The color of racism: What many get wrong about race relations in Israel

Jewish residents of Afula protest against Arab being allowed to buy a house there

Lihi Yona writes in +972, “Over the past few weeks, protests have rocked the northern Israeli city of Afula, following news that an Arab family was moving into the Yizrael Quarter neighborhood. The demonstrators, who were joined by the former mayor of Afula, say they are “not racist,” and that they believe that Jews and Arabs should live separately. Shaun King, an American writer, civil rights activist and a brilliant commentator on race relations in the U.S, shared the story on his Facebook page, writing: “White supremacists are now surrounding the home and chanting that they want the neighborhood to be for white Jews only.”

“But King, who has been instrumental in bringing light to injustices against racial minorities in the United States, simply gets the story wrong. Afula is not a city of “white Jews,” and the struggle against Arabs moving to the neighborhood does not stem from a desire to turn Afula into a city of white Jews. Afula is a middle and working class city with a clear Mizrahi (Jews from Arab and/or Muslim countries) identity, which over the last few decades has absorbed immigration waves from Ethiopia and former Soviet countries.”…

“Israel and the Zionist project were indeed formed on the basis of a Jewish supremacy. Israel was, after all, established as a Jewish and democratic state, in which the rights of Jews are anchored in a set of laws that grant them privileges, from the Law of Return, to the Absentees’ Property Law, and so on. But, simultaneously, the Zionist project in Israel sought to promote its own brand of white supremacy. “White” Jews, — that is, Jews who came from Europe and North America — were granted a set of benefits and privileges in Israel at the expense of Jews who came from Arab and Muslims countries.” (more…)