‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’

Recent poll reveals steep rise in racist views against Arabs in Israel; many participants feel hatred, fear when overhearing Arabic, 75 percent don’t approve of shared apartment buildings

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html

<snip>

"Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.

The survey, which was conducted for the Center Against Racism, also found that over 75 percent of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home.

Five hundred Jewish men and women participated in the poll, which was published Tuesday.

According to the survey, racism against Arabs in Israel has seen a sharp rise since a similar survey was conducted two years ago.

In 2006, 247 racist acts against Arabs were reported, as opposed to 225 one year prior."

...or is an A-rab just an A-rab just an A-rab to them?

<snip>

"The life expectancy of Jewish citizens in Israel is four years higher than that of Arab citizens, according to the equality index published Wednesday by Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel. The data also reveals that the mortality rate for Arab infants under the age of 12 months is double that of their Jewish counterparts.

The index, published Tuesday for the first time, suggests grave inequality in the level of medical services enjoyed by Jews in Israel, and that available to Arabs. The index comprises several criteria, such as the general life expectancy, mortality rates and the percentage of smokers in the population.

The data suggests that the Arab minority in Israel suffers worse conditions than those of the Afro-American minority in the U.S. or the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. This, according to similar indexes published there.

Dr. Nyhaiya Daud, a public health expert and member of Sikkuy, told Haaretz Tuesday that one of the major factors for the differences was the lower socioeconomic status of the Arab-Israeli public compared to the Jewish population.

According to Dr. Daud, while the national health insurance law has dramatically improved the medical situation of many Arab citizens, not enough is being done to bring about full equality. To promote the issue, Dr. Daud proposes the creation of a special organization dedicated to improving health services for the Arab population."

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but also discriminate against those who have converted to Judaism and/or are not the same denomination (orthodox vs. reformed).

What sets this statement apart from the above-referenced "preference" is the employment of the word "treason" (mixing patriotism with religion -- again). This is still more evidence of the charge of apartheid as it is clear that someone thinks that two different groups of people should not intermix and live in peace through small societal institutions, such as marriage.

Isn't that why Palestinians "hate" Israelis? They're taught to in schools remember? Hilary said so!

like anti-Israel revisionist history and anti-semitic propaganda? Because I'm pretty sure Hil isn't just being racist.

http://www.pmw.org.il/BookReport_Eng.pdf

Do you have any sources that think that Israeli schools are teaching similar material against Arabs? Because if they are it would be pretty awful. As awful as it is when it occurs in Palestinian schools. Especially since America provides the funds for a lot of them.

and FWIW, I think Hil's a complete prostitute on this issue.

It makes me want to puke that with all the horror of occupation, she chooses to shine a light on the victims' TEXTBOOKS.

You gotta be kidding me!

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...indoctrinating a generation of children with propaganda is quite another altogether. Officially sanctioning textbooks that teach children anti-semitic, revisionist, or just plain old untrue history reflects a problem far greater than just "textbooks" as you seem to think. If it is official policy to groom a generation of children to resist peace by teaching them an alternate version of history which leaves them lacking a legitimate understanding of the world around them then I fail to see why you oppose criticizing it.

To rob these kids of the history behind the conflict that affects their lives so deeply in favor of false propaganda that can have no effect other than to widen the gulf between the two societies even more, (while also leaving their kids without a real education) indicates a government that has no plans to make peace in the forseeable future.

It indicates a government that plans to make terrorists.

provides all that is needed to create hatred.

No indoctrination necessary.

...that some would have people believe. Douglas Carpenter posted some information on another thread and I think you should read it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=169953&mesg_id=170096

What I find ridiculous is for anyone to try to claim that either Israelis or Palestinians are immune from having textbooks that stick to their own nation-building mythologies, no matter how much they ignore the other people, portray them as nothing but enemies fighting a heroic good-guy, or stick in maps that claim Israel and the Occupied Territories as being solely Israel or Palestine.

When it comes to Israel's shortcomings on the education side of things, the Green Line was erased from textbooks. The Education Minister has demanded it be put back in, and I hope it happens.

'Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children's awareness.'

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/796919.html

'Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as “murderers,” “rioters,” “suspicious,” and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.

Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.

“The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as ‘robbers,’ ‘bloodthirsty,’ and ‘killers,’” said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years.

Bar-Tal pointed out that Israeli textbooks continue to present Jews as industrious, brave and determined to cope with the difficulties of “improving the country in ways they believe the Arabs are incapable of.”

