Jewish Lobby Mum on Israeli Segregation

The New Observer
April 15, 2016

In Israel, Jews are so segregated from Arabs that most even live in separate towns—but the Jewish lobby in America and Europe, who are always the first to condemn any form of racial segregation involving white people, are completely silent on their own country’s policies.

News sources meant only for Jews are quite open about the fact of segregation in Israel. For example, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)—one of the largest and oldest international Jewish news sources—has recently published a boastful article showing how Jews are segregated from Arabs in “four major areas” of Israeli life.

JTA-4-ways

 

Titled “4 ways Jews and Arabs live apart in Israeli society,” the JTA starts off its review by discussing the recent “uproar”—in Israel only—concerning the admission that hospitals are racially segregated in Israel.

The JTA then asserts that this is not the only area in which Jews are segregated from Arabs in Israel.

“Jews and Arabs attend separate schools,” the JTA boldly asserts as a matter of fact, before explaining how this works:

Israel’s schools are separated by both religion and race.

Jewish students attend either[sic] secular, religious, or haredi Orthodox schools, while the Arabs attend separate Muslim, Christian, and Druze systems taught in Arabic.

The split education system does, the JTA says matter-of-factly, lead to “lower educational achievement among Arab Israelis.”

This means, the JTA continues, that on average two-thirds of “non-haredi Jews” (that is, non-orthodox Jews) qualify for university, as opposed to less than half of Arab students.

This also means that Israel’s universities have very low numbers of Arabs: in 2012, Arabs made up only 12 percent of bachelor’s degree students, and 4 percent of doctoral students.

The next segregation measure claimed by the JTA is even more dramatic, stating quite simply that “Jews and Arabs live in separate towns.”

Israeli Jews and Arabs mostly live in separate cities.

Two of the country’s largest cities, Jerusalem and Haifa, have substantial Arab populations, but even those cities are often separated by neighborhood.

Nearly all of Jerusalem’s Arab residents live in the eastern half of the city.

The JTA goes on to reveal that

Aside from a handful of other mixed Israeli towns, most of the country’s cities are more than 90 percent Jewish or Arab. Though Arabs make up nearly 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Israel’s largest, is nearly 95 percent Jewish.

There are also massive disparities in public services and economy, the JTA article continues.

Arab cities have higher poverty rates and, in general, worse municipal services than their Jewish counterparts. Eight of Israel’s 10 poorest towns are Arab. The richest 30 are Jewish.

The third place of segregation, the JTA reveals, is in politics, saying that the Jewish and Arab “political leaders rarely work together.”

The JTA says that:

Israel often points to its Arab-Israeli lawmakers as proof of the country’s democratic chops.

But Israeli Arabs’ political leadership perpetually sits in the Knesset’s opposition, and few politicians in the government are Arab, such that the two communities’ agendas rarely align. The only Arab in Israel’s political leadership is the deputy minister of regional cooperation, Ayoub Kara, who is part of the Druze [Christian] minority.

Fourthly, the JTA asserts, “Arabs are barely present in Israel’s mainstream media.”

Israeli Arabs have their own active press, but they are vastly underrepresented in mainstream Israeli media, comprising fewer than 3 percent of total interviews on leading Israel stations in January and February this year alone, the JTA says.

The number drops even lower when it comes to news segments not directly related to Israeli Arabs. Aharish’s Channel 2, for example, spoke to only 11 Arabs out of more than 5,500 total such interviews in January.

In America, the Anti-Defamation League—which fanatically supports Israel—is one of the leading campaigners against any form of segregation involving white people.

For example, in June 2015, the ADL issued a statement “applauding” a US Supreme Court decision enforcing the “Fair Housing Act” even when the impact of a neutral policy is discriminatory.

ADL-Discrimination

 

This means that any local authority is liable to prosecution if racial segregation occurs in its jurisdiction—even if there was not active intent to segregate, or where it “happened naturally.”

Christopher Wolf, ADL Civil Rights Chair, said in a statement that the “Fair Housing Act is an essential tool to eradicate housing discrimination and promote more inclusive neighborhoods. This decision recognizes the realities of discrimination. Intentional or not, discrimination hurts people and damages the fabric of our society.”

Obviously, Wolf and the ADL have a different set of standards for their own country, Israel—where they not only segregate suburbs, but entire towns.

According to the Jewish lobby therefore, discrimination in Israel is fine, and must be supported to “protect Jewish identity,” but any white person using this identical argument is an “evil racist” who is “damaging the fabric of society.”

Once again, the message is clear: there is one rule for Jews, and another completely different rule for non-Jews.