TENSIONS are rising in the Israeli city of Safed, following a recent edict issued by Safed Chief Rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, forbidding Jews to let apartments or sell property to non-Jews because:
It causes evil and makes the public commit the sin of intermarriage.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu
The apartheid edict issued by the state-funded fascist rabbi sparked a disturbing racist campaign. According to this report, following news of a plan to establish a medical school in Safed which would admit Arab students, flyers were circulated by some sort of “campaign headquarters,” declaring:
The smokescreen called a medical school obscures an evil scheme: to establish a refugee camp for psychotic, sadistic and debased Arabs, whose deceptiveness is, and always has been, aimed at tempting [Jewish women] and cruelly abusing them. On orders of the great rabbis of Safed, may they be blessed with a long life, we declare our protest and vehement resistance, and reiterate that it is forbidden under the law of the Torah to offer these people apartments for sale, rent, work or any form of entry. Our city will not succumb to wanton behavior – go back to your own locales and do not defile our camp.
Soon after, according to a report today in The Age, Israeli psychology student Osama Ghanaim was woken by a mob of 60 ultra-orthodox Jews chanting ”kill the Arabs” outside his apartment.
Then they stoned my house. Rocks broke through my front windows.
After the crowd dispersed, Ghanaim, one of 1,400 Arab Israeli students enrolled at the Safed Academic College, found a poster on his front door warning him to move out.
The poster said they would set fire to the house, so I called the police. The police took four hours to come to my house, and they did nothing. I have not heard a thing from them since.
One of Judaism’s four “holy” cities, Safed has been the centre of ethnic tensions in recent weeks after Eliyahu issued his ruling.
Only 70 Arab students are living in private accommodation in Safed, a city of 32,000 Jews – a third of them ultra-orthodox. Another 120 are living in dormitories provided by the college, while the remaining 1200 commute from nearby Arab villages.
Said Ghanaim:
Here at the college, we Arabs get on very well with the Jewish students. Many of us have Jewish girlfriends, and I think this really is the problem. The Jewish people who live in Safed don’t like to see Jewish women with Arab men.
Last Friday – two months after his apartment was damaged during a riot against Arab students living in Safed – fellow student Mustafa Ali woke to find his car had been trashed.
All the windows were smashed, some of the tyres had been cut, and the words ‘Arabs out’ were spray-painted on the front of the car. He said:
What is next? Are we made to wear a green crescent on our coats so everyone knows we are Arab Muslims? Why are these people not being stopped?’
Ali and Ghanaim took The Age on a tour of the Safed campus, identifying sites where anti-Arab graffiti – such as “death to Arabs” and “Arabs go home” – had been painted over by administrators. Benches in the park adjacent to the college had been painted with the words ”Seating for Jews Only”.
Despite sending shockwaves through Israel’s secular political establishment, with many commentators likening the edict to Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Rabbi Eliyahu’s edict received the immediate backing of 75 rabbis across Israel. At last count more than 300 rabbis – most of them in positions funded by the state – had added their names to the edict.
Said the Arab Israeli MP Ahmed Tibi;
Fascism has raised its head in Israeli society.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
December 18th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Bloody religion! The muslim countries denounce the jews, the jews condemn the muslims, pathetic!
December 18th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
This happens when you’re sure you’ve ‘god’ on you side. Maybe Shmuel Eliyahu should spend less of his state-sponsored time reading his holy books and do some research on Nazi Germany. Israel, the only democracy in the Middel East, what a joke!
December 18th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Religion poisons everything.
December 18th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Whether trying to restart a peace process or counteracting these religious fuckers the vast majority of Secular liberal Israeli’s seem to have given up trying— that to me is so depressing
December 18th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
What peace process, Michael?
http://www.startribune.com/world/111747234.html
Speaking to a business conference Monday, Netanyahu faulted the Obama administration for concentrating on a “peripheral” issue — namely, the settlements.
“Yeah – we’re stealing your land, but let’s not talk about that!”
December 18th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
that’s my point Barriejohn
December 18th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I just checked out the Wikipedia page on Shmuel Eliyahu. That has got to be the bleakest Wiki page I’ve ever seen.
Their whole country is built on stolen land, aided and abetted by us and the US. Obama telling ‘em to stop now is like spoiling a child rotten for years and then expecting her to understand when you suddenly tell her she can’t have what she wants any more.
December 18th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
And all this in the name of a god purported to be the central figure in both faiths.
Why would any self respecting imaginary deity wish to have these animals as worshipers ?
December 18th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
@Canada Dave
There is no need to be so unkind to animals. I have always thought it odd that people wear silly hats on their head and have stupid haircuts to show us how religious they are. My cat doesn’t behave like this because he is by far more intelligent than these religious clowns and deserves some respect, if that’s not too much to ask.
December 18th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
According to an article in Jpost, there is Jewish opposition to the Safed Rabbi’s views.
“The Israeli Reform movement petitioned the High Court on Thursday to instruct the attorney general to charge the chief rabbi on Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu, with incitement for his religious ruling banning the sale or rental of apartments in the city to Arab Israelis.”
December 18th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Natalie, yes, we only really get the assholish news out of Israel, you have to read their own media to get a proper taste of public reaction, there’s sensible opposition where you’d fucking expect it in Israel, they’re not all knuckledraggers over there, thankfully.
December 18th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
@Sean Reynolds,
“the’re not all knuckledraggers over there”,of course not,however the ‘settlements’ continue to expand at the cost of the Palestinians.So I’d say there are plenty of ‘knuckledraggers’ in power in Israel.
Zionism is a chauvinistic religious movement and the attitudes of that demented old racist are simply an extreme expression of the underlying belief.
@barriejohn,
Yes.
Why would the Zionists want peace? They have an overwhelming military advantage,the support of a morally bankrupt USA and their project is not yet complete-and they have an invisible super-friend.
December 18th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
In both Israel and Palestine, the majority of realistic and sensible people are effectively held hostage by the zealots, who subtly hint that they can tip either state into civil war if they don’t get their way (which effectively happened in Gaza when Hamas drove Fatah out). The sad thing is that secularisation wouldn’t necessarily lead to a love-fest between the two communities. The Bosnian war was fought between three thoroughly non-religious groups who happened to nurse old grudges. Colour me pessimistic.
December 18th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Sadly, I have to agree with you, Mr Gronk. This goes beyond religion.