Integration versus Desegregation, Should People be Pushed/Forced Together?

Having grown up in the 1960's America, the concepts of Integration and Desegregation were lumped together as one, and both were idealized. Looking at them over a half a century later, most of which has been spent in Israel, I see things very differently.

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Before continuing with this article, I must say that one of the biggest changes I've noticed during my periodic visits to New York is the lessening of racial tension in the streets and the subway. You now see New Yorkers of all colors and accents interacting comfortably together, which wasn't the case a half a century ago. You also see many very well-dressed and obviously materially successful blacks and hispanics, which means that people of all races are working and living together to a degree that was hard to imagine when I lived in New York.

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Tennessee4Me

First of all, to distinguish the two terms, one can say that Desegregation is forced Integration, and history has shown it to be problematic and unsuccessful at best. This morning I noticed an article that reminded me of something I had experienced a few decades ago.

Black students seek nonwhite roommates, spark race debate
Students at the Claremont colleges in Southern California initiated a fresh debate about race on college campuses when they narrowed their roommate search to "POC only," specifying in a Facebook post that they wanted only a person of color to join their off-campus apartment.
When a classmate challenged this roommate criteria, the Pitzer College student who posted the notice on Facebook doubled-down. “It’s exclusive [because] I don’t want to live with any white folks,” wrote Karé Ureña, who is black...

It reminds me of a time about thirty years ago, when I shared a podium with a local Arab, and we were asked all sorts of questions about our lives and thoughts. The group was Leftist and came from the mindset of Civil Rights activist America, and for them, as you can still see today among academics, Israel was a White vs Black situation, like 1950's America.

As I remember the Arab man was the first one asked the question, which went something like:

"Wouldn't you like joint activities and events with the nearby Jews?"

His answer:

"No, why would I? I wouldn't want my family to socialize with them."

The group was horrified. That was not the answer they had expected. They projected their concept of equality and an enlightened society on Israel and especially what they called the "occupied sic territories."

Now in the 21st Century, I think that people are starting to realize that Arab muslims are not interested in integrating, whether it's here in Israel or countries they are moving to in great numbers, such as the United States, Europe etc. They are not like the Jews who fled from Eastern Europe a hundred years ago, who quickly adopted American dress and customs to fit in. And they aren't like the Asians of today using their strong work and study skills/culture to quickly climb the academic, social and economic ladders.

Back to the article, even the Black university students who are in a good college prefer to live and socialize among themselves, considering it a right for a "safe space."

Food for thought....

The Arabs Have Returned!

We were all wondering how long it would take, but as the local Muslim Arabs began preparing for their Ramadan Holiday, when they buy lots of nice clothes for their children and themselves and feast all night, after a long day of fasting, the prices, quality and selection in Rami Levy and Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin became too attractive to ignore.

The fears of revenge terror by Jews and the "confiscations" by the PA Police have kept many away for the past few years. That is except for this season, since according to reports by our loyal Arab customers, Arab women with fluent English from years living abroad, there is no comparison between what they can buy here in Jewish shops and what is sold even in Ramallah, the largest Arab city in the area.

In Rami Levy and Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin we experience the peaceful coexistence that the Leftists and Liberals claim to strive for. We work and shop together. But for some very fokokt reason, the Leftists and Liberals do everything in their power to sabotage it.

To make things very clear, I do not work in Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin for any ideological, idyllic agenda. Actually, when I was offered the job in the store, all I could think of was making a salary, even a small one, since we desperately needed more monthly income. Adjusting to work with Arabs was a lot easier than I could have predicted. When they come to us to shop they respect the fact that we Jews own the stores. They are strict with their children and keep them in line when shopping, which not all Jews are willing to do. I'm a pragmatist, and have no doubt that if the ideologues would just butt out, life would be a lot more peaceful.

How Many Arabs would Allow Jews to Live in Their Buildings?

Now the news has been full of the results of a poll:

Poll: Half of Israeli Jews would not live in apartment building with Arabs49 percent of Israeli Jews said that they would not live in the same building as Arab families, compared to 42 percent who said they would be willing.

There's something very faulty with this entire news item. Actually more than one thing.

• It does not make it clear that the question only involves having arabs live in Jewish neighborhoods, cities and communities.
• It does not ask the reverse question: "How Many Arabs would Allow Jews to Live in Their Buildings?"

This news item it skewered to make Jewish Israelis look bad by either not asking that crucial question to show that Arabs do not want Jews in their neighborhood or hiding the results from the readers.

It's certainly no secret that it's considered dangerous and potentially deadly for Jews to go in Arab neighborhoods (even for shopping) which answers clearly what Arabs think of Jews moving into their building and being neighbors. There are many Arabs who for various reasons want to get out of their neighborhoods and see many advantages for living with Jews. 

Shame on the Jerusalem Post and all the other media that chickened out of asking for the missing poll statistics!!

Israeli Media Promotes Arab Lies

I listen/watch Israeli television and radio news to hear the Israeli side. I certainly don't expect CNN or the BBC to be fair and tell the truth about what is going on here in Israel, especially when Arab terrorists are attacking innocent Israelis. It really gets on my nerves to have broadcasters/news announcers present us with reports from the PA-Palestinian Authority. If I had wanted to hear them I'd be listening/watching a different channel.

I also don't see why our newscasts should include interviews with relatives of Arab terrorists who lie and cry about the terrible injustices done to their children, husbands etc.

The father of these young Arab terrorists was given a microphone and screen time to claim that his children hadn't done anything wrong. Duh!? Is that what should be on the news? The Arabs get more screen time than the innocent Jewish victims and their families and friends.

