{"id":134690,"date":"2014-08-01T16:15:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T16:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134690"},"modified":"2014-08-01T16:15:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T16:15:12","slug":"understanding-israels-war-racist-crucial-ending-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/understanding-israels-war-racist-crucial-ending-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Israel\u2019s War as Racist Is Crucial to Ending Occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonali Kolhatkar<\/em><\/p>\n

The nearly month-long attack by Israeli forces on Gaza has revealed that anti-Arab racism permeates many levels of Israeli society. Indeed, to acknowledge Palestinians as humans worthy of a state, a home and basic necessities such as medical care, electricity, food and water, would undermine the brutality of Operation Protective Edge.<\/p>\n

Racism among the Israeli population is either stronger than ever, or simply more visible today thanks to social media and the proliferation of online means of expression.<\/p>\n

Some Israelis are openly thrilled that Gaza is being leveled. A Danish reporter\u00a0came upon a cheery group of people<\/a>\u00a0who gathered outdoors in the southern Israeli town of Sderot with folding chairs and popcorn to watch the air war, clapping each time a bomb dropped on Gaza. Other Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to celebrate the killing of Gaza\u2019s children. They were\u00a0videotaped<\/a>\u00a0singing a song whose words included, \u201cIn Gaza there\u2019s no studying; No children are left there,\u201d and calling for violence against two of the Israeli Knesset\u2019s Arab members.<\/p>\n

The verbal vitriol is also flowing strongly. Early on in Israel\u2019s operation, writer David Sheen compiled a list of what he called\u00a0\u201cTerrifying Tweets of Pre-Army Israeli Teens<\/a>,\u201d which included such gems as \u201cDeath to these fucking Arabs\u201d and \u201cWe wage war so this will be our land without any Arabs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the racism has gone beyond mere celebrations of war and death. While the horrific revenge killing of 15-year-old Mohammad Abu Khdeir is being dismissed as an extremist act, and the police beating of his cousin Tariq Abu Khdeir is being \u201cinvestigated,\u201d more attacks have followed with little U.S. media attention. For example, Israeli newspaper Ha\u2019aretz\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201ctwo Palestinian youths were reportedly assaulted by a Jewish mob in Jerusalem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor David Shulman, who teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, went further,\u00a0writing<\/a>\u00a0in a July 12 column that \u201cIsrael has witnessed a wave of racist hatred on a scale perhaps not known before.\u201d Shulman also cited the advent of \u201cIsraeli lynch gangs prowling the streets of downtown Jerusalem … and organized Fascist groups attacking any Palestinians unlucky enough to be going home late at night, after work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonali Kolhatkar The nearly month-long attack by Israeli forces on Gaza has revealed that anti-Arab racism permeates many levels of Israeli society. Indeed, to acknowledge Palestinians as humans worthy of a state, a home and basic necessities such as medical care, electricity, food and water, would undermine the brutality of Operation Protective Edge. Racism among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}