Racism rampant in Israel

• Report rights infringement
• published: 19 Jan 2012
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Thousands have attended protests in Jerusalem over racial discrimination within Israeli law and society against mainly the Jewish Ethiopian community. Press TV interviews Ralph Schoenman, Author of the Hidden History of Zionism from Berkeley in a discussion about the history of internal racism in Israel and why outbreaks of mass protests are occurring at this time. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview. Press TV: Racism in the Middle East's only so-called "Democracy" - Does that surprise you? Schoenman: Of course it does not surprise me because it's been intrinsic and inherent to the Zionist State from it's inception. It has to be emphasized here that the majority of the Israeli population are what they call Mizrahi or Sephardi - they are oriental Jews, which means Jews from Yemen or Iraq or Iran or from Morocco. And when you're speaking to or meeting a Jew from Yemen or Iraq or Morocco, you're talking to an Arab or in the case of Iran, a Persian who has Jewish religious convictions. But a Jew from Yemen or a Jew from Morocco has the wedding customs; has the eating customs; the family activity, but they are Arab coiffure. And the consequence in Israel has been that the Mizrahi as the majority of the Israeli population have always been subject to a racist discrimination, which has been intrinsic. Indeed, the oriental Jews have comprised of a tiny fraction of the graduates from universities or of those who are actually civil servants or work in government positions and what is manifesting itself at the moment in Jerusalem is an outpouring of protests by Ethiopian Jews who were brought to Israel by the way actually in an organized campaign by the Zionist State in order to maintain the claim that they have a root in the region and in Africa - always subject to discrimination. It's instructive to note that the Ethiopian Jews, the Falasa (Falas Mura), were first brought on an organized basis often without even an initiation within Ethiopia itself, it was a campaign issued by the Israeli State. When they were brought to Israel and subject to discrimination it was also demanded that they should be re-circumsized. And we made the response at the time it would be an inappropriate thing for the Israeli Cabinet to be publicly recircumcised in light of its demand. It's intrinsic; it's inherent. One manifestation of it, which I think was very clear, is the role of Naim Giladi. Naim Giladi is an Iraqi Jew who actually lived in Iran and was involved early in facilitating the movement to Israel of Jews from Iraq and one of the consequences of this is that when he experienced the discrimination of which I speak - and I'm talking about a high rate of unemployment; slum conditions; inaccessibility to educational facilities; a living standard barely that above the treatment of the Palestinian population itself - Naim Giladi organized something called the Black Panther movement within Israel out of the oriental Jews, which has been a mass movement over decades in Israel itself. What we're experiencing now in Jerusalem with the rising of Ethiopian Jews in response to specific racist events namely the refusal to allow Ethiopians to live in areas of Israel; the racist slurs directed at Ethiopian children when they're on buses where they're told that they smell bad and they should put on deodorant; the violence that's directed against the Sephardi in a regular basis in Israel... Naim Giladi organized a movement about this and he published a really important book called Ben Gurion's Scandals. One of the things Naim Giladi was involved in exposing was that in the aftermath of the formation of the Israeli state, it should be noted that the Jews that live in the Arab world were integrated... Press TV: You had mentioned that they had been brought in to Israel themselves so, why exactly - What is the root cause of why they are the targets of racism? Schoenman: Well, I want to emphasize that at the time when Naim Giladi had exposed in his book Ben Gurion's Scandals; and it's been widely acknowledged, that the Israeli MOSSAD undertook the blowing up of synagogues and bombed attacks on Iraqi Jews to create a hysteria and a panic in order to induce a flood of Iraqi Jews to Israel. This is an expression of the manner and nature of the Zionist colonial enterprise and a discrimination that has been inflicted upon oriental Jews has been intrinsic; it is decades old, it's since virtually the formation of the state itself and the overall exploitation takes place now in a context of a deepening economic crisis, which we've discussed before, that's unfolding in Israel and is particularly experienced by the most oppressed the Palestinian population and the oriental Jews and the racism that is being reflected in the protest against the racism is a manifestation of this nature of the Zionist state in its inception.