Racism and xenophobia in Isreal

Israeli holy town sends message of exclusion to Arabs

Rabbis frown at rentals, warn of intermarriage

By Joel Greenberg Washington Post / December 19, 2010

 SAFED, Israel — In the winding stone alleys of this Galilee hill town, a centuries-old center of Jewish mysticism, a campaign is underway.

It is being waged by the town rabbi, Shmuel Eliahu, who along with other area rabbis issued a religious ruling several months ago forbidding residents to rent apartments to Israeli Arab students from the local community college.

The rabbi has warned that the Jewish character of Safed, long revered as sacred, is at risk and that intermarriages could follow if the students mingle with the locals.

Last month, Eliahu called a public meeting to sound the alarm. On the agenda was “the quiet war,’’ a reference to the feared Arab influx, and “fighting assimilation in the holy city of Safed.’’

Several days later, a building that houses Arab students was attacked by a group of young Jews, and an elderly Holocaust survivor renting a room to students received threats.

To civil rights advocates and other critics, the unsettling developments in this normally quiet community of 32,000 are a window into ugly currents of racism in Israeli society. The events here, the critics say, reflect a general atmosphere of growing intolerance under a government and Parliament dominated by parties of the nationalist right.

Common Sense finds this very troubling on several grounds.  Considering that Jews have been widely persecuted one would imagine that they, particularly a teacher, a rabbi, would understand better than any that racism and xenophobia are ugly and vial.  Yet here we have a rabbi promoting just that.  And we have a group of Israelis attacking an elderly Holocaust survivor for the offense of renting a room to an Arab.  That is no different than the actions of the Nazis that created the Holocaust.  That this was a crime of Jews on a Holocaust survivor is offensive and profoundly wrong.  Common sense feels that we should all be better than this, particularly a people, an ethnic group, that has first hand experience of racism and xenophobia.