Israel’s cruel apartheid against non-Ashkenazi Jews (casual killings are reserved for Palestinians)

Racism in the name of religion
Jerusalem Post Sep 24, 2008

the school physically and academically separated the Ethiopian girls from the rest of the school - separate teachers, separate curricula, separate rooms, separate recess... 


There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from Ahoti, a Sephardi feminist organization, waiting for a ruling on the religious girls' school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim Crow-like separations in place.

What is happening in the Beit Ya'acov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardi girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic girls, and they have different teachers, different classes and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups do not mingle during the breaks.

It's not just Emanuel, but in other religious girls' schools around the country, such as Elad, where parents protested to ensure that a Sephardi girl would not be allowed in to the class. Protested! There have been reports from around the country of girls being rejected or ejected from schools because of the color of their skin or their last name. And even though the High Court ruled last week that the apartheid has to end, the school and parents are refusing to comply, thus rejecting civil as well as moral obligations. This is not the post-Civil War South, but Israel of 2008...

Yael Ben-Yefet, "This happens everywhere in Israel..."

This story comes on the heels of a similarly shocking exposure of racist practice in a religious school in Petah Tikva. Earlier this year, in a state religious school, the school physically and academically separated the Ethiopian girls from the rest of the school - separate teachers, separate curricula, separate rooms, separate recess...

[One[ teacher said, "This community is very hurt. It just doesn't understand how such a deep-rooted hatred can exist in the country that its members dreamed of coming to."

...a discourse that takes for granted Ashkenazi culture as morally, intellectually and religiously superior to Mizrahi or Sephardi culture....Mizrahi students are assumed to be problems, on the margins of society....

Full article in the Jerusalem Post Sept 23, 2008

See also Rupture and Return pp67-68 for another example of exremes of Ashkenazi racism in Israel. During the 40s, 50s and 60s, children of Yemeni Jews in Israel were kidnapped by State authorities for adoption by Askenazi Jews in Israel and the US. A similar programme to 'whiten' Australia by kidnapping working -class British children also ran during much of this time.
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