De Israelische Terreur 493

Mayor of Umm al-Fahm, Khaled Hamdan (center), speaks with Jewish supporters visiting the town, 13 December. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

Door de zionistische hetze van leidende joodse politici in Israsel neemt de spanning tussen Palestijnse en Joodse Israeli's de laaatste jaren toe.

'Arab town blamed for Jewish Pride march's cancellation

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2008

Jewish peace groups have accused the Israeli police of fueling racism by canceling a "Jewish Pride" march by a far-right group that was to have taken place through one of the largest Arab towns in Israel.The police postponed the march, due last Monday, claiming they had evidence extremist residents of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel would open fire on the marchers and police."There was a real danger that lives could be lost," said a police spokesman, adding that the decision to ban the march would be reassessed in two weeks.But local Arab leaders and Jewish peace activists claimed the police concocted the story to justify the cancellation of the march. Thousands of Jews had planned to form a human chain with the residents of Umm al-Fahm at the entrance to the town to block the way of the Jewish National Front.Adam Keller, of the peace group Gush Shalom, said the planned show of solidarity would have been nonviolent. He denounced the police for exploiting the stereotype of violent Arab citizens promoted by the marchers, many of whom are hardline settlers in the West Bank."It is a supreme irony that we had organized for thousands of Arabs and Jews to prove we can live here as citizens in harmony," he said. "Then the police cancel the march but use the false pretext that the marchers are in danger rather than that they seek to inflame violence."Claims by the police that Arab residents would shoot at the marchers were derided by Jewish and Arab organizations.Jafar Farah, of the Mossawa parliamentary lobbying group, pointed out that the northern police force had used a similar excuse -- that Arab demonstrators were armed -- in October 2000, at the start of the second Palestinian intifada, to justify its use of live ammunition against protests in Arab communities.A later state inquiry examining the deaths of 13 Arab demonstrators at the hands of the police found that they were unarmed. The inquiry concluded that the institutional view of the police was that Israel's 1.2 million-strong Arab population should be treated as "an enemy" rather than as citizens."The lessons from that inquiry have still not been learnt," Farah said. "There is still a culture of hatred in the police force as well as a culture of incitement. In their different way, the police want to delegitimize the country's Arab minority just as much as the marchers."The Jewish National Front is widely seen as a reinvention of the Kach movement, a Jewish terror organization demanding the expulsion of Palestinians from both Israel and the West Bank. The movement was outlawed in the 1990s.Kach tried to stage a march to Umm al-Fahm in 1984 but was repulsed when Jews and Arabs turned out on a large scale.The police opposed the new march from the outset, saying it believed that confrontations between the marchers and local residents might provoke riots across the north, especially in the wake of violence between Jews and Arabs in Acre in October.'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10044.shtml