[WCUSP] Ha'aretz: Israel has reached new heights of racism

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_http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEnjhtml?itemNo=932384_
 
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=932384) 




   w w w  . h a a r e t z . c o m      
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Last update - 16:05 09/12/2007
Civil rights group: Israel has reached new heights of racism

By _Yuval Yoaz_ (mailto:yuvaly at haaretz.co.il)  and _Jack Khoury_ 
(mailto:jkhouri at haaretz.co.il) , Haaretz  Correspondents

Racism against Israel's Arab citizens has  dramatically increased in the past 
year, including a 26 percent rise in  anti-Arab incidents, according to the 
Association for Civil Rights in  Israel's annual report.

Author Sami Michael, the association's  president, said upon the release of 
the report that racism was so rife it  was damaging civil liberty in Israel.

"Israeli society is reaching  new heights of racism that damages freedom of
expression and privacy,"  Michael said. The publication coincides with Human 
Rights Week, which  begins Sunday.

"We are a society under supervision under a  democratic regime whose 
institutions are being undermined and which  confers a different status to residents 
in the center of the country and  in the periphery," Michael said.

The number of Jews expressing  feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled, 
the report  stated.

According to the June 2007 Democracy Index of the Israel  Democracy 
Institute, for example, only half the public believes that Jews  and Arabs must have 
full equal rights.

Among Jewish respondents, 55  percent support the idea that the state should 
encourage Arab emigration  from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of 
Arab political parties  in the government. According to a Haifa University 
study, 74 percent of  Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are "unclean."

The ACRI  says that bills introduced in the Knesset contribute to 
delegitimize the  country's Arab citizens, such as ones that would link the right to vote 
 and receive state allowances to military or national service.

They  also include bills that require ministers and MKs to swear allegiance 
to a  Jewish state and those that set aside 13 percent of all state lands owned 
 by the Jewish National Fund for Jews only.

"Arab citizens are  frequently subject to ridicule at the airports," the 
report  states.

It says that Arab citizens "are subject to 'racial  profiling' that 
classifies them as a security threat. The government also  threatens the freedom of 
expression of Arab journalists by brandishing the  whip of economic boycott and 
ending the publication of government  announcements in newspapers that 
criticize its policy."

Hadash  Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh said that the report "did not take us by 
 surprise and neither should anyone be surprised by it. Its results are the  
natural consequence of a racist campaign led by political and military  
leaders, as well as the result of the anti-Arab racist policies  implemented by 
consecutive  governments."





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