Racism in Israel

It has been suggested that the situation of the Ethiopian Jews as 'becoming white' is similar to that of some European immigrants like Poles and Italians who arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The 1998 Report of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that the Convention "is far from fully implemented in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and that the shortfall contributes very significantly to the dangerous escalation of tension in the region".

He said that on the one hand "one can understand the fear of parents of kindergarten children afraid someone will take a knife one day, as happened in the synagogue in Jerusalem, shout 'Allah Akhbar' and begin to attack."

It recommended that Israel should assess the extent to which maintenance of separate Arab and Jewish sectors "may amount to racial segregation", and that mixed Arab-Jewish communities and schools, and intercultural education should be promoted.

[48] Some critics have described the Law of Return, which allows all Jews and persons of some Jewish descent to immigrate to Israel as racist, as Palestinian refugees are not eligible for citizenship.

Examples include Germany,[59] Serbia, Greece, Japan, Turkey, Ireland, Russia, Italy, Spain, Chile, Poland and Finland[58] (See Right of return and Repatriation laws.)

The proposal met harsh criticism, including accusations of racism, and subsequently it was amended to make the loyalty oath universal to both Jewish and non-Jewish naturalized citizens.

[69][70] As part of a 2008 plea bargain, Yitzhak was sentenced to community service, and David issued a declaration saying he was opposed to any racist incitement and said that he calls for love, brotherhood and friendship.

[79][80] Both opposition leader Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a full judicial investigation of Lior's remarks and said that rabbis were not above the law.

Nearby, about 200 residents of Bat Yam held a counter protest, waving signs reading, "We're fed up with racists" and "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies".

"[93] In 1994, a Jewish settler in the West Bank and follower of the Kach party, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

[113] The report blamed Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials.

The page features a myriad of photos of people holding up signs demanding revenge for the killing of the teens, and urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order widespread military action in the West Bank and Gaza.

Further racist incitement within the Facebook campaign depicted a photograph that was posted to the page with two teenage girls smiling, hugging each other and holding a piece of paper saying, "Hating Arabs is not racism, it's values."

The Israeli Defense Forces also vowed to severely punish any soldier involved with the exchange of racist photographs depicting revenge for the murdered teens or retributive incitement of Anti-Arabism across Facebook and other social media sites.

[135] On 30 November, a synagogue in Tel Aviv had several books burned and was vandalized with graffiti against the Jewish nation-state bill,[136] which most recently, had been submitted the previous week.

The Times of Israel reported on 1 January 2015 that three Jewish men who had admitted to committing racist hate crimes against an Arab taxi driver in early 2014 were each sentenced to approximately one year in prison.

The "New Voices from the Stadium" program, run by the New Israel Fund (NIF) amasses a "racism index" that is reported to the media on a weekly basis, and teams have been fined and punished for the conduct of their fans.

[160] A variety of Mizrahi critics of Israeli policy have cited "past ill-treatment, including the maabarot, the squalid tent cities into which Mizrahim were placed upon arrival in Israel; the humiliation of Moroccan and other Mizrahi Jews when Israeli immigration authorities shaved their heads and sprayed their bodies with the pesticide DDT; the socialist elite's enforced secularization; the destruction of traditional family structure, and the reduced status of the patriarch by years of poverty and sporadic unemployment" as examples of mistreatment.

[161] In September 1997, Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud Barak made a high-profile apology to Oriental Jews in Netivot stating: We must admit to ourselves [that] the inner fabric of communal life was torn.

[162]Barak's address also said that during the 1950s, Mizrahi immigrants were "made to feel that their own traditions were inferior to those of the dominant Ashkenazi [European-origin] Israelis [Alex Weingrod's paraphrase]".

[163] Several prominent Labor party figures, including Teddy Kollek and Shimon Peres, distanced themselves from the apology while agreeing that mistakes were made during the immigration period.

[170] Some claim that the education system discriminates against Jewish minorities from North Africa and the Middle East, and one source suggests that "ethnic prejudice against Mizrahi Jews is a relatively general phenomenon, not limited to the schooling process".

With regard to these unresolved 56 cases, the commission deemed it "possible" that the children were handed over for adoption following decisions made by individual local social workers, but not as part of an official policy.

The Israeli Education Ministry decided to pull the funding from the Lamerhav, Da'at Mevinim and Darkhei Noam schools, the three semi-private institutions that refused to accept the students.

[citation needed] Professor Zvi Bentwich, an immunologist and human rights activist from Tel-Aviv, rejected the claim and said there's no ground to suspect a negative official policy towards Ethiopian Jews.

In 2010, an Israeli-Jewish security guard, Kochav Segal Halevi, was forced from his home in the Arab town of I'billin after a racist crowd gathered at his house, and he received death threats.

[237] In April 2012, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported that tens of thousands of refugees and African migrant workers who have come to Israel in dangerous smuggling routes, live in southern Tel Aviv's Levinsky Park.

[248] Arabs rioted in the city center, smashing shop windows, vandalizing vehicles, and throwing rocks at people going to or from Yom Kippur prayers,[249][250] chanting "Death to the Jews" and "If you come out of your homes, you will die".

As soon as the Yom Kippur fast ended, about 200 Jewish residents rioted in Acre's Arab neighborhoods, torching homes, vandalizing property, and forcing dozens of families to flee.