protest reportedly called for Jewish women who consort with Arab men to be put to death.
And Ynet Thursday reported on five Israeli Arab men who said they had been forced to abandon their rented Tel Aviv flat after it was vandalized and they were threatened with violence.
“I felt humiliated by the hatred,” Ynet quoted one of the men, Ganem Abbas, a Druze veteran of the Israeli military, as saying. “The landlady told me that people from the neighborhood had threatened to torch the house and attack her if we don’t get out, because we’re Arabs.”
Israel has 1.3 million Arab citizens – Palestinians who remained in the country after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and their descendants.
There are also some 200,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later occupied.
Hundreds of people marched through Tel Aviv neighborhoods Tuesday calling for the expulsion of illegal migrants from Africa.
“[Avigdor] Lieberman, where are you when we need you?” read some banners, referring to the foreign minister and head of Yisrael Beitenu, while others proclaimed: “Eli Yishai we are with you,” referring to Shas’ political head.
About 35,000 economic migrants and asylum-seekers, many from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped into Israel through its porous border with Egypt since 2006, with many congregating in rundown neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv.
Veteran residents say the newcomers are overloading social services and boosting crime levels, though police dispute the latter charge.
The liberal daily Haaretz Thursday carried several opinion pieces on tolerance and an editorial asking President Shimon Peres to intervene.
“The fire of hatred and racism is ablaze in Israel. Signs of loathing toward Arab citizens and African migrants are cropping up every day,” it wrote. “The president must intervene. He must express that which unites and consolidates us and loudly and clearly take a stand against hatred, racism and violence between ethnic groups and communities.”