It's clear that those Arabs and their entire clan should be fired from any job that puts them in contact with Jews. If that had been done to Abu Jamal, the cousin of the Arab terrorists who massacred innocent Jews and the policeman who tried to rescue them in the Har Nof Synagogue, then he wouldn't have been able to use an innocent-looking Bezeq car as a weapon to attack and kill Jews in Jerusalem.

The Bezeq vehicle an east Jerusalem man used to ram a bus stop on Malchei Yisrael Street in Jerusalem. Photo: Hillel Maier, TPS

What could have driven Abu Jamal to do such a beastly thing? Surely, it couldn’t have been desperation born of poverty and unemployment (the media’s favorite justification for Palestinian terrorism). Abu Jamal, it so happens, worked for Bezeq, the Israeli telecommunications company whose uniform he wore during the attack.
A clue about the Arab man’s true motivation emerged soon enough. Abu Jamal was a cousin of the two terrorists, Uday Abu Jamal and Ghassan Abu Jamal, who murdered four ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and a Druze police officer who came to their rescue at a synagogue in Jerusalem last year. (Algemeiner)

For the past few years, most of the Arab terrorists have been Israeli or held permits to live and work in Israel. The hotbed of Arab terrorism is in East Jerusalem, not in the Arab villages near my home in Shiloh. The children go to Israeli-funded schools, and the adults have jobs, frequently working with Jews. 

This is the truth, not what you hear in the news and from politicians. Integration, education and equal employment are not reducing Arab terrorism!

Israeli newscasts are trying to humanize, make the Arab terrorists seem sympathetic rather than dangerous and psychopathic. There should be a total ban of featuring family and friends of Arab terrorists on the news. Sympathy and understanding should only go to the Jewish victims!

Arabs Prefer Israeli Right to Left

The recent uproar in the Knesset is no surprise to me.

Arab MK Attacks Labor Party: 'You Leftists Urinate on Us'
MK Zahalka surprises plenum with tirade against Labor's Stav Shafir; 'The right-wingers are much better than you!'

From my first acquaintance with Arabs to my most recent, it has been very clear that many Arabs prefer us, people like me and my neighbors in Judea and Samaria to the Israeli Leftists.

• When I studied for my English Teachers Certificate, there were Jews of all "stripes," addresses and ideologies in the group and an Arab, too. She lived a Jewish-Arab community that was supposed raise the children to be completely bilingual with Arabic and Hebrew, but she complained that the Jews were hypocrites. They wanted to reduce the Arabic being afraid that their children would have Arab accents in their Hebrew. She would tell us that she prefered being with us, who were honest and open, to being with her Jewish neighbors.
• When Arabs talk of "going home" they refer to Jerusalem, Beersheva, Haifa, Ramat Aviv, etc. and not Shiloh. That's because there wasn't an Arab city or community in Shiloh, but Jews now live on Arab villages or in Arab homes in all those other places, which are inhabited by many Jewish Israeli Leftists.
• BDS has been pressuring international companies to desert their factories in post-1967 Six Days War Israel, although that causes unemployment for the Arabs they claim to be supporting. 

"The [South African] leaders of the movement were stunned to hear a Palestinian who says that Israel is not an apartheid state..." Eid said. "I'm opposed to the boycott because it only ends up harming the Palestinians themselves," he says.
Ynet/Amit Shabi"Bassam Eid"From the Palestinian point of view, BDS gives the distinct impression that the Palestinian side has no interest in the pursuit of compromise, peace and the two-state solution; activists have managed to block attempts at dialogue between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians in Ramallah and East Jerusalem.
From an economic standpoint a boycott of West Bank's settlement businesses ends up hurting the Palestinians who are employed by those companies. (I24NEWS)

I work with Arabs, and many of my customers in Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin are Arabs. If they didn't want us here, they'd be boycotting Rami Levy and Yafiz. But the truth is that they are loyal workers and customers and want us here.

Arab shoppers taking family photos in Rami Levy, Sha'ar Binyamin

Many times I've heard that Arabs prefer our honesty to the Left's fake friendship. We all know that one of the main reasons that the Left wants to get Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley out of Israel is to reduce the Arab population.

Some Truth About Israel From Caroline Glick and Latma's Tribal Update

Caroline Glick's article this week is about Arab integration in Israeli society vs the NGO's, something the Left claims isn't happening.

A poll of Arab youth carried out in late 2007 made clear how widespread this integrationist impulse has become. Seventy-five percent of Arab youth aged 16 to 22 supported voluntary national service.

And yet, despite these sentiments and developments, Arab Israelis who seek to integrate into Israeli society and reject the separatist messages of their political leaders are forced to contend with extraordinary social pressures and even coercion to prevent them from acting in accordance with their wishes.

A study completed this week by Im Tirtzu exposes the vast array of NGOs generously funded by the supposedly pro-Israel New Israel Fund as well as by foreign governments which are running a campaign to oppose Cpl. Joseph and her comrades - Arabs and Jews alike. Since 1999, these groups have been conducting a campaign to undermine Arab integration into Israeli society specifically and to demoralize and reduce the social standing of those who serve in the IDF, national service and IDF reserves generally. The campaign is being carried out on a dual track of discouraging Israeli Arabs from serving in the IDF or national service, and of opposing government benefits to IDF veterans, reservists and those who undertook national service by claiming that these benefits unjustly discriminate against Israeli Arabs.

And Latma's Tribal Update exposes the "cool," calm, quiet in Arab villages, sings for Jerusalem and Bibi's priorities.

Chodesh Sivan Tov, A Good Month of Sivan to You

and Shabbat Shalom!