'NY Times' publishes defense of racial segregation in Israel

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

By Mairav Zonszein

|Published June 15, 2013

'NY Times' publishes defense of racial segregation in Israel

Imagine that the ‘New York Times’ published an op-ed defending the segregation of white and black schoolchildren at an American amusement park. That’s more or less what happened in Israel recently.

By Mairav Zonszein and Lisa Goldman

This article was originally published on the Daily Beast’s Open Zion blog on June 14, 2013.

A roller coaster at the Superland amusement park (Superland.co.il)

Imagine that Six Flags Great Adventure, a New Jersey adventure park, quietly instituted separate days for black and white schoolchildren. Exposed by the media, the management claimed they had acted in response to complaints from some white parents about the behavior of the black children, saying they behaved badly and cursed at the white children. Senior government ministers, including President Obama, said they were outraged and suggested the incident merited an official investigation. And then a white person wrote an op-ed defending the Six Flags management’s decision. In an article saturated with links and references to right-wing media outlets like Fox News, the Washington Free Beacon and the Drudge Report, the white author claimed that Six Flags’ policy was not racist. And the New York Times published the piece.

A variation of this scenario happened in Israel recently, when local media exposed the Superland amusement park’s policy of segregating Arab and Jewish schoolchildren. The mainstream media and the government, including right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were outraged. But Shmuel Rosner, a journalist who lives in Tel Aviv, defended the management’s policy in an op-ed for the New York Times, on the International Herald Tribune‘s Latitudes Blog. According to Rosner, the policy is not an expression of racism, but rather pragmatism that reflects a regrettable reality.

Rosner explains that Superland’s management is just trying to “prevent trouble” between Jewish and Arab kids who behave badly toward one another. This is the same argument that elite American universities like Harvard made for imposing quotas on Jewish students as recently as 50 years ago. The deans justified their policy by explaining that letting a department fill up with Jews would exacerbate anti-semitism, so by limiting the number of Jewish students they were actually protecting them.

Rosner cites statistics showing that a majority of Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens see the country as a “foreign imprint in the Middle East” and that “more than half of Israel’s Jews were ‘not ready to have an Arab neighbor‘.” Leaving aside the relevance of these polls to schoolchildren out for a day at an amusement park, one would think the lesson to draw from such expressed hostilities is that much more needs to be done to impart respect, tolerance and equal rights. But Rosner makes no such case. Instead, he is content to conclude that when it comes to Arabs and Jews, “the mix can be a recipe for trouble.”

Given this logic, we wonder how Rosner can reconcile Israel’s existence in the Middle East and, more specifically, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where several hundred thousand Jews choose to “mix” with the existing Palestinian population. Perhaps he also supports the systemic discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel, who are allocated far fewer resources and job opportunities than Jews, as a means of perpetuating the separation of Jews and Arabs. Is he also a supporter of the state-funded Orthodox rabbis who called on Jewish landlords not to rent or sell to Arabs, or of the Israeli ad hoc groups that organize to prevent Jews from marrying Arabs? After all, we can’t have them mixing—there might be trouble.

As Rosner himself admits, Superland’s management did not create the “mutual contempt” and “tribal sensitivities” that informs their policy. But maybe a good starting point for dealing with these trends is to condemn the practice of segregation that has clearly become normalized in Israeli society. Instead of combating such discrimination, Rosner has chosen to manage it — and to justify it.

http://972mag.com/ny-times-publishes-defense-of-racial-segregation-in-israel/73723/

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Racism in any form is wrong. But you will always have folks that "yearn" for the ways of yesteryear.

[Karee 4,190]

Racism is just one of tools being used in this particular conflict. This situation is a land grab. Israel wants it all, and slowly but surely, they are getting it. All with the full support of the U.S. govt. despite what they say publicly. This is a good opportunity for Obama to grow a pair. He's a lame duck president now, so any electoral fallout should be minimal. Israel loves to frame this as some kind of religious thing, when in reality it has nothing to do with religion. It's about forcefully stealing land. It's that simple

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Oppression and discrimination against Israel's Palestinian citizens (or as Israel insists on calling them, "Israeli Arabs," as if they are completely separate from and unassociated with the rest of their own people) is indeed part of Israel's systematic dispossession and marginalization of Palestinians in general.

