Not racism

Israelis aren’t ‘racist’ - they’re worried

Israel’s Arab citizens are being drawn toward radicalism by their leadership.

By Isi Leibler, January 24, 2007
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/israelis-arent-racist-theyre-worried

Far Left Group ‘Documents’ Israeli (supposed, so called) Racism

By Steven Plaut, December 12, 2007

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is a far leftist propaganda group that has just released a report allegedly documenting a skyrocketing rate of “racism” among Israeli Jews against Arabs, in addition to discovering that Israel is a generally oppressive society.

The first point to be made is that nothing coming from ACRI is credible and everything from it should be dismissed as misleading and skewed. ACRI is not a reliable source about anything. The second point is that the same survey supposedly collected for ACRI asked no questions about Arab racism against Jews. How curious. The third point is that none of the questions supposedly indicating growing Jewish “racism” have anything at all to do with racism or bigotry.

ACRI claims to discern an increase of 26% in anti-Arab “incidents” in Israel, although it offers no evidence that any of these “incidents” are really racist. It claims a 100% increase in anti-Arab “hatred” among Jews but does not say how it measures this “hatred.”

From the media reports about the study, ACRI evidently measures this alleged racism based on the proportion of Jews who want to condition welfare benefits, social perks (like tuition vouchers), and income subsidies on army service. This is racist, insists the ACRI. Never mind that every other nation on earth gives its army vets such benefits, or that no one is stopping any Arabs from serving in the Israeli army and getting the same veteran benefits, or that in any case such a policy would “penalize” Orthodox yeshiva students no less than Arabs.

Many of the indicators of “oppression” used in the ACRI study are meaningless, political biased, and have even less to do with ethnic disparities. For example, the report bewails a drop in the number of hospital beds in Israel per 1,000 population (still among the world’s highest rates), a drop having nothing to do with racism and everything to do with fiscal cuts and budgetary constraints.

ACRI also finds evidence of “oppression” in the structural reforms that Israel’s minister of justice is pursuing. It would be “repressive,” believes ACRI, for an elected cabinet minister to prevent unelected judges from just making up laws and “rights” as they go along in court. The report cries crocodile tears about the hiring of workers via employment agencies rather than as direct employees of companies and business. But there is nothing at all “oppressive” in this; in fact, it’s downright beneficial, as thousands of unemployed people are able to find jobs through manpower agencies.

The ACRI study finds that fully half the Jewish public takes a negative view of exact equality between Jews and Arabs. This is amusing, of course, because the left opposes exact equality for Arabs when it comes to things like conscription or national service for Arabs.

In any case, the wording of the question could be interpreted to mean not legal equality or equal opportunity but equality of results (such as in income homogeneity), a cause beloved by the left and opposed by everyone else.

Fifty-five percent of Jews endorse subsidizing Arabs who want to emigrate from Israel, finds the ACRI report, which labels such sentiment racist. Except that 100% of the Israeli Labor Party and the left supports subsidizing Jews to move out of the West Bank, which evidently is not racist.

Here’s yet another example of Jewish anti-Arab racism in the ACRI report: It turns out Arabs are searched for weapons and explosives at airports more so than Jews. ACRI would prefer a “non-racist non-discriminator” set of security procedures.

In short, the ACRI report is a very useful tool for identifying what is not racism, though it will be picked up by every anti-Semitic organization and website on earth to prove that Israel is an “apartheid entity.”
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/far-left-group-documents-israeli-racism-2/2007/12/12/

Feiglin: No One is as Spoiled as Israel’s Arabs

Gil Ronen, Jun 6, 2013 —
Arab MK could not hold back a smirk as MK Feiglin said the Arabs of Israel are the world’s most spoiled minority.

“Because you are so concerned about racism,” he continued sarcastically, “I would like to point to several examples of racism that I am sure you, the Arab MKs, will denounce along with me. For instance, when an Israeli citizen wants to enter the Temple Mount – if he is an Arab, he can enter freely, without being checked at all, through ten gates. All week long, almost 24 hours a day.

“If he is a Jew, he may enter only during one or two hours a day, only through one gate, with an intensive security check – and MK Tibi is saying that even that is too much. Since you are so opposed to racism, I have no doubt that you, MK Freij – you will join me in opposing this racist discrimination.

