Thursday, October 02, 2014

A Zionist professor calls racism "pluralism and flexibility"-Israeli style

"Intent aside, Hassan Jabareen, director of Adalah, a legal advocacy center for Arab minority rights, said the episode revealed a deeper issue of invisibility for Israel’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens and more than 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.

Arabs have served in Israel’s Parliament since its opening in 1949, but only one has been a government minister. A 2011 Adalah report found that 6 percent of the state’s Civil Service jobs and 1.2 percent of tenure-track positions in universities were filled by Arabs.

“On TV, if we open Channel 1, Channel 2, Channel 10, in prime time, we don’t see Arabs as producers, as anchors — we don’t see them, they do not exist,” Mr. Jabareen complained. Each channel has an analyst of Arab affairs, but they are Jews, he added, “sending a message that in fact the Arabs are foreigners, this is why we need a mediator between us and them.”

Oz Almog, a sociologist at the University of Haifa, said the list of baby names showed not racism but “our pluralism and flexibility,”"