As the article touched on, why would anyone who is so opposed to living together with Arabs want to insert themselves right into the heart of the Arab Middle East ? Zionist ideology has continually insisted that the State of Israel - even though it was created in the midst of an overwhelmingly Arab population of Muslims and Christians - must somehow be a Jewish state with an overwhelming Jewish majority, so it continues to try to solve this "problem" with ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

And Israel doesn't want anyone to criticize this. Because they're not done yet.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Falastin_Qalbi

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Israel has a net annual migration rate (2 persons per 1,000 population) half that of the US (4 persons per 1,000 population).

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

Not sure why we call this racism.. Its all based on Religion.. Israel has put effort into bringing in Russian and African Jews in the past so race does not seem to play into it.. How about we call it religious Intolerance or religious persecution...

And I'm thinking at least some of this this is learned behavior from existing with its neighbors for some time.. Maybe I am wrong help me out here, If I were an Israeli Jew what Middle Eastern country would I travel to to experience some religious tolerance? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Syria? Yemen? Would a change in Israeli thinking solve the problem? I don't think so..

In this particular case both sides raise their kids to hate.. Why the shock? The children are acting exactly as they have been taught.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Not sure why we call this racism.. Its all based on Religion.. Israel has put effort into bringing in Russian and African Jews in the past so race does not seem to play into it.. How about we call it religious Intolerance or religious persecution...

And I'm thinking at least some of this this is learned behavior from existing with its neighbors for some time.. Maybe I am wrong help me out here, If I were an Israeli Jew what Middle Eastern country would I travel to to experience some religious tolerance? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Syria? Yemen? Would a change in Israeli thinking solve the problem? I don't think so..

In this particular case both sides raise their kids to hate.. Why the shock? The children are acting exactly as they have been taught.

In Israel's case, they apparently learned it from the Nazis.

Jews were living all over the Middle East, and they lived in Palestine in peace and safety for centuries as a minority among their Muslim and Christian neighbors.

The real problem started when Zionist Jews arriving from Europe decided they would take over Palestine and turn it into their exclusive Jewish colony by driving out the non-Jewish inhabitants (who were not only the vast majority of the population, but who owed the vast majority of the land.)

You don't have to teach children to hate the soldiers who are bulldozing your home and burning your crops and kidnapping and torturing your father and killing your sister and calling your mother a #######.

[GandD 5,966]

Racism in any form is wrong. But you will always have folks that "yearn" for the ways of yesteryear.

To be fair, this is evident in religion, schools, and nearly everything else. People often glorify the world when they were a child. What percentage of this is racism and what percentage is resistant to any change?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Not sure why we call this racism.. Its all based on Religion

Israel is 80% secular. Religion has little to do with this. This is about Zionism, and the perceived need for an exclusively Jewish homeland. Judaism and Islam have very little to do with it, except for the more extreme elements on both sides, that justify their actions as some sort of religious calling.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It's not just racism (or "religious intolerance") against non-Jews.

ISRAEL: The tribulations of being an Ethiopian Jew

TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) - Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “***”.

Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children.

"The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN.

An estimated 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, but while they are supposed to be full citizens with equal rights, their community has continued to face widespread discrimination and socio-economic difficulties, according to its leaders.

A recent decision - as reported by local media - by 120 homeowners not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families has brought discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel back into the spotlight.

Hundreds of Ethiopian Israelis took to the streets on 18 January to protest the move by landlords in the southern city of Kiryat Malakhi - Shay Sium’s hometown.

“This is not an isolated case,” said Yasmin Keshet, an attorney for the Israeli NGO Tebeka, which provides legal support to Ethiopian Israelis. The scale of racist offences and discrimination against Ethiopian Jews, she said, is reflected in the many legal cases Tebeka has dealt with in recent years.

