The Haaretz editorial board asks whether Israeli citizens being humiliated by other countries is good for Israel:
Perhaps Israelis need humiliation to respect others
Israel should view the harassment of Israeli Turkish Airlines passengers humbly as it serves as an embarrassing reflection on us.
Haaretz Editorial
The Israeli response that has followed the harassment of Israeli Turkish Airlines passengers who experienced detention and intrusive body searches upon their arrival at Istanbul airport on Monday, borders on hysteria and hypocrisy. The incident was blown out of all proportion and immediately became an additional and unnecessary chapter in the friction between Turkey and Israel.
[snip]
The security check that Turkish citizens - and passengers from other countries with a Muslim majority - experience as they travel through Israel is stringent, overbearing and humiliating. Israeli citizens have gotten used to taking off for Turkey without the need for a visa, enjoying the hospitality of Turkish tourism services and vacationing in their multitudes in Turkish cities, villages and beach resorts without any restriction. Turks seeking to come to Israel for a visit, however, have had to go through a real ordeal, beginning at the Israeli consulate, where on occasion they get turned down without explanation, and later - assuming they get a visa - ending with an exhausting and humiliating airport security check.
The State of Israel has never apologized to these visitors and has never thought they deserved compensation for the lost time and the insult. Israel doesn't bother at all to explain its offensive security inspection procedures. To this day, it has not provided a proper response to the High Court of Justice, which demanded an explanation over the blatant discrimination experienced by Israeli Arabs before they board flights here...
I think the most interesting thing about this editorial is that it addresses the state sponsored racism by Israel towards Arabs/Muslims, even if it has nothing to do with security. Unfortunately, this sort of racism exhibited by the Israeli government will become more prevalent as racist parties like Yisrael Beiteinu grow in popularity among Israelis. Here is Christopher Hitchens on Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party:
There is, by the way, a fair likelihood that the soldier was not even Jewish; it's an open secret in Israel that tens of thousands of Russian immigrants used forged papers as a means of exiting their country of birth, pretending to exercise the "right of return." So here is yet another insult to heap on those whose great-great-grandparents were born in Palestine yet are treated as if they live there only on sufferance.
Yet if you are a former bouncer born in former Soviet Moldova, like Avigdor Lieberman, you can come to live in the Holy Land as of right and become the leader of a party that proposes to institute a "loyalty oath" not just to the Arab citizens of the state of Israel but to all Jewish members of religious Orthodox sects that do not declare themselves Zionist. And this grotesque party, named Israel Beiteinu or "Israel Is Our Home," is now the power broker, and its leader is the kingmaker in the Israeli electoral process.
Now many Arab countries are much worse than Israel in this regard. Their record on LGBT and women's rights are horrifying. But that doesn't give Israel the right to be racist either, especially if Israel wants to view itself as a beacon of democracy and human rights. By continuing to give Israel free money and their vote in the U.N. security council America is just enabling this behavior. At some point the U.S. needs to sit back and let Israel isolate itself until they realize they can't continue to colonize Palestine and treat them and other Arabs without respect or decency.
Sun Sep 11, 2011 at 6:11 AM PT: Haaretz in today's editorial touches on some of the unspoken racism Ashkenazi's have towards Sephardics in Israel:
But Peretz is remembered only for his mistakes. An unnecessary war that failed on account of an army that was not properly prepared for it - long before he was appointed minister of defense. Yet the blame is directed at him alone. His successor, Ehud Barak, was not to blame for Operation Cast Lead, but Peretz alone was to blame for the fiasco of the Second Lebanon War. So why not call a spade a spade. Let the genie out of the bottle: it's called ethnic discrimination. Peretz was given the historic opportunity to serve as defense minister and to shatter two myths: that a Moroccan Jew cannot serve in this position and that someone who was never a general cannot succeed in it. Peretz failed in the very act of going into Lebanon, but someone of his ethnicity is not permitted to fail even once in Israel. A Moroccan Jew will not be forgiven for a single needless war, not even for a single incident of failing to remove the lens cap from his binoculars. Others are forgiven for the same things.
Peretz is the last remaining survivor of Labor's promising "group of eight." The rest were scattered to the winds, and it's no accident that he alone was not. He turned out to be the most committed, the most persistent and therefore also the most serious of them all. He is also one of the most honest and modest Israeli politicians. Unsullied by suspicion, never rubbing shoulders with the rich and never closing his eyes to the occupation. No one gives him proper credit for this. He supported Peace Now from the beginning, from nationalistic Sderot, during times when this took great courage, and unlike Yachimovich he never abandoned his commitment to the fight against the occupation. Even now, when everyone is talking about social justice, Peretz talks of its indivisible connection to the injustice of the settlement enterprise. But Peretz isn't "one of us," he never was and presumably never will be. As a result he has always been doomed to ostracism and sniggering and definitely not to total and genuine acceptance
.
http://www.haaretz.com/...