Photo Gallery Racist Attacks on the Rise in Israel
An orthodox Jew looks at a vandalized mosque in Jerusalem in this picture taken in December 2011. Attacks by perfectly normal Jewish Israelis on their Arab countrymen have been so brutal in recent weeks that the commentary has been surprisingly unanimous. The media on both the left and the right, otherwise rarely of the same mind, have condemned the attacks.
Palestinian youths throw stones at Israeli forces (R) during a protest against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nilin. For decades, Jews and Palestinians have been fighting over the same piece of land. Some of them even share the same citizenship. Three quarters of Israel's 8 million people are Jews, and 1.8 million are Israeli Arabs. However, their paths rarely cross in everyday life.
Israeli settlers hurl stones at Palestinians after rampaging through the West Bank village of Safa, near Hebron, in April 2009. A survey by the University of Haifa found that more than half of Jewish Israelis don't want to live next to Arabs. In another study, 63 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement "Arabs are a security risk and a demographic threat to the country," while 40 percent felt that the government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate.
A Palestinian protester hurls stones at Israeli troops in the West Bank village of Beit Laqiya near Ramallah. An Arab, whether he lives in Israel or in the Palestinian territories, is only one thing for many people, says Mordechai Kremnitzer, a law professor at Hebrew University: the enemy. "Arabs are being attacked just for being Arabs," says Kremnitzer. "Given our experiences, it ought to be clear that this sort of thing cannot happen."
