A Militaristic and Racist State - What Next?

The state that boasted the campaign slogan "A Million Arabs Will Vote for Barak" (May 1999) is the same state in which its Jewish citizens were blind to slogans on walls and bulletin boards declaring "Arabs get out!," "Cahana was right!," "Death to the Arabs!," and today also "No Arabs, no terrorism." A state that for 54 years has discriminated against its Arab citizens in all things, inclusive of the percentage of land it allocates them (they constitute 18% of the population, while Israel doles out to them but 2.5% of the land) is racist and unjust.

A state that shoots live bullets and rubber coated ones at its Arab citizens when dispersing a demonstration, killing 13 of them, a state that from the first and until today has held its Arab citizens suspect of being an enemy from within and a danger to the security of the country, is a state that is militaristic and racist, whose government has these past days sanctioned amending the law with a statute that would permit restricting sale of land in communities to Jews only. Israel's Declaration of Independence proclaims equality for all citizens and prohibits discriminating on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, and sex. Yet in actuality we see crop up daily proposals for laws that discriminate against Arab citizens, treating them as inferior, suspect, the enemy.

Policies such as these, Jews felt on their own skins in 19th-century Russia and during the 1930s in Germany with the rise of the Nazis, and witnessed in South
Africa until it ended apartheid.

We the undersigned condemn and are ashamed of the militaristic and racist character of the State of Israel. We -- Arabs and Jews -- refuse to be enemies
and refuse to be silent in the face of its injustices and wrongs. We call for Israel to educate its citizens to equality and justice for all.

Representatives of New Profile -- an organization calling for civil-izing Israeli society

Dr. Adina Aviram

Dr. Diana Dolev

Ronit Marian-Kadishay

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