“Can’t you see I am not taking black people?”

Under the Law of Return, Ethiopian Jews enjoy full rights and have a right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. The reality, however, is different.

In 2009, a young Ethiopian-Israeli university student named Idano tried to board a bus in Rishon LeZion city.

“She knocked, but the driver wouldn’t let her in," Keshet said. "When he opened the door for someone else, she followed inside, whereupon the driver said: ‘Can’t you see I am not taking black people. Did you have buses in Ethiopia, or even shoes?’"

The driver eventually appeared before a disciplinary hearing and was fined 20,000 New Israeli Shekels (NIS, US$5,330) in 2010. The next year, a magistrate’s court ordered him to pay Idano 60,000 NIS ($15,980) in compensation.

In September 2011, Tebeka represented 281 children who were prevented from registering in a school in Petah Tikva town because of their Ethiopian backgrounds - “a clear breach of law,” according to Julie Wyler, director of resource development at Tebeka.

About 30 percent of all legal cases Tebeka deals with are about discrimination in the workplace.

"Ethiopians are a resilient community [but] don’t know what is legal and illegal, also because new immigrants often don’t speak proper Hebrew,” Wyler said.

Lack of awareness and skills also makes Ethiopian Israelis easy to employ on lower-than-average pay. They are often desperate to find a job and willing to work under difficult circumstances.

“Ethiopians are an easy catch for manpower agencies," Wyler said. "They are allowed to hire employees for up to a year without providing social security under Israeli law, so they fire them after 11 months, just to re-employ them again afterwards.”

Poverty

About 81,000 of Ethiopian Israelis were born in their home country, while 38,500 were born in Israel, according to official records. Between 1985 and 1991, more than 30,000 were airlifted in three rescue operations after years of civil war and famine had driven hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into the capital, Addis Adaba, and refugee camps in Sudan.

But more than 20 years on, many Ethiopians still face economic hardship and social problems in Israel.

About 52 percent of Ethiopian-Israeli families live below the poverty line, compared to 16 percent among the general Jewish Israeli population. According to the Brookdale Institute for Applied Social Research, only 65 percent of Ethiopian Israelis were employed compared to 74 among the general Jewish population in 2010.

"In the area of employment, the gap between Ethiopians and other Jews has narrowed significantly,” institute director Jack Habib said. But about 60 percent of all Ethiopian families are still in a welfare programme, partly due to juvenile delinquency which is four times higher than the Israeli average, and domestic violence, which is estimated to be 2.5 times higher than the average.

Growing up in Israel

Partly as a result of the difficult socio-economic situation, which also triggers prejudice against the community, many young Ethiopian Israelis become disassociated from society at large.

"Growing up was an everyday struggle,” said Sium. “For those who are different, the Jewish people can be a very closed community. Simply because I am Ethiopian, life has been harder than it is for others.

“Raising a kid is tough for everyone in Israel, but it is even tougher for us,” he continued. “Once, my five-year-old kid asked me after a demonstration why the people on the street are shouting. I couldn’t tell him that it is because the white people don’t like the black people. I didn't want to give him the feeling that he is not good enough."

In 2008, a report by the Israeli state comptroller and judge Micha Lindenstrauss found that about 20 percent of Ethiopian Israeli children do not go to school. Drug abuse among the youth is widespread, and crime rates are much higher than among the overall Jewish Israeli society.

Ethiopians are a resilient community [but] don’t know what is legal and illegal, also because new immigrants often don’t speak proper Hebrew

These conditions have remained largely unchanged since the report was issued more than three years ago.

Shula Mola arrived in Israel when she was 12. “I was sent to a religious boarding school, where I worked very hard to become Israeli and also religious. Whenever I knew something others did not, the teachers were surprised because I am Ethiopian. I wanted to go to university. But they expected us to become nothing more than cleaners.”

Now the chairwoman of the independent Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ), she says growing up in Israel is hard for Ethiopian children. “Many face prejudice in school and little support. They try to connect, but often can’t cope with the study gap.”

