At a time when the US government is boycotting participation in the United Nations 2009 anti-racism conference, here are a few interesting figures from The Association of Civil Rights in Israel. ACRI`s Annual Report on the State of Human Rights We learn the following…
According to the Israeli Association for Civil Rights, anti-Arab incidents have risen sharply. “Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy,” says Sami Michael, the organization’s president. Among the Association’s findings:
Some 55 percent of Jewish Israelis say that the state should encourage Arab emigration;
78 percent of Jewish Israelis oppose including Arab parties in the government;
56 percent agree with the statement that “Arabs cannot attain the Jewish level of cultural development”;
75 percent agree that Arabs are inclined to be violent. Among Arab-Israelis, 54 percent feel the same way about Jews.
75 percent of Israeli Jews say they would not live in the same building as Arabs.
This could almost have been polled from the US and be White opinions about Blacks. Zionism simply is racism, and YES, Jewish people are often racists. See Israeli Civil rights group claim Israeli occupation is “reminiscent of apartheid”
The report neglects to include factors for increased unease with Israeli Arabs among Israeli Jews, namely, Israeli Arabs’ increased support for enemies of Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. In fact, during Israel’s recent incursion into Gaza, Israeli Arab protesters, who, incidentally, are relieved of military duty, carried signs that said, “Death To Jews” That said, ironically, Israeli Arabs enjoy human rights and freedoms denied those living in Arab states, most importantly, the right to vote. For ths reason, there is not exactly a stampede of Israeli Arabs eager to leave Israel for an Arab nation. It merits noting that racism truly exists in the Arab nations, where Jews are largely forbidden to live, where the average Jewish population ranges from zero to 100, and those who do live there live under severe repression.
A significant portion of Israeli Jews wants to expel all Arabs out of their own country and you write the above comments trying to justify such, Chuck? Israeli Jews deliver ‘Death to Arabs’ daily, I might add. Using your own logic I could turn around and say that that will always justify any Arab wanting to kill Jews by any means necessary. Isn’t the reverse what you’re always telling us? …that Jews have the right to kill Arabs or do anything to them, in fact, because somebody (maybe even an agent provocateur?) supposedly carried somewhere a sign saying ‘Death to Jews’?
This may explain why Arabs living in Israel are not exactly lining up to leave…
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/10/gaza.reprisal.killings/index.html
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/06/12/gaza-armed-palestinian-groups-commit-grave-crimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/22/MNHV15EHUT.DTL
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGMDE210012009&lang=e
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053825.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2215320.stm
Chuck, you could put up a thousand links to try to confuse people, but the reason Palestinians are not rushing to leave from Israel is simple. It’s their HOMELAND, and Chuck it’s not Jewish. It’s Palestine.
There is an interesting passage from a Counterpunch published article today that puts a light on the much hidden history of White Apartheid South Africa and Israel’s alliance…
‘The saga starts with a box of tea that arrived in South Africa in 1975.
This past May (2010), researcher Sasha Polakow-Suransky uncovered declassified South African documents indicating that in 1975 the Israeli government offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime. Israeli officials apparently tried to block the declassification of the documents, but failed.
According to the British Guardian, then Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres—currently president—negotiated with Pretoria to supply South Africa with nuclear warheads for Israel’s Jericho missile. Peres dismissed Polakow-Suransky’s book—“The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa”—as having “no basis in reality for the claims.”
But according to Allister Sparks in Business Day (South Africa), the Israeli offer “to sell nuclear warheads to SA during apartheid is almost certainly correct—despite denials by key figures in both countries.” Sparks should know, because he was told what was in that box of tea by the Rand Mail’s lead investigative reporter, Marvyn Rees.
“I can state this because the disclosures closely corroborate information I was given 32 years ago when the late Echel Rhoodie, then secretary of information, told the Rand Daily, of which I was then editor, how he and Gen. Hendrik van den Bergh, head of the South African Bureau of State Security, had brought what he called ‘the trigger’ for a nuclear bomb from Israel,” Sparks writes.
Sparks has remained silent all these years because he made a promise to Rhoodie not to reveal the conversation, and because he was afraid of the “draconian Defense Act” that would have subjected him to prosecution. But since Rhoodie and the general are dead, the Act repealed, and the story revealed, he felt it was time to come in from the cold.
According to Polakow-Suransky the warhead offer fell through because the parties were worried that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would not go along. But Sparks argues that the “more likely explanation” was that Israel offered a “trigger,” which was cheaper, and ultimately more useful to Pretoria because it would allow the South Africans to produce their own nuclear weapons.
Apparently the Israelis also supplied South Africa with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that enhances the explosive power of nuclear weapons.
According to Sparks, the South African general and Rhoodie packed the trigger into a tea box and put it on a South African Airways plane as hand luggage.’
The complete article is here and it examines Israel, the US, and nuclear weapons today some…
http://www.counterpunch.com/hallinan12152010.html
Sasha Polakow-Suransky talks about his book outlining the White Apartheid-Israeli alliance here…
http://www.cfr.org/publication/22299/unspoken_alliance.html