May. 13, 2021 4:50 AM
“Our stage is the street.” “Expressing our solidarity with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah is for me a national obligation, a human and universal one.” “We cannot remain silent any longer.”
Before the escalation in the Gaza Strip and the violent events that swept into Israel, thousands of Israeli citizens took to the streets in recent weeks, participating in legal, nonviolent demonstrations in mixed Arab-Jewish cities, Arab towns and at major intersections. In interviews with Haaretz, they lay out the diverse reasons that brought them out into the streets, explaining against whom and what they are protesting.
‘We can’t remain silent about Sheikh Jarrah’
May. 9, 2021 2:49 PM
Out of the 200 Palestinians wounded on Friday’s violent clashes in Jerusalem, two suffered moderate wounds. Amid the unprecedented participation of Arab citizens of Israel in the recent incidents, it is not surprising that both of them are not East Jerusalem residents, but rather Arab citizens of Israel.
According to Sireen Jbareen, 25, a leading figure in the young Arab citizens of Israel protest movement, more than 250 protesters from the Israeli Arab city of Umm al-Fahm alone took part in the protests in Sheikh Jarrah on Friday. In addition, hundreds of the protesters who clashed with police in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Friday evening came from northern and central Israeli Arab towns.
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May. 6, 2021 3:49 PM
You’re active in the struggle against violence among Israel’s Arab population. The situation was never simple, but in the past few months there seems to be a downward spiral.
It’s been intensifying in the past few months – every week there are more and more people murdered – but the spiral started two years ago. We keep thinking we’ve reached a record number, and then another record is broken. We came out of 2020 with 113 people killed. This year we’re already at 34, and we’re still early in the year. In Deir al-Asad, there were two murders on the same day. In Baka al-Garbiyeh two brothers were murdered in their car. For the crime organizations, it no longer matters whether the victim is the person they were looking for, someone who’s with that person or just a passerby. They shoot anyone in the vicinity. In the past, women were considered a red line: No one dared to gun down wom
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Apr. 7, 2021
Arabs in Israel are not allowed to be happy. They’re also not allowed to mourn. On Thursday of this week, for example, Holocaust Remembrance Day, they are not allowed to be happy. Next week, on Independence Day, they’re not allowed to mourn.
Arabs in Israel are only allowed to be happy when Jews are happy and sad when the Jews are sad. Any deviation is considered treason. Just look at how Ibtisam Mara’ana, the newly elected Arab Knesset member from the Labor Party, tripped herself up.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, they need to identify with the pain of the Jewish people.
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Dec. 28, 2020
The state’s hatred for its Arab citizens is reaching insane heights. Generations of Jews grew up on the slogan “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” So why bother trying to save them when they’re doing the job themselves? Especially when, time after time, they choose “supporters of terror,” as most of the leaders of the Jewish parties put it, to represent them in the Knesset?
The Or Commission, which investigated the October 2000 killing of 13 Arabs, noted that the police treated Arabs like the enemy. The policemen killed, but none were charged with a crime.
People were killed, but somehow there were no killers. And now the same thing is happening with Arabs who murder Arabs: Charges are rarely brought.