From her perspective, Ethiopian Israeli youth have it even harder today.

“My kids are born here. They face the same problems, but don’t have the excuse of being new immigrants. Whatever the problem, people automatically see it as a distinct Ethiopian feature,” Mola explained.

Such branding, as well as poverty and a difficult family background, often contribute to the youth’s disaffection from society. “Many are hopeless. When facing difficulties at school, poor and uneducated families usually can’t support their kids,” Mola said, adding that today’s Israeli education system puts more and more responsibility on the family.

But others say integration of the generation of Ethiopian Jews born in Israel is much easier than for their parents and grandparents.

“For me, it was easy to adapt,” said 27-year-old Avi Yalou of Kiryat Malakhi. “But when my mum goes to the bank, she still doesn’t know how to deal with it in Hebrew.”

Civil society role

Upon arrival, Ethiopian Jews are usually placed in “absorption centers” - housing arrangements run by the Jewish Agency, on organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews into Israel. There, new immigrants receive support, including cheap housing and language classes. But many stay much longer than the usual period of six months.

“The absorption center is like a closed society where new immigrants get used to being dependent," said Shalva Weil, an anthropologist and leading researcher on the Ethiopian community in Israel. She said Ethiopians often end up staying three, four, or even seven years. “When they finally move out, they are suddenly on their own and often face severe difficulties in Israel, which is not an easy country.”

Efrat Yerday, speaker of the IAEJ, added: "The Jewish Agency puts a lot of pressure on them to prove how Jewish they are. And this is the main thing they have in mind when they are in the absorption center, because they need to fulfil the requirements."

Some civil society organizations are trying to empower the Ethiopian Israeli community.

“My organization is fighting against a huge monster we have no power against,” said Yerday. She cites the “Five-Year-Plan”, which was produced by a cross-ministerial committee in 2008, as one such “monster”.

With a budget of 870 million NIS ($231 million), it was meant to be a comprehensive strategy for integrating the community and tackling socio-economic problems. One of its goals was to enable young Ethiopian Israeli couples to take out mortgages under preferential conditions and move from overcrowded poor areas to better neighbourhoods.

But many of the 400 young couples included in the plan never moved, because the amounts allocated were not sufficient and banks did not provide any guarantees for the mortgage loan. In 2011, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the key provisions of the plan had not been implemented.

Another plan was started in January 2012 by the Immigrant Absorption Ministry to tackle domestic violence through workshops and awareness-raising, after a study by Shalva Weil found that 81 percent of Ethiopian immigrant women murdered by their husbands came from new immigrant families.

“The plan will be implemented in towns where new immigrants hardly live,” she told IRIN. The cities include Ashkelon, Kiryat Malakhi, Afula, Netanyam Rehovot and Richon LeZion, where almost no immigrants from Ethiopia have settled for several years.

Optimism

Despite the challenges, the Ethiopian Jewish community has done relatively well, experts say. “You can’t compare someone who recently arrived from Ethiopia to someone who lives in a villa on the north of Tel Aviv,” Weil said. "Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many immigrants came from remote villages.”

Weil, who has studied the community for more than 30 years, added: “Given the difficult background of many immigrants, it is quite fantastic how well they have managed in Israel.”

Israeli government officials have called for mutual coexistence. "We, the state of Israel, should say thank you to immigrants from Ethiopia, and not vice-versa," Israeli President Shimon Peres said after the protests in Kiryat Malakhi.

The younger generation also gives reason for hope.

"The generations are different in dealing with problems,” Sium said. “The old generation is quiet. We have witnessed many demonstrations, but saw hardly any older people there. It is the young people who move things forward today. The elders understand that our situation is changing."

As Yalou, one of the organizers of the 18 January protest, put it: “My parents know that we, the young generation, are the future.”

In the meantime, activists say they will continue resisting what they see as racism.

“Right now, groups of activists are sitting together to see what we can do to fight the current situation," Yalou said. "Further protests are in the process of being planned… We hope to make changes.”

http://www.irinnews.org/report/94819/israel-the-tribulations-of-being-an-ethiopian-jew

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

In Israel's case, they apparently learned it from the Nazis.

