Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumThe Racist Little Superland In All Of Us
When people think of Hanna Arendt, they usually think of "the banality of evil", her famous phrase after seeing Adolf Eichmann tried in Jerusalem. But Arendt had another interesting, albeit less famous quote regarding the relationship between evil and the banal in her posthumous book "Life of the Mind": "The sad truth", she wrote, "is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil".
Last week, seventh grade students from the Arab school Ajial in Jaffa learned that lesson first-hand when their teacher tried to order them tickets for a day of fun in the Superland amusement park in Rishon Lezion, only to be told he'd have to pick another day. Why? The park apparently has a segregation policy, renting the park to Jews and Arab schools on different days.
The enraged teacher, Khaled Shakra, posted the story on his Facebook page. It caused quite the national stir. Superland's managers hastened to explain that the segregation was the result of multiple requests from Jewish and Arabs schools alike, following violent confrontations between groups of Arabs and Jewish students. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni vowed to open a "racism hotline" for citizens to report incidents of discrimination. Education Minister Shay Piron was outraged and called Shakra to offer his support and MKs from all parties voiced their disgust.
Yet again Israel found itself defending itself against accusations of apartheid.
MORE...
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/the-racist-little-superland-in-all-of-us.premium-1.527699
msongs
(67,406 posts)I think it would have been more diplomatic to ask:
"Is that like groups that segregate women from men."
where it's understood that we're not speaking about separate vs unisex washrooms.
E.g. the Catholic Church, which has a 100% male hierarchy. Like the USA before Susan B. Anthony and Co.
Liberation is piecemeal, but we have to believe that it's the wave of the future.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)Op-ed: Amusement park's Arab-Jewish segregation policy stems from racist Israeli laws
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4386908,00.html
snip :
For example, the admissions committees law (passed on March 22, 2011), which applies to hundreds of communities in the Negev and the Galilee that were built on "State-owned land," stipulates that "the allocation of land to a person for the purpose of its acquisition as part of a communal settlement, can be done only with the approval of the admissions committee."
The law is meant to keep Arabs away from Jews. This is also true of the Nakba Law, which prohibits Arabs from expressing their pain and threatens them with economic sanctions. And there are other laws that have the same purpose.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)Instead of combatting anti-Semitism and racism at its core, this kind of backwards logic gives in to the unjust system, trying simply to manage a racist and discriminatory status quo. This is exactly the case of Superland.
Superland perfectly expresses the super segregation we live in. Its policy isnt a law that was handed down from above, or a specific manager who hates Arabs. It has simply become the norm.
MORE...
http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2013-05-31/mairav-zonszein-superland-and-the-normalization-of-segregation-in-israel/