“You know what, MK Tibi was fair enough to say his opinion on this matter. It is not racism that is causing your reaction,” MK Feiglin added. “I know of no other minority in the entire human race that receives so much, and wails so much.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/168651

Livni Team Thinking Outside the Box: Swap Israeli Arabs for Settlers
By Yori Yanover, January 1, 2014
Hard to tell why physically uprooting Jews is not racism, but merely redrawing the border to the west of an area rather than its east is racist.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/livni-team-thinking-out-of-the-box-swap-israeli-arabs-for-settlers/2014/01/01/

Former MK: We are at war | Israel National News - Arutz Sheva

Nov 24, 2016 — Ben Ari included High Court Justice Salim Joubran in his call for disloyal Arabs to be sent to other countries. “I’m not against Arabs, but I am against enemies who are not loyal like Salim Joubran, who refused to sing Hatikvah. Send him to Syria. Ahmed Tibi and all the Arabs who vote for the Joint List, which say that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, are enemies. The Arabs who vote for the Likud are loyal. But the 450,000 who voted for the Joint List are not loyal and should go to another country. Send them to Denmark or to Arizona. Give them a free airplane ticket and send them to another country.”

“It’s not racism. It’s a war of survival for the only country we have.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/220812

Ask Israeli chess champion Liel Levi-tan about Middle East apartheid

A seven year old champion is prevented from attending the chess world championship in Tunisia because she is Israeli, but nothing happens. Only Israel’s Nationality Law is panned as apartheid.

Giulio Meotti, Jul 27, 2018
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/351113

A right to self-determination, not racism
The raging dispute over the nation-state law blows a debate that has been quashed and suppressed in public discourse for years wide open—Judaism not as a religion, but as a civilization, and the central responsibility of Israel for its continued existence.

Dror Eydar, 07-31-2018

1.
Is the nation-state law a declaration of independence by the majority in Israel against a years long attempt to dictate the identity of Israel and its laws, via an unelected minority in the Supreme Court and the people in the media and academia who declare themselves responsible for setting the tone? Let’s hope so. Time will tell. According to the hysteria that the Left creates using its endless mouthpieces, it appears that we have hit the bullseye: the battle for the State of Israel’s Jewish identity. Some among us thought that after 2,000 years, they’d be able to establish a European country whose Jewishness was expressed only by the people living here. But a people who has been around for thousands of years cannot escape its identity and its focus on it.

2.
I still haven’t heard even one serious argument against Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People—only curses, invective, and childish clichés, not to mention of course tears and hurt feelings. Dear readers, read the full version of the law. (It’s short.) It’s the best serum for inoculation against media propaganda.

The nation-state law protects Israel from the risk of it becoming a binational state as well as from the direction in which former Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak was pushing it, what is known formally as “a state of all its citizens,” but in effect means “a state of all its nations.” If it weren’t for this law, at the end of the current process, the Arab citizens of Israel would demand national autonomy. They already are, but without the nation-state law, the path would have been cleared for them.

3.
There is no attack here on individual rights or civil rights. In Israel, everyone is equal before the law. But the nation-state law is different; it is part of an entirety that will be expressed in a future constitution, so it addresses nothing other than the issue of nationality. When it comes to this, there is no equality. In the State of Israel, there is room for only one national identity: that of the Jewish people. The nation-state law belongs to the same family of laws as the Law of Return. “Apartheid,” a veteran reporter tweeted on Monday about the nation-state law. According to that logic, the Law of Return is apartheid, too (and I’m familiar with the legal figure eights the left performs to justify the Law of Return). Oh, the shame!

4.
What we have here isn’t racism (and may the mouths of those who call it that fill with dust). Rather, it is the simple and natural right of the Jewish people to their only national state in the world. Anyone who opposes that is racist because he does not accept the right of the Jewish people to exclusive self-determination, whereas he has no problem supporting a Judenrein Palestinian state. On the fringes of the opposition to the nation-state law there is also a denial that Jews are a people and a nation. Article 19 of the PLO charter determines that the Jews are a religion, not a people, and therefore have no right to a country of their own. Do you understand who else is in the boat with the opponents of the law?

5.
The nation-state law must not be touched or changed, but I am in favor of a special law that would benefit the Druze and other minorities who are blood allies of the Jewish people. For years, I’ve been pushing to allocate more funds to their communities than to Jewish ones. But the nation-state law has nothing to do with all that; it is about the question of Israel’s Jewish nationality. The Druze have no national aspirations or any desire for an independent state. Therefore, the nation-state law doesn’t affect them. Anyone saying that the rights of minorities have been harmed even one iota is lying. Incidentally, only the Jewish state will protect the civil and human rights of the minorities living in it. One need only glance around the region to realize that. The people who object to the nation-state law need to decide who their leader is. Is it Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint Arab List?