Hebrew-language geography books from the 1950s through 1970s focused on the glory of Israel’s ancient past and how the land was “neglected and destroyed” by the Arabs until the Jews returned from their forced exile and revived it “with the help of the Zionist movement.”

“This attitude served to justify the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough about the country to turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same land,” Bar-Tal told the Washington Report. “The message was that the Palestinians were primitive and neglected the country and did not cultivate the land.”

This message, continued Bar-Tal, was further emphasized in textbooks by the use of blatant negative stereotyping which featured Arabs as: “unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic, unproductive and apathetic.” Further, according to the textbooks, the Arabs were “tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor, sick, dirty, noisy, colored” and “they burn, murder, destroy, and are easily inflamed.”

Textbooks currently being used in the Israeli school system, says Bar-Tal, contain less direct denigration of Arabs but continue to stereotype them negatively when referring to them. He pointed out that Hebrew- as well as Arabic-language textbooks used in elementary and junior high schools contain very few references either to Arabs or to Arab-Jewish relations. The coordinator of a Palestinian NGO in Israel said that major historical events hardly get a mention either.

“When I was in high school 12 years ago, the date ‘1948’ barely appeared in any textbooks except for a mention that there was a conflict, Palestinians refused to accept a U.N. solution and ran away instead,” said Jamal Atamneh, coordinator of the Arab Education Committee in Support of Local Councils, a Haifa-based NGO. “Today the idea communicated to schoolchildren is basically the same: there are winners and losers in every conflict. When they teach about ‘peace and co-existence,’ it is to teach us how to get along with Jews.”

Atamneh explained that textbooks used by the nearly one million Arab Israelis (one-fifth of Israel’s population) are in Arabic but are written by and issued from the Israeli Ministry of Education, where Palestinians have no influence or input.

“Fewer than 1 percent of the jobs in the Education Ministry, not counting teachers, are held by Palestinians,” Atamneh said. “For the past 15 years, not one new Palestinian academic has been placed in a high position in the ministry. There are no Palestinians involved in preparing the Arabic-language curriculum obviously, there is no such thing as affirmative action in Israel.”

In addition, there are no Arabic-language universities in Israel. Haifa University, Atamneh points out, has had a steady 20 percent Arab student population for the past 20 years. “How can that figure have remained the same after all these years when the population in the north has grown to over 50 percent Arab?”

Answering his own question, Atamneh rattles off statistics that reflect excellent high school scores among Arab students which he contrasts to their subsequent lower-than-average performance in Hebrew-language college entrance exams given by the state.

“No major scholarships have ever been awarded to an Arab; there are no dorms for Arabs and no college-related jobs or financial aid programs. They justify this legal discrimination by the fact that we do not serve in the army. There are numerous blatant and official methods used to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the universities.” '

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0999/9909019.html

"Participants were asked what they felt when they overheard someone speaking Arabic. Thirty-one percent said they felt hatred, while 50 percent said they felt fear."

<snip>

"The majority of Arab Israeli adults are not part of the labor force, compared to most Jewish Israeli adults who are. Such was the finding of the Employment Index, part of a statistical project evaluating equality in Israel.

Among the Jewish population aged 15 and above, 57 percent work, compared to only 39 percent among the Arab citizens. One major contributing factor for this discrepancy is the fact that only 17.6 percent of Arab women work, compared to nearly 55 percent of Jewish women.

A closer evaluation also shows that the Arab population is employed at very high rates in less profitable jobs, such as construction. The average wage in construction is NIS 6,287, and the rate of Arabs employed in that field is 4.6 times higher than that of Jews.

On the other hand, in very profitable fields, the numbers of Arab workers is significantly lower than that of Jews. For example, in banking, finance and insurance, in which the average wage is NIS 13,500, there are 3.7 times more Jews than Arabs.

Yasser Awad, a Ph.D. student in statistics at the University of Haifa, and leading the Suitable Representation in Employment project on behalf of Sikkuy - The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel, believes that the labor market and the government exclude Arab citizens from various jobs."

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. . the author's own words. It may be just an example of terribly stupid reporting - but if the project is anything like how this article describes it - it's nothing but anti-Israel BS.

For example, the author says, "Arabs do not succeed in being integrated in the prestigious fields or in key positions in the Israeli economy," Awad says. "The reason for this can only be one - they are viewed, by the government and the private sector, as a demographic threat and not as skilled and educated human capital," he explains."

Nowhere is there any indication that the project attempted to determine why the stats are as they appear. No surveys, questionnaires, etc. exploring that question. Scholars who actually publish serious papers do not make unfounded conclusions based on their data if they wish to be taken seriously. This is especially true if the conclusions are politically loaded - as these are.

"The reason for this can only be one . . " followed by some politically loaded statement is a phrase that is almost never included in any real scholarly paper. This is a big red flag.

Another reason to suspect this guy is this. He says, "For example, in banking, finance and insurance, in which the average wage is NIS 13,500, there are 3.7 times more Jews than Arabs."

A quick check of widely available population figures shows that Israeli Arabs comprise about 20% of the population of Israel. If Jews were to get these high paying jobs at the same rate as Arabs in Israel, as a percent of population, Jews should get 4 times as many of those jobs.

The fact that they only get 3.7 times as many of those jobs according to this article therefore shows a bias in favor of Arabs between 5 and 10 percent of the total - depending on how you calculate it. I doubt that is the case at all and that Arabs probably do get fewer high paying jobs on a per capita basis. I also suspect that some of that difference is due to discrimination - it would be quite understandable for Israeli Jews to mistrust people who have generally claimed for 60 years that your state is an illegal entity sitting on their land - and who's friends and relatives across the border have tried repeatedly during those 60 years to violently remove you. But this study doesn't even describe the job rate difference accurately - much less explain its causes.

The author's own description of his data (based on this news article) is so full of unscholarly, inaccurate and politically loaded statements - the whole thing must certainly be one more anti-Israel smear job masquerading as a scholarly project.

it would be quite understandable for Israeli Jews to mistrust people who have generally claimed for 60 years that your state is an illegal entity sitting on their land - and who's friends and relatives across the border have tried repeatedly during those 60 years to violently remove you.

You do realise that the people yr talking about are every bit as Israeli as any other Israeli?

But I must thank you. Armed with this new knowledge that it's quite understandable to mistrust and entire group of people based on the actions of a few, I'll explain to people, using yr post as a guiding light, why it's quite understandable to mistrust indigenous Australians, seeing as how they have friends and relatives who have repeatedly started riots and burgled homes etc ;)

violence and anti-semitism/zionism amongst Palestinians is restricted to a tiny percentage of the population. Or that a reasonable parallel can be drawn between violent actions from indigenous Australians and those from Palestinians. (Are indiginous Australians organized into large factions committed to driving non-native Aussies off the continent? Have they repeatedly attacked non-natives without end since their arrival? Are they teaching their children that you use their blood to bake bread?)

If it is only a few who are violently resisting Israel, then why have I never seen Palestine's version of Peace Now or B'tselem? I have never seen any kind of voice preaching moderation eminate from the Palestinian camp. I DID notice that some 60% of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the last election though. I also noticed how popular stone throwing (with slingshots of course) is among Palestinian youth. One could say it's become an ingrained part of popular Palestinian culture.

You have to admit, there is not much diversity to be seen in the Palestinian camp regarding violence against Israel. If not everyone participates, practically no one hinders it either, in word or deed.

I have never seen any kind of voice preaching moderation eminate from the Palestinian camp.

What's Hanan Ashrawi and Sari Nusseibeh, just to name two? Scotch mist????

Also, I posted a link in this thread to a post full of info from Douglas Carpenter which had lots of information about Palestinian textbooks. It's pretty obvious that yr attempts to claim the problem is an all pervasive one is ignoring all of that information...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=171028&mesg_id=171213

Here's some info on the ones I mentioned:

Hanan Ashrawi

In 1988, ABC's "Nightline" aired a three-hour discussion between four Palestinians and four Israelis. A member of the Palestinian team, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, was then a relatively unknown figure -- a Dean at a Palestinian Anglican University and a political activist. Appearing on live American television for the first time, Hanan Ashrawi was about to blast onto the political arena.

As a woman, a Christian and an articulate and eloquent speaker -- Dr. Ashrawi's appearance shattered a number of Western stereotypes about Palestinians. Educated in the West, with a doctorate in medieval literature from the University of Virginia, Dr. Ashrawi understood how to cross cultural boundaries and make Palestinian issues clear and identifiable to people outside the Middle East. ABC News describes her as a person who "masterfully conducts press conferences and interviews, controlling the topics of discussion, dodging uncomfortable issues and cutting off what she considers irrelevant questions". Back in 1988, she was one of the first Palestinian figures to transcend the media's popular "terrorist" stereotype and present the more realistic image of Palestinians as victims of oppression.

