Racism and extremism in Israel
Rabbis in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak have signed a statement declaring it forbidden for Jews to sell or rent property to Arabs. The statement echoes sentiments expressed in racist fliers distributed in the city last month. The Hebrew-language fliers read:
Our homes have become non-Jewish. In Pardes Katz, there are hostile Arabs, not of our people, who have brought to our streets intermarriage, destruction and fear… We must not agree to an atmosphere so dangerous to our souls and bodies! We cannot allow them to destroy the education of the youth in our neighborhood!
But I guess it doesn’t matter, since 68 percent of Israelis already refuse to live in the same apartment building as an Arab.
This latest bit of racist bile comes on the heels of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon this past summer, during which the Yesha Rabbinical Council declared, “according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as ‘innocents’ of the enemy.” Perhaps Yesha’s ‘fatwa’ is simply a reflection of the prevailing attitude toward non-Jewish life within the Israeli Defense Forces, as evidenced by the alarming practice of IDF soldiers posing for pictures with dead Palestinians (Of course, CNN somehow missed all of these incidents, though they did report on this in great detail)
How is it that racism and religious extremism are so pervasive in the “only democracy in the Middle East”? I wonder if MEMRI will translate and distribute these statements…
(courtesy of KabobFest)