Via silver Lining
Graffiti left by colonists/settlers
SAFED// The tranquility of Safed, a small Israeli city nestled high in the hills of the Upper Galilee close to the Lebanese border, is not usually disturbed except by occasional pilgrimages by Madonna or other famous devotees of the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah.
But in the past few weeks, Safed – one of Judaism’s four holy cities – has been making headlines of a very different kind. Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, last week declared it “the most racist city in the country”.
The number of Arabs in the city, though low, has been steadily rising as the student body at Safed Academic College has expanded. There are now some 1,300 Arab students enrolled at the school.
The rabbis’ statements have provoked a series of attacks by ultranationalist Jews, in which several Arab homes have been attacked to chants of “Death to the Arabs”. In one recent incident, three Arab students were beaten as shots were fired.
So far three Jewish youths, including an off-duty policeman, have been charged with participating in the violence. The policeman is accused of firing his gun.
Mr Milstein’s replacement as deputy mayor, Rina Greenberg, is a member of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, who advocates ridding the country of many of its Arab citizens.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso, who is allied to the far-right party of foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, has announced plans to build a new neighbourhood for 3,000 religious Jews to halt what he called the city’s “demographic deterioration”.
Hundreds of Arab families from neighbouring Nazareth have relocated to the Jewish city to escape overcrowding. Today, one-in-eight of Upper Nazareth’s 42,000-strong population is Arab.
In August, Mr Gapso told Israel National News that he felt “as happy as if I had a new baby” at the news that 15 extremist families from the former Gaza settlement of Gush Katif were establishing a Jewish seminary in his city.
Hatia Chomsky-Porat, who leads Galilee activists for Sikkuy, a group advocating better relations between Jews and Arabs, said: “The political atmosphere is growing darker all the time. Racism among Jews is entirely mainstream now.”
In Safed, Arab students have tried to keep a low profile. However, one small act of defiance appears to have further contributed to Jewish residents’ fears of a “takeover”.
Inhabitants awoke recently to find a Palestinian flag draped on the top of a renovated mosque, one of the many old stone buildings in Safed that attest to the city’s habitation long before Israel’s establishment.
In 1948, when Jewish forces captured the town, Safed was a mixed city of 10,000 Palestinians and 2,000 Jews. All the Palestinian inhabitants were expelled, including a 13-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority.
(When abbass visited Safad, they asked him if would like to see his home, he responded: "Just" Give me it's rent $$$$$$$$, Thus said Abbas nephews - UP )
Mr Khaliali said the city’s history appeared still to haunt many of its Jewish residents, who expressed fears that Arab students were there to reclaim refugee property as the vanguard of a movement for the Palestinian right of return.
It is not the first time Mr Eliyahu, the son of a former chief rabbi of Israel, has been accused of incitement against the city’s Arab population.
In 2002, during a wave of suicide attacks at the start of the second intifada, he called on Safed Academic College to expel all Arab students.
Two years later he launched a campaign against inter-marriage, accusing Arab men of waging “another form of war” against Jewish women by “seducing” them.
He narrowly avoided prosecution for incitement in 2006 after he agreed to retract his earlier statements.
The Religious Action Centre, a group of Reform movement Jews, and several Arab MPs have demanded that Yehuda Weinstein, Israel’s attorney general, investigate Mr Eliyahu and the other rabbis for incitement to violence.
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