I have recently reported on a few instances in which two Jewish anti-miscegenation groups – Lehava and Yad L’Achim – have been actively operating to thwart contact between Jews and Arabs. Lehava, which runs a hotline encouraging callers to inform on Jewish-Arab couples, was reportedly behind a campaign to pressure Israel’s National Service Administration to stop allowing Israeli Jewish females to work night shifts in hospitals – presumably to make it more difficult for them to socialize with the Palestinian citizens of Israel with whom they work.
Yad L’Achim – whose mission is to fight “assimilation” (read: miscegenation) and whose slogan is, “We don’t give up on a single Jew” – claims to collect the identification cards of Jewish women seen socializing with Palestinians.
Both these organizations have posters circulating on the streets and in social media that are racist, sexist and offensive. Here is a flyer by Lehava spotted in Jerusalem that says in Hebrew and Arabic: “Don’t even dare to think about a Jewish woman!”
‘Don’t even dare to think about a Jewish woman!’ -Lehava poster in Jerusalem (Courtesy, T.F.)
Yad L’Achim has a poster going around social media that reads: “In a relationship with citizen belonging to an ethnic minority?” And below that: “You know it’s not it, but having fun in the meantime? Don’t waste your time! You are wasting the most beautiful years. Your life is not a game! Turn to Yad L’Achim’s 24-hour hotline now.”
Yad L’Achim poster: ‘In a relationship with citizen belonging to an ethnic minority?’
The barcode in this flyer takes you to a video produced by Yad L’Achim which shows a Jewish Israeli woman telling other women about the dangers of dating an “Arab” – how they are obsessive, and take over your life, and she implies that all Arab men abuse Jewish women verbally and physically. The last message of the video is: “You deserve one of us.”
Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war – the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel and the massive retaliatory Israeli attacks on Gaza. Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing violence.
We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The bloodshed unleashed by these events has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Hamas’ murderous assault in southern Israel has devastated and shocked the country to its core. Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza is wreaking destruction on the already besieged strip and killing a ballooning number of civilians. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to escalate their attacks on Palestinians.
This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the past 13 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized siege on Gaza.
We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the fight of their lives.
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