Racism against Israeli Arabs has alarmingly increased in Israeli society amid a systematic state discrimination which makes the matter worse, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in its annual report cited Sunday, December 9, by Haaretznewspaper.
"Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy," ACRI President Sami Michael said upon the release of the report on civil rights in Israel.
Michael said the towering racism undermines Israel as a real democracy in the Middle East.
"We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery."
The ACRI report found that racist incidents against Israeli Arabs increased in 2006 by 26 percent.
The number of Jews publicly expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has also doubled.
The report also found that over two-thirds Israeli teens believed Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent, and over a third of the age group feared Arabs all together.
The report cited a March ACRI poll, which showed that 50 percent of the Israelis neither accepted living in the same building with Arabs nor having Arab friends, nor even letting their children befriend Arabs.
The respondents said that they would not also let Arabs into their homes.
Nearly half of the Israelis further want the state to encourage Arab citizens to emigrate elsewhere, according to the survey.
According to a June 2007 Democracy Index of the Israel Democracy Institute, also cited in the report, only half the Israeli people believes that Jews and Arabs must have full equal rights, and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government.
And a recent Haifa University study found that 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are "unclean," the report says.
According to statistics released by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in 2006, Arabs in Israel are estimated at 1,413,500 or 19.8% of the Israeli 6.5 million populace.
State Discrimination
The report further said that there is a systematic state discrimination against Israeli Arabs, which added insult to injury.
It says that Arab citizens "are subject to ‘racial profiling’ that classifies them as a security threat. "
The government also threatens the freedom of expression of Arab journalists by "brandishing the whip of economic boycott and ending the publication of government announcements in newspapers that criticize its policy."
Arab citizens are harassed and singled out at airports.
"Arab citizens are frequently subject to ridicule at the airports," the report stated.
More and more, in the last year’s Isralie-Lebanon war, some 40% of the citizens killed were Israeli-Arabs, mostly due to a severe lack of shelters in Israeli Arab towns, according to the report.
The report further criticized a set of Knesset draft laws discriminating against Israeli Arabs like one that would link the Arab citizen’s right to vote and receive state allowances to military or national service.
Under Israel’s draft system, Arabs are not allowed to join the army.
The bills also include one that requires ministers and MKs to swear allegiance to the "Jewish state."
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the starting point for all negotiations with the Palestinians will be the "recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people."
Recognizing Israel as a "Jewish state" and a homeland for the Jewish people would kill stone dead any hopes for them to return to homes in what is now Israel.
Though legally considered as Israeli citizens, many of Israeli Arabs have been complaining about discrimination in all walks of life. Poverty rate among Arabs in Israel is almost twice that of the Jewish population.
Norm
Arab Members of Knesset said the report underlined the fact that racism in Israel against Israeli Arabs is deeply-rooted.
"This report doesn’t come as a surprise," Mohammad Barakeh, the chairman of the left-wing Hadash party, told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on Sunday.
"These findings are a natural outcome of the racial slurs by political leaders and the racial policy that have been implemented by the Israeli governments towards the Arab population for the past 60 years."
Ahmad Tibi,of theUnited Arab List-Ta’al, agreed.
"Racism has become the norm in Israeli society," he said. "Israel is ridden with discrimination through and thought."
Barakeh said the Israeli government should change what he called its anti-Arab mentality to lay racism to rest.
"Such racism can only be cured by changing the Israeli government’s racial mentality," he said.