6.
The raging dispute over the nation-state law blows a debate that has been quashed and suppressed in public discourse for years wide open—Judaism not as a religion, but as a civilization, and the central responsibility of Israel for its continued existence. This is what the law protects. Minorities in Israel have the right to live in this great civilization that has placed a wealth of treasures of knowledge, wisdom and ancient texts at its disposal—a legacy the like of which no other civilization has left its descendants. We are offering it to the world, but to continue flourishing in cultural and religious terms, as well, we have an obligation to defend our national home. We swore enough oaths to do so in the Diaspora, another reason why we now have the law.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-right-to-self-determination-not-racism/

Into the Fray: Identifying the Enemy as the Enemy is NOT “Racism”

By Dr. Martin Sherman, 17 Av 5778 – July 29, 2018
[...]
Arab enmity not Arab ethnicity

This, then, is the context, in which the various countermeasures that Israel undertakes against the members of the Palestinian enemy collective—but not against its own citizens—should be perceived—such as: travel restrictions on certain roads; intrusive security inspections at roadblocks and checkpoints; preemptive administrative detentions; demolition of convicted terrorists’ homes; dawn raids on households suspected of harboring members of terror organizations; and so on.

However, the enforcement of these coercive counter measures is not motivated by any doctrine of racial superiority, but by well-founded security concerns for the safety and security of Israel’s citizens—concerns that are neither the product of mere arbitrary malice, nor of some hate-filled delusional prejudice. To the contrary, they are the result of years of bitter experience, of death and destruction, wrought on the Jews by Arab hatred.

Of course, one might dispute the wisdom, the efficacy and/or the necessity of any—or even all—of these measures; but not the reason behind their use. This is, without a doubt, due to Arab enmity – not Arab ethnicity.

Accordingly, Israel would do well to clarify, forcefully and resolutely, this simple truth, which has been either unintentionally forgotten or intentionally obscured:

Identifying one’s enemy as the enemy is not “racism”—it is merely an imperative dictated by common sense and by a healthy instinct for survival.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-identifying-the-enemy-as-the-enemy-is-not-racism/

No, R’ Kahane Was Not A Racist

By Yehuda L Oppenheimer, January ruary 28, 2019

... I find it amazing how much people distort the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Hy”d. It is my experience that the vast majority of those who find Rabbi Kahane’s beliefs abhorrent have 1) never actually read his books; 2) tend to be liberal in their outlook to the extent that they are uncomfortable with Torah concepts that conflict with western liberal values; and 3) are afraid of the political power Kahane represents.

This short article is not the place to argue the merits of Rav Kahane’s ideas. Personally, I agreed with at least 90 percent of what he had to say, although I believe some of his statements – particularly toward the end of his too-short life – were too extreme and the tone in which he said them was too harsh. I ascribe this tone and extremism to the bitterness he felt in being unfairly undercut and destroyed by his political enemies who were afraid of his growing popularity.

I would encourage any fair-minded person to actually read his books – the two most important of which, in my opinion, are Never Again and Why Be Jewish?. I promise it’s worth your time. Even if you end up disagreeing with him, you will at least come away impressed by the power of his arguments.

Those who oppose Rabbi Kahane remind me of the mindless, absolute rejection of President Trump by virtually the same groups that are vilifying Otzma Yehudit. In both cases, haters pick up on half-truths, which they distort and twist in order to vilify and politically murder their political opponent. Truth is irrelevant for them.

For example, both Rav Kahane and President Trump have been accused of being racist. In the case of Rabbi Kahane, critics point to his calls to drive the Arabs out of Israel. As for the president, critics point to his statement that there were good people on both sides of the Charlottesville debacle and his strong stance against illegal aliens.

Both these “proofs,” however, are bogus. Rabbi Kahane did not hate Arabs nor did he wish them to be treated with anything less than full civility as long as they left Israel. He argued that no self-respecting Arab would ever sing Hatikvah and salute the Israeli flag with full hearted loyalty to Israel.

He argued that Arabs genuinely believe we stole their land and far too many of them would like to push us into the sea, or at the very least, use their growing birthrate to democratically vote the State of Israel out of existence. Living where I do – in the 70-percent-and-growing Arab Galilee – I can testify that the issue is real.

The crucial bottom line, however, is that Rabbi Kahane’s argument is based on practicality and history, not racism or animus. To refuse to deal with the issues he raised – and that Otzma Yehudit champions – is to refuse to deal with uncomfortable questions. (Another Kahane classic, incidentally – obviously unread by most Jews – is Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews.)

In the case of President Trump, he is not against immigrants; he’s against illegal immigration. He does not consider illegal aliens “animals.” He used that term only to describe the murderers and rapists gang members of MS-13.

He also did not say that Nazis marching in Charlottesville were good people; he said exactly the opposite and condemned them severely. In his “good people” comment, Trump was arguing that many of the Confederate-statue-loving protesters were simply opposed to rewriting the history of the Confederacy.

It is too bad that – both in Israel and the U.S. – political discourse has been replaced by lies, smears, and innuendo. Let’s hope that less shrillness and more sanity returns to political discussion, and that people start listening to – rather than vilifying – each other.
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/no-rabbi-kahane-was-not-a-racist/2019/02/28/

Otzma Yehudit candidate defends party from charges of racism, says party must be judged on current positions, not those of Meir Kahane.

Arutz Sheva Staff

Mar 6, 2019
“To say that there is no room for Israel’s enemies is not racism. This is just focusing on a few sentences and taking them out of context”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/260003

Racism and discrimination in the Middle East - against whom? | ערוץ 7
Aug 27, 2019 — Is that not racism in the center of Jerusalem? The Muslim Waqf controls the Temple Mount – where Jews aren’t allowed to pray
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/352951

Particularism or Universalism?
Are the citizens of Israel entitled to preserve their ethnic and religious makeup as well as their culture? And who is to decide? Opinion.
Ted Belman, Jan 27, 2022

Everyone is familiar will Hillel’s quote in Ethics of the Fathers, loosely translated, “If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

I have always understood this to mean that an individual must make the case for his particular before making the case for the other. Particularism before universalism. Neither should be to the exclusion of the other, but the former, according to Hillel, comes first. One might add that it is only natural to fight for yourself before fighting for others.

The first half of the twentieth century, however, witnessed within the Jewish community a flight from the Jewish particular in favour of the universal. As the Jews came out of the ghetto and shteitels, they shed religion for secularism. They became Communists in Russia, socialists in Europe and liberal Democrats in America.

The Jewish Right wishes to follow Hillel’s dictum by emphasizing the Jewish particular first and then addressing the “other”. Thus, it chooses a Jewish Israel even if it offends the Western notion of democracy. On the other hand, the Jewish Left wishes to do the opposite. It stresses the rights of the other, particularly the Palestinian Arabs, at the expense of Jewish rights. A case in point is a look back at the decisions by Israel’s left-leaning High Court of Justice. The Jewish Right wants Israel to be a Jewish state whereas the Left argues that Israel should be a state like other states or of all its citizens. Binyamin Netanyahu got it right when he said, “Israel is the state of the Jews and not of its citizens.”

In an article I once wrote, “It pays to be Jewish”, I argued that Israel, to be a Jewish state, must give pre-eminence to Jewish Civil Law (not criminal law, which, in the days of Biblical monarchy, followed what is called Mishpat Hamelech, the King’s Law, whose expedience was approved of by halakhia) which flows from the Torah. About the time the State was established, there were scholarly Torah works written in favor ot this idea and how to implement it today, showing that it is more fair and more successful in rehabilitating those found guilty.

I implied that freedom of speech should not protect anti-Israel incitement and that persons not loyal to Israel as a Jewish state should have their citizenship revoked and should not be allowed a Knesset seat.

This raised howls of racism from some. But to deny your enemies certain rights is not racism, because it is not based on physical characteristics. It is self-defense, based on their stated intention to destroy us.

Paul Eidelberg, in his important book Jewish Statesmanship, stands against a loyalty oath as the solution, writing “It is the height of impudence, of conceit and even of stupidity to grant equal political rights to Arabs in the expectation that they will renounce their religion and 1,300 year old civilization for a ballot box.”

“[…]From the Torah’s perspective, a people is not a random or amorphous aggregation of individuals. The essence of peoplehood is particularism and not universalism, which is not to say that particularism precludes universal ideas and ideals such as ethical monotheism. A living people must have a revered past and a profound sense of collective purpose, embodied in national laws and literature and vivified by national holidays and customs. Such a people will experience similar joys and harbour similar thoughts conducive to friendship. They will feel responsible for each other and respond in righteous indignation to assaults on their national honour. Therein is the heart and soul of a people and the reason why their government will not bestow citizenship on foreign elements whose goals or way of life clashes with their own.”

Thus, the question becomes, are the citizens of a country entitled to preserve their ethnic or religious makeup or their culture? And who is to decide? The Western model said “no” and today’s wokeism is even more emphatic. Multiculturalism reigns supreme, as does relativism. In a post-modern, progressive liberal world, no one’s values are better than the values of others. Everything and everybody is to be tolerated, even those who don’t tolerate you. It is easy to see that this destruction is the ultimate destination of universalism. It seeks to render valueless the particular, whether religious or national.

