[News] Rabbis provoke riots in Israel's "most racist" city

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Rabbis provoke riots in Israel's "most racist" city

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11616.shtml
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 November 2010

The tranquility of Safed, a small city nestled high in the hills of 
the Upper Galilee close to the Lebanese border, is not usually 
disturbed except by the occasional pilgrimage by Madonna or other 
famous devotees of the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah.

But in the past few weeks, Safed -- one of Judaism's four holy cities 
-- has been making headlines of a very different kind. Gideon Levy, a 
columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, last week declared it "the 
most racist city in the country."

The unflattering, and hotly contested, epithet follows an edict from 
Safed's senior rabbis ordering residents not to sell or rent homes to 
"non-Jews" -- a reference to the country's Palestinian citizens, who 
comprise a fifth of Israel's population.

At an emergency meeting, called last month to discuss the dangers of 
"assimilation" caused by Palestinian men dating Jewish women, the 18 
rabbis warned that Safed was facing an "Arab takeover." Jewish 
residents were told to inform on neighbors who try to sell or rent to Arabs.

The number of Palestinians in the city, though low, has been steadily 
rising as Safed Academic College has expanded. There are now some 
1,300 Palestinian students enrolled at the school.

The rabbis' statements have provoked a series of riots by local 
religious Jews, in which several homes have been attacked to chants 
of "Death to the Arabs." In one recent incident, three Palestinian 
students were beaten as shots were fired.

So far three Jewish youths, including an off-duty policeman, have 
been charged with participating in the violence. The policeman is 
accused of firing his gun.

The anti-Arab campaign escalated last week as posters were plastered 
across the city threatening to burn down the home of an elderly Jew 
if he did not stop renting to Arab students.

The owner, 89-year-old Eli Zvieli, said the posters appeared after he 
received phone threats and visits from several rabbis warning him to 
change his mind.

Jamil Khalaili, 20, a physiotherapy student at the college who rents 
an apartment with a friend in a Jewish neighborhood, said the 
atmosphere in Safed was rapidly deteriorating.

"We're being treated like criminals, like we're trying to steal their 
homes," he said. "It's got the point where many of my friends are 
wondering whether to leave. I want to study here but not if it costs 
me my life."

Leading the opposition to the presence of Arab students in the city 
is Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is employed by the 
municipality as head of its religious council.

"When a non-Jew moves in, residents begin to worry about their 
children, about their daughters. Many Arab students have been known 
to date Jewish girls," he told Israel National News, the main news 
agency of the settlement movement.

The 18 rabbis issued their joint statement after learning of the 
city's plan to build a medical school, which is expected to draw 
Palestinian students from across the Galilee.

They urged Jewish residents to shun a "neighbor or acquaintance" who 
rents to Arabs. "Refrain from doing business with him, deny him the 
right to read from the Torah and similarly ostracize him until he 
renounces this harmful deed," it read.

They have been given backing by a former chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, 
who used a recent sermon to tell his followers that "selling to 
[non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won't let 
them take control of us here."

Similar anti-Arab sentiments have been heard in two other Jewish 
cities in the Galilee, Karmiel and Upper Nazareth. Both were 
established decades ago as part of a government "Judaization" program 
to settle more Jews in the country's most heavily Palestinian-populated region.

In Karmiel, thirty kilometers west of Safed, ads in local newspapers 
have been promoting a special email address for residents to inform 
on neighbors planning to sell homes to Arabs. According to Ynet, a 
popular news website, the email account is overseen by officials for 
Oren Milstein, the city's deputy mayor until he was fired last week.

Adi Eldar, the mayor, said Milstein had "damaged the city's image" 
after he gave a newspaper interview in which he boasted that he had 
prevented the sale of thirty homes to Arab families.

Milstein's replacement as deputy mayor, Rina Greenberg, is a member 
of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, 
Israel's foreign minister, who advocates ridding the country of many 
of its Palestinian citizens.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso, who is also 
allied with Yisrael Beiteinu, has announced plans to build a new 
neighborhood for 3,000 religious Jews to halt what he called the 
city's "demographic deterioration."

Hundreds of Palestinian families from neighboring Nazareth have 
relocated to the Jewish city to escape overcrowding. Today, one in 
eight of Upper Nazareth's 42,000-strong population is Palestinian.

In August, Gapso said he felt "as happy as if I had a new baby" at 
the news that 15 extremist families from the former Gaza settlement 
of Gush Katif were establishing a Jewish seminary in his city.

Hatia Chomsky-Porat, who leads Galilee activists for Sikkuy, a group 
advocating better relations between Jews and Palestinians, said: "The 
political atmosphere is growing darker all the time. Racism among 
Jews is entirely mainstream now."

In Safed, the Palestinian student body, heavily outnumbered by nearly 
40,000 Jewish residents, has tried to keep a low profile. However, 
one small act of defiance appears to have further contributed to 
Jewish residents' fears of a "takeover."

Inhabitants awoke recently to find a Palestinian flag draped on the 
top of a renovated mosque -- one of the many old stone buildings in 
Safed that attest to the city's habitation long before Israel's establishment.

In 1948, when Jewish forces captured the town, Safed was a mixed city 
of 10,000 Palestinians and 2,000 Jews. All the Palestinian 
inhabitants were expelled, including a 13-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now 
the president of the Palestinian Authority who continues to hold 
office under controversial emergency decrees extending his expired term.

Khaliali said the city's history appeared still to haunt many of its 
Jewish residents, who expressed fears that Arab students were there 
to reclaim refugee property as the vanguard of a movement for the 
Palestinian right of return.

It is not the first time Eliyahu, the son of a former chief rabbi of 
Israel, has been accused of inciting against the city's Arab population.

In 2002, during a wave of suicide attacks at the start of the second 
Palestinian intifada, he called on Safed college to expel all 
Palestinian students.

Two years later he launched a campaign against intermarriage, 
accusing Palestinian men of waging "another form of war" against 
Jewish women by "seducing" them.

He narrowly avoided prosecution for incitement in 2006 after he 
agreed to retract his earlier statements.

The Religious Action Center, a group of Reform movement Jews, and 
several Palestinian MPs have demanded that Yehuda Weinstein, the 
attorney-general, investigate Eliyahu and the other rabbis for 
incitement to violence.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. 
His latest books are 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/theelectronic-20>Israel 
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the 
Middle East (Pluto Press) and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/theelectronic-20>Disappearing 
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His 
website is <http://www.jkcook.net/>www.jkcook.net.



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