Jews were living all over the Middle East, and they lived in Palestine in peace and safety for centuries as a minority among their Muslim and Christian neighbors.

The real problem started when Zionist Jews arriving from Europe decided they would take over Palestine and turn it into their exclusive Jewish colony by driving out the non-Jewish inhabitants (who were not only the vast majority of the population, but who owed the vast majority of the land.)

You don't have to teach children to hate the soldiers who are bulldozing your home and burning your crops and kidnapping and torturing your father and killing your sister and calling your mother a #######.

It takes two to tango. The Palatines are not without fault. After years of terror attacks, suicide bombing and rocket attacks maybe the Israelis are a bit touchy for a reason

http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2013/6/5/palestinian-stone-throwing-attacks-on-jews-become-daily-occurrence-in-eastern-jerusalem

(JNS.org) Palestinian stone-throwing attacks on Jews in eastern Jerusalem have become a daily occurrence and have recently escalated to include Molotov cocktails, Israel Hayom reported.

A Palestinian boy throws a stone at Israel's security fence. Credit: Justin McIntosh.

Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Kobi Dudian of the Jerusalem District Police told the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee on Wednesday that 207 stone-throwing perpetrators have been arrested in eastern Jerusalem in 2013, the majority of whom were minors, and that only 47 of them were detained, pending the conclusion of the legal proceedings against them.

Dudian noted that the number of cases involving stone and firebomb throwing has spiked by dozens of percentage points since Israel conducted Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza last November. But he noted that in recent weeks, the number of firebomb incidents has steadily declined, attributing that to the arrest of several terror cells that orchestrated the violent attacks.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

It's not just racism (or "religious intolerance") against non-Jews.

More Palestinian kidnapping plots thwarted by Israel

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2013/05/more_palestinian_kidnapping_pl.php

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

More Palestinian kidnapping plots thwarted by Israel

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2013/05/more_palestinian_kidnapping_pl.php

You have no idea how to interpret what you are reading.

What is the IDF doing in Hebron ?

Who are these Israelis in Hebron that this group supposedly wants to kidnap ?

Why are they there in Hebron - what are they up to ?

How many Palestinians has the IDF kidnapped from Hebron ?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It takes two to tango. The Palatines are not without fault. After years of terror attacks, suicide bombing and rocket attacks maybe the Israelis are a bit touchy for a reason

http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2013/6/5/palestinian-stone-throwing-attacks-on-jews-become-daily-occurrence-in-eastern-jerusalem

(JNS.org) Palestinian stone-throwing attacks on Jews in eastern Jerusalem have become a daily occurrence and have recently escalated to include Molotov cocktails, Israel Hayom reported.

A Palestinian boy throws a stone at Israel's security fence. Credit: Justin McIntosh.

Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Kobi Dudian of the Jerusalem District Police told the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee on Wednesday that 207 stone-throwing perpetrators have been arrested in eastern Jerusalem in 2013, the majority of whom were minors, and that only 47 of them were detained, pending the conclusion of the legal proceedings against them.

Dudian noted that the number of cases involving stone and firebomb throwing has spiked by dozens of percentage points since Israel conducted Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza last November. But he noted that in recent weeks, the number of firebomb incidents has steadily declined, attributing that to the arrest of several terror cells that orchestrated the violent attacks.

You've put the cart before the horse.

When was the first terror attack in Palestine and who carried it out ?

When was the first car bombing in Palestine and who carried it out ?

When was the Nakba ?

When was the Naksa ?

How many Palestinians did Israel ethnically cleanse from Palestine, and refuse to allow to return to their homeland ?

When was Israel supposed to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza ?

Now, when was the first suicide bombing again ?

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Nobody cares, except to blame the other side, about who did what first. At this point in time it takes both sides to take genuine steps to solve the problems and move towards a workable peaceful coexistence.

It's all Israels fault. No, it's all the Palestinians fault. Getting both sides nowhere.