It is paradoxical that the greatest opposition to universalism comes from Muslims, who are the largest intended beneficiary.

While the Left continually excoriates Israel for falling below a standard imposed by them on Israel alone, it totally ignores the reality of the Muslim world. You would think that since the Muslims are most in conflict with their tolerant world view, that the left would focus on castigating and reforming them. But no, they pick on Israel instead. Could this be antisemitism...?

When Jews agonize over the survival of the Jewish people, invariably one asks, “Survive as what?” Obviously, if you give up what makes you Jewish, you, as a Jew, are not surviving. The resistance to assimilation is also often referred to as racism, but it isn’t. It denotes healthy love of self. It is the self-hatred of the Jewish Left that is evident as they strive to deny the Jewish particular. That is to be rejected, or at least recognized for what it is.

The same goes for Israel. If Israel would become a bi-national state, it would die as a Jewish state. Even the name Israel could be changed. The Arab Israelis would argue for the Law of Return to apply to them, also. And so on. It will also die as a Jewish state if it doesn’t take steps to preserve its Jewish character. These should include restoring Jewish Civil Law wherever feasible and creating a basic law that permits only Jews to determine its national purpose, character and defense.

I submit that a nation has not only the inherent right of self-defense when its national existence is threatened, but also when its cultural essence is at risk. Israel’s enemies deny it both rights. To assert these rights is not racism. Every nation has the right to determine who can immigrate, who can become citizens and what values in its society are inviolable.

Israel even more so. The Torah defines the People of Israel (Am Yisrael) and the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisroel), and the covenant between them and G-d. The People of Israel have a collective responsibility and a mission and a birthright (Israel). Whether or not you believe in G-d, the fact remains that this is the essence of Judaism. This essence has survived for over three thousand years and should continue to survive.

Israel has not only the right to defend this culture, but the duty to do so.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321236

The hypocrites attacking Israel’s new government

The only ones who should be afraid are Israel’s enemies. Op-ed.

Jason Shvili, Nov 6, 2022.

... A lot of the criticism the RZP receives, however, comes from some very hypocritical sources.

For example, the Palestinian Authority wasted no time in criticizing the results of the recent elections, saying that they reflect an increasingly intolerant and racist Israeli society. But this is the same P.A. that fails to protect religious minorities under its jurisdiction, as evidenced by a recent attack on a church by several Muslim men in the P.A.-ruled town of Beit Sahur.

It’s no accident that ever since the P.A. was created in 1994 as part of the Oslo Accords, the Christian population of P.A.-ruled territory has shrunk significantly. This is because of the relentless persecution of Christians at the hands of the Muslim majority.

The P.A. also has the hutzpah to accuse Israeli politicians of racism while it continues to demand that all Jews be expelled from a future Palestinian Arab state. If that’s not racism, I don’t know what is.

The new Israeli government under Netanyahu will certainly not be anti-peace. It will be a government that recognizes the present reality in which a two-state solution is not a solution to anything, but rather a recipe for disaster.

If anyone is anti-peace, it’s the Palestinian Arab leadership, which in no way promotes peace and coexistence with Israel. Instead, Palestinian Authority textbooks promote the murder of Jews and Palestinian Authority media is inundated with imagery that glorifies terrorism. No wonder that whenever a Jew is murdered by Palestinian terrorists, the Palestinian Arabs celebrate by handing out candy.

In fact, history shows that right-leaning politicians like Netanyahu tend to be good for peace. Let’s not forget that it was a right-wing government under Prime Minister Menachem Begin that achieved peace with Egypt. Forty years later, Netanyahu concluded normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. His efforts more than doubled the number of Arab states that have full diplomatic relations with Israel.

I have almost no doubt that by the end of his upcoming tenure as prime minister, Netanyahu will have achieved peace agreements with Saudi Arabia and other Arab and Muslim states. In contrast, the left gave us the Oslo Accords, which resulted in runaway terrorism and the deaths of hundreds of Israelis.

Netanyahu and his right-wing partners’ return to power should be a cause for optimism, not fear. The only ones who should fear the new government are Israel’s enemies.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-hypocrites-attacking-israels-new-government/

Kahane was a leader, we are not racists’ | Israel National News

When the “status quo” protects injustice | ערוץ 7

Jan 20, 2023 — In modern democratic societies, policies should be decided on the basis of law, morality, and justice—not racism or fear of rioting mobs.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366224