Is Zionism Racist? Half of Israeli High School Students Oppose Equal Rights for Israeli Arab

Jewish Group Urges Israeli Model Bar Refaeli not to marry Leonardo DiCaprio and dilute the Jewish race

Is Zionism racist? Of course not. It’s just a gentle Jewish cultural and spiritual association of like-minded thinkers! And pigs (kosher of course) can fly. In most countries you will find clubs and societies which are allied with church or synagogue and which are only for those who are of a particular brand of religion or creed. There is nothing racist in this because racism comes from power, the power to determine others' lives.

It is when a State is aligned to a particular religion and becomes a state of a particular religion, with the purpose of making that state as ‘pure’ as possible in respect of other religions, it is not a religious but a racial state. In that sense there is no difference in principle between the State of the Aryans in Nazi Germany and the State of the Jews in Israel. There may be differences in degree, method, power etc. but the underlying philosophy is the same.

What you may ask about an Islamic state? Well there are a few of them and they are not States of Islamic privilege. In Iran you don’t gain any particular rights or privileges because you are Islamic. Jews are not discriminated against by the state in Iran because they are Jewish. Islam, in short, becomes a means of legitimising repression against other Iranians who are deemed Islamic. Likewise in Saudi Arabia, which officially bars non-Muslims from the country, the ruling Saud family, uses the Wahhabite offshoot from Islam to repress other Muslims.

Britain is formally Christian but the only privilege that this carries is that of the right of succession to the present Royal incumbent. Only Protestants of the Church of England can become King or Queen. Not a deprivation that blights too many lives although there is widespread consensus that this is anachronistic, although some of us would say the monarchy itself is what is anachronistic! But you don’t get higher welfare benefits or gain access to state lands or jobs etc. because you are Christian here. On the contrary there are laws against that type of thing.

So it’s no surprise that we find that nearly 50% of Israel’s Jewish secondary schools don’t believe in equal rights for Israeli Arabs. These students are, of course, educated in a strictly segregated system of education, though like in northern Ireland that is more a symptom than a cause.

No wonder that Professor Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv University can state the bleeding obvious, namely that ‘"Jewish youth have not internalized basic democratic values.’ And why? Maybe it has something to do with a Jewish state? The need for Judaification of areas of the country where Arabs predominate or are in large minority, such as Jerusalem or the Galilee or Negev? Maybe it is also something to do with having a party of the far-right Avigdor Liebermann in power, whose followers chant regularly ‘death to the Arabs’ or whose leader expresses the desire to drown thousands of Palestinian ‘terrorists’ in the Dead Sea?

Note that whereas 49.5% of youth are opposed to granting equal rights to Arabs, among the growing religious and orthodox sector this shoots up to over 80%. Proving how correct I am to have focussed on Israeli’s neo-Nazi rabbis.

Indeed it seems that over half are opposed to equal rights because 56% are opposed to Arabs being able to run for office. Of course this won’t happen, at least not yet, because the ability of Arabs to formally take part in the political process is a major component of the propaganda that declares Israel to be a democratic state. Indeed Israel is what should be known as a democratic police state for Arabs.

The article beneath that is about an openly racist Zionist group that has petitioned Bar Refaeli not to marry her boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio ‘because it would dilute the Jewish race’. Now the only reason I include this article from Ha’aretz is because what they are calling for is actually part of mainstream Zionist discourse. It was Netanyahu who said at the 2003 Herzliya Conference who termed Israeli Arabs a ‘demographic problem’. As Haaretz of 17.12.03. reported:

‘the finance minister blamed Israeli Arabs for tilting Israel's demographic balance, and said if the percentage of Arab citizens rises above its current level of about 20 percent, Israel will not be able to remain both Jewish and democratic. "If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens," Netanyahu said…’

Indeed opposition to ‘assimilation’ or marrying-out was converted from a religious injunction into a racial prerequisite when Zionism sought to create a state that was Jewish. Just as the Nazis transformed anti-semitism from a religious to racial persecution, so too in Israel. Indeed in the latest controversy over conversion to being Jewish in Israel, it is Liebermann’s Yisrael Beteinu is in the forefront of calling for mass conversions and a liberalisation of the existing order (because one-third million Russians in Israel are not Jewish).


