Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israel’s ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behavior as a threat to the state’s Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with “national treason.”
(full article…)

Acutely conscious that Israel’s Arab population considers itself to be the victim of discrimination, Peres made the point that the Arabs would live better if they had fewer children. Parents of ten or more children cannot necessarily give them the education they deserve. Cutting down on the Arab birth rate, he suggested, would raise the standard of living of each Arab family, and would make education for all the children in each family much more affordable. (full article…)

Every night, dozens of young men in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood take to the streets and go out searching for girls.

But theirs is not a promiscuous search. In fact, the group of some 35 volunteers is looking to prevent such interaction and to stop what neighborhood residents have overwhelmingly complained is a growing problem in Pisgat Ze’ev – Arab men going out with Jewish girls. (full article…)

For the 31st time, Israeli Authorities demolished huts and removed tents used by the residents of the unrecognized Tawil Abu Jarwal Arab village in the Negev. (more…)

Criminalising dissent is not unique to Israel. Many oppressive states, such as apartheid South Africa, have used it to de-legitimise parties, ideas and activities disliked by ruling elites and security apparatuses. Furthermore, persecution on grounds of “security” creates an immediate divide between Arab and Jewish citizens. In 2007, the head of Shabak, the Israeli general security agency, stated that struggles against the Jewishness of the state, even if lawful and democratic, would be deemed subversive. The current right-wing government is seeking to condition citizenship on loyalty to Zionist ideology, a demand unparalleled in any democracy and contrary to the most basic of human rights. With this kind of attitude, it is no wonder that young Arab men and women inside Israel are victimised because of their noble aspirations to equality and freedom. (more…)

Legislation that Israel’s Arab citizens fear could limit their freedom of speech came a step closer on Sunday to becoming law.
The bill, proposed by a legislator from the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, would withhold government money from any state-supported institutions that fund activity deemed detrimental to the state.
Such activity includes “rejecting Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people” and supporting “armed struggle or terrorist acts” against Israel. (more…)

But this morning there’s no relief on the horizon for Palestinians hoping to ease their desperate housing shortage. Only a day earlier, employees of Jerusalem’s Israeli-run municipality handed house demolition orders to three more families in the Al-Bustan area of Silwan, which lies alongside Wadi Qadoum and abuts the walls of the Old City. All of the homes in Al-Bustan – 90 in total – are slated for demolition, despite ongoing negotiations between residents and City Hall. (more…)

The so-called Israeli Regional Committee for Construction and Planning in Haifa, issued orders for the evacuation and demolishing 25 Arab stores in the Market area, near the main road of Wadi Ara, in Um Al Fahim Arab town. (more…)

“The Carmel Academic Center in Haifa shut down the concentration in accounting within its Department of Business Administration because a majority of the students applying were Palestinian citizens of Israel. This was revealed in a news item reported on Israeli news Channel 10 on 24 May (in Hebrew only).” (more…)

The so-called Israel’s Land Authority uprooted on Monday nearly 250 olive trees and several fig trees and grapevines south of Shqeib Al Salaam Arab village in the Negev. (more…)

According to Israeli police, nine Bedouin Arabs from the town of Shfaram in Israel have been arrested as a ‘terrorist cell’ for throwing stones at Israeli cars while Israel was invading Gaza in January. (more…)

Nevertheless, Israel is not innocent of serious mistakes in its attitude toward the population of East Jerusalem in general, and regarding the issue of illegal construction in particular. The gaps in services and infrastructure between the Jewish and Arab parts of the city – sometimes by thousands of percentage points – cry out to the heavens. Israel is not really making any effort to change this. (more…)

Ayoob Kara won’t present these dilemmas to the Jewish public. Even if he is appointed to a post in the Netanyahu government, he must remain right-wing and “loyal,” to the liking of Avigdor Lieberman. Kara, a hawk and reserves officer who declares his complete loyalty to the state and Likud, does not view himself as a Palestinian like most Arab citizens in Israel. Yet despite these differences, he promises that he will faithfully represent the entire Arab public. (more…)

Israel can erect walls to seal out the Palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza. It can fire missiles at terrorist suspects. It can bomb government buildings in Gaza. It can bulldoze Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but if in widening numbers Israeli Jews hold fast to the idea that Israeli Arabs — who are Israeli citizens — are the enemy within, the Jewish state will end up ripping itself apart. (more…)

“When the Palestinian state is created, I will be able to go to Palestinians citizens – who we call Israeli Arabs – and say to them: You are residents with equal rights, but your national solution is in another place,” Livni was quoted by Army Radio as saying to students at a Tel Aviv high school. (more…)

Who is she trying to compete with for hawkishness…? Oh… right.