Gaza and the West bank are not the only places where Palestinians face persecution by Israel. Inside Israel itself, Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are increasingly becoming targets of racially driven violence. Middle East Eye reported yesterday that there have been at least 10 attacks on Palestinians by Israelis Jews inside Israel, “as racist sentiment continues to spread across the country, inflamed by far-right politicians and media. Four attacks were recorded in Jerusalem, two in Tel Aviv, and one each in Jaffa, Netanya, Afula and Kiryat Ata. During these incidents, bus drivers, construction workers, security guards, sanitation workers and passers-by were attacked by Jewish men, with only a few subsequently arrested.”
Last week, MEE reports further, the workers’ union representing drivers at the Israeli bus company Superbus announced a labour dispute—a step that would allow them to strike—saying that in November alone 11 attacks against company drivers were recorded, many of them targeting Palestinian drivers. “Indifference to violence against workers will not be met with silence,” said Micha Vaknin, chair of the Koach LaOvdim union. “This dodging of responsibility is costing us in blood.”
Earlier this month, Khalil al-Rashak, a Palestinian sanitation worker employed by the Jerusalem municipality, was attacked by two young Jewish men while working in the city. The pair caused al-Rashak serious injuries, and he was evacuated to hospital with broken teeth and ribs. Before attacking al-Rashak, the two young men, who have since been arrested, assaulted a Palestinian bus driver elsewhere in the city.
Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian Knesset member from the Ta’al party, who visited al-Rashak at his home in Anata in occupied East Jerusalem, wrote in Haaretz that Israel was experiencing “a widespread and systematic phenomenon of racist and nationalist violence against Arab citizens.”
The violence inside Israel “is closely linked, ideologically and practically, to Jewish terror against Palestinians in the occupied territories—it is the same ideology, the same perpetrators, and the same system that turns a blind eye.”
Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said the police, the State Attorney’s Office, and the courts were effectively giving an ongoing green light to violence against Palestinian citizens of Israel. “Just a few months ago, we saw how Israeli Jewish rioters attacked Knesset member Ayman Odeh,” they said in a statement, referring to an attack against the Palestinian leader of the Hadash party during a speech in the city of Ness Ziona last July. “Despite videos submitted to the authorities, affidavits, inciting publications, and forensic opinions, all of which showed that those responsible for serious acts of violence could be identified, no indictments were filed against the rioters.”