<snip>

As Ashrawi's prestige and influence grew, she became Palestinian Minister of Higher Education and Research, and for one year, Head of the Political Committee. In 1993, she was one of the founders of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights and also is currently a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for Jerusalem. In 1998, however, Ashrawi resigned from the government in protest against political corruption, specifically Arafat's handling of peace talks. At the same time, she founded MIFTAH -- the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy. MIFTAH's mission is to "foster the principles of democracy and effective dialogue based on the free and candid exchange of information and ideas". Essentially, MIFTAH aims to promote the Palestinian cause by providing "updated, accurate and reliable information and analyses on all aspects of Palestinian reality" as well as networking with like minded organizations, regionally and globally. The ultimate goal is a respect for human rights, democracy and peace. MIFTAH reflects Dr. Ashrawi's drive to end to Israeli occupation on humanitarian, rather than historical or ideological, grounds.

Whether she is fighting for the cause of her people, or standing up to corruption and abuse of power by her own leaders, Dr. Ashrawi has consistently set an example of courage and integrity. She is undeniably an inspirational figure, a powerful woman in a world of big boys and their guns and an articulate and outspoken activist for democracy, human rights, and the Palestinian cause.

http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/mideast/ashrawi/ashrawibio.html

Sari Nusseibeh

Criticised the militarization of the intifada in January 2002, called for the renunciation of suicide bombings and the establishment of Palestine as a demilitarized state: "A Palestinian state should be demilitarised - not because that's what Israel demands, but in our own interest".



Arrested briefly, 17 December 2001, for planning a reception for foreign diplomats at the Imperial Hotel in Jerusalem, to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Arrest criticised on the Israeli Left, justified by the Likud on the grounds that the reception threatened Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. Nusseibeh's university offices were closed and sealed by the Israelis on 10 July 2002, on the grounds that they represented PA activity in Jerusalem (same grounds were used to justify the closure of Orient House in East Jerusalem in August 2001, in retaliation for a Palestinian suicide attack).



Relieved of Jerusalem PLO portfolio by Arafat, 19 December 2002.



In June 2003, Nusseibeh co-launched with Israeli former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon "The People's Voice", a non-partisan civil initiative to mobilize grassroots support for a two state solution based on:

§ a return to 1967 borders;

§ Jerusalem to be an open city;

§ Palestinian refugees have right of return only to a (demilitarized) Palestine, Jews have right of return only to Israel.

http://www.geocities.com/lawrenceofcyberia/palbios/pa09000.html

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Hmmm, apparently somebody here does give a shit.

And stop that moronic habit of trying to make out that just because I point out the poison being spewed on that site about me is something you agree with, that I'm even the slighest bit upset at a bunch of obsessed Arab/Muslim hating whackjobs say somewhere else...

check out http://semitism.net/
has a somewhat familiar domain name, but could not be more different than the one under discussion.

describing itself as "Pro-Jewish, Pro-Arab, Pro-Peace", it seems to me to be a place of rational, human discussion by people who want peace... and justice, for everyone.

You are complaining about that? That's pretty good kiddo.

Don't be shy...

and don't call me kiddo...

. . over the line. I can only do this for a little while and then I have to go do something positive with my life. Go and start a fight with someone else.

And don't call me exactly.

Typical.

..which consists of little more than incoherent shrieking about what an antisemite I supposedly am. Of course if msmghee agrees with that, she'll have no problems coming up with some examples of this antisemitism I supposedly espouse :)

<snip>

"Batya Oved of Kfar Sava, an Israel Defense Forces widow since 1978 and currently unemployed, was considered a known critic of Pnina Cohen, former chairwoman of the IDF Widows and Orphans organization.

After not receiving a voting slip for the internal elections for the organization's chair, she found out several of her friends had not received it either. Haaretz has learned they had been blacklisted along with some other 600 widows, most of whom hail from the Bedouin and Druze minorities. The blacklisted widows were not invited to events held by the organization, and excluded from receiving some benefits, according to a document obtained by Haaretz.

The document, in which the names of blacklisted widows are distinctly marked, was exposed by Nava Shoham, an activist for the right of IDF widows. It was prepared by former Chairwoman Pnina Cohen, who had recently been replaced. Cohen denies that such a document exists.

The 600 blacklisted women did not receive any correspondence from the organization, informing them of various benefits and grants afforded to IDF widows. 'We did not receive invitations to vacations and activities over several years,' says Oved. 'These get-togethers are our social circle and our support group. The women marked as Cohen's detractors were barred, as though the activities of the organization were some sort of private enterprise,' she accuses."

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