Poll: Half of Israeli high schoolers oppose equal rights for Arabs
Friday March 12 2010

By Or Kashti

Nearly half of Israel's high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel, according to the results of a new survey released yesterday. The same poll revealed that more than half the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.

The survey, which was administered to teenagers at various Israeli high schools, also found that close to half of all respondents - 48 percent - said that they would refuse orders to evacuate outposts and settlements in the Palestinian territories.

Nearly one-third - 31 percent - said they would refuse military service beyond the Green Line.

The complete results of the poll will be presented today during an academic discussion hosted jointly by Tel Aviv University's School of Education and the Citizens' Empowerment Center in Israel. The symposium will focus on various aspects of civic education in the country.

"Jewish youth have not internalized basic democratic values," said Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the conference organizers.

The poll was commissioned last month by Maagar Mochot, an Israeli research institution, under the supervision of Prof. Yitzhak Katz. It took a sampling of 536 Jewish and Arab respondents between the ages of 15-18.

The survey sought to gauge youth attitudes toward the State of Israel; their perspective on new immigrants and the state's Arab citizens; and their political stances.

The results paint a picture of youth leaning toward political philosophies that fall outside the mainstream.

In response to the question of whether Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews, 49.5 percent answered in the negative. The issue highlighted the deep fault lines separating religious and secular youths, with 82 percent of religious students saying they opposed equal rights for Arabs while just 39 percent of secular students echoed that sentiment.

The secular-religious gap was also present when students were faced with the question of whether Arabs should be eligible to run for office in the Knesset. While 82 percent of those with religious tendencies answered in the negative, 47 percent of secular teens agreed. In total, 56 percent said Arabs should be denied this right altogether.

The survey also delved into the issue of military service and following orders that are deemed politically divisive.

While an overwhelming majority (91 percent) expressed a desire to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, 48 percent said they would not obey an order to evacuate outposts and settlements in the West Bank.

Here, too, researchers note the religious nexus. Of those who would refuse evacuation orders, 81 percent categorize themselves as religious as opposed to 36 percent who are secular.

"This poll shows findings which place a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth," said an Education Ministry official.

The survey, which also revealed that a relatively high number of youth plan on voting and that democracy is still the preferred system of government, indicates "a gap between the consensus on formal democracy and the principles of essential democracy, which forbid the denial of rights to the Arab population," the official said.

"The differences in positions between secular and religious youth, which are only growing sharper from a demographic standpoint, need to be of concern to all of us because this will be the face of the state in another 20-30 years," said Bar-Tal. "There is a combination of fundamentalism, nationalism, and racism in the worldview of religious youth."

See also

Jewish extremists to model Bar Refaeli: Don't marry DiCaprio

Jewish extremists have urged supermodel Bar Refaeli not to marry her actor boyfriend, Leonardo DiCaprio, because it would dilute the Jewish race, according to media reports.

In a letter to Refaeli, far-rightist Baruch Marzel wrote on behalf of nationalist group Lehava, which aims to fight assimilation among Jews: "It is not by chance that you were born Jewish.
"Your grandmother and her grandmother did not dream that one of their descendants would one day remove the family's future generations from the Jewish people," the letter continued. "Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people."

Lehava in Hebrew means "flame" but it is also an acronym for "Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land." According to the group's Facebook page, it aims to provde assistance to Jewish girls in relationships with non-Jews, and especially Arabs.

Marzel told Refaeli that he "has nothing against Mr. DiCaprio, who I have no doubt is a talented actor." Still, he urged Refaeli: "Come to your senses, look forward and back too - and not only the present. Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations."