Israel Shahak, a holocaust survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine where he became a model citizen. He served in an elite regiment in the Israeli Army, after which he became an assistant to Ernest Bergmann, the head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. He was a popular professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. His writings exposing and documenting the nature of Zionism and its polocies driving the laws and policies of th government of Israel, such as its racism, were based exclusively on mainstream Israeli sources.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4216853,00.html
Israel Shahak on the issue of the racism of Zionism:
Zionism is Racism
It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life,
only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and
is carried out today mainly in cooperation with the institutions of the Zionistic movement. I will prove this opinion of mine by quoting facts, laws and regulations which have force in Israel (and which are known really to anybody) and are enforced by the government. I will therefore ignore the racism of the individuals in this article and also the declared or undeclared explanations by which this racism is “justified” sometimes.
The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionistic State of Israel
by: Israel Shahak
December - December 1975
The Link - Volume 8, Issue 5
http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=91&aid=307
In the above document he covers the following catagories demonstrating the racist nature of Zionism and the laws and policies that result from this in Israel - I am only giving short excerpts:
The first issue:
Restrictive Covenants
In the State of Israel, one who is not a Jew is discriminated against, only because he is not a Jew, in these areas of life:
1) The right to live or to dwell or to open a business in the place of his choice. Most of the land in Israel belongs to or is administered by the Jewish National Fund—-NF—which is an institution of the Zionist organization, and operates an admitted racist policy: It forbids non-Jews to dwell on its lands or to open a business and sometimes even to work, only because they are not Jews!
He give examples, one of which is:
...Any attempt of an Arab to buy or to rent a flat from a Jew is opposed openly and legally by all the branches of the government (the Ministry of Housing, municipality,etc.) and also by the illegal opposition of the Jewish inhabitants which is nevertheless supported by the Israeli police. I can only remind you that nobody opposes an operation of the sale or the rental of a flat in Nazareth, if the buyer or the lessee is a Jew; which means according to the racist definition of this word employed legally in Israel, a human being who can prove that his mother, his grandmother, his great-grandmother were Jewesses. If he can prove this, such an operation becomes all right all of a sudden and nobody opposes it, neither the government nor the inhabitants. There is an opposition only if the mother of the buyer is not a Jewess...
next:
“Security”
I want to continue with this subject in order to show that:
A) There is no connection between this and what is called among us by the name of “security”: This limitation is enforced in a racist way against all non-Jews, including those among them who served in the Israeli Army, or even distinguished themselves in it, or were wounded during their service; or if they are too old but whose sons or other relatives serve in the army.
He goes on here to given the example of how such a one, if they are not a Jew, has no right to dwell in Carmel, even though they distinguished themselves with such service and sacrifice for Israel, but a theif, robber or murderer after serving their time, CAN dwell in Carmel simply because they are born of a Jewish mother/grandmother.
He goes on to speak about the extreme racism fostered by Israeli policy seen in the Kibbutzim:
An Israeli citizen who is not a Jew cannot be accepted as a member in any kibbutz, even in cases where a daughter of a kibbutz falls in love with one of its hired non-Jewish workers.
He then progresses to his next main issue, the Zionist concept of the "Redemption/Salvation of the Land" which means the transferring of the land from non-Jewish owners to Jewish ones:
Save the Land
shall now describe more briefly some of the other forms of discrimination:
2) The “Salvation of the Land”, that concept which is pushed into the brains of all the Jewish pupils in Israel from the kindergarten on. What is this? The meaning of this term is that according to the teaching of the Israeli Ministry of Education, a land which was “saved”—was transferred to a Jewish ownership. A land which has not yet been “saved” belongs as yet to human beings who were born of non-Jewish mothers, and one has to “save” it. Messengers of the JNF, who enjoy the most forceful support of the Israeli government and especially of its “security arms”, are employed continually in “saving” land both in Israel and in the conquered territories, and in changing it into an additional area of racism.
He gives the example of the Rafiah Approaches which expelled Arabs from that area, and asks these questions which he gives the official Israeli answer to, followed by his observations comparing this to the treatement of Jews by Tsarist Russia:
Do the people who lived in that area until a few years ago enjoy the right to dwell in the new racist town of Yamit? Has an Israeli Arab the right to settle in Yamit? The open and the official Israeli answer is: No! Only Jews enjoy the right to live in the new racist town of Yamit, and in the other settlements established near it. The reasons for that step do not interest me. Maybe the Tsars of Russia had a good reason when they prohibited Jews from dwelling outside the area of the “Pale” only because they were Jews. But this was racism! Similarly what is done now in Rafiah Approaches and similar acts of “salvation of land” in any other area, in Israel or in the conquered territories constitute a similar act of racism.
.....Zionism wants to “save” as much land as it can without any limit at all, in all areas of the “Land of Israel”, and it turns the land that it “saves” into one big apartheid area, in which human beings who were born from non-Jewish mothers have no right to live.
Next is his 3rd issue the right to work:
“Jewish” Labor
3) The right to work.
I will begin here from two quotations. Under the title of “The Israeli settlement authorities are taking action against the leasing of lands to Arabs,” Ma’ariv (3.7.75) tells the following racist story: “The Ministry of Agriculture and the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency have recently launched a vehement campaign to eradicate the plague of land-leasing and orchard-leasing to Bedouins and Arab farmers in the Western Galilee. The Director of the Galilee area for the Jewish Agency, Mr. Aharon Nahmani, said that his office sent a circular notice to all settlements, in which they are warned that the leasing of national lands for cultivation by Arab sharecroppers, as well as the renting of the orchards for picking and marketing by Arabs contradicts the law and the regulations of the settlement authorities and the settlement movements. The management of the Galilee area enjoins the settlements to abstain from this practice, and stresses that last year already, the department pressed legal charges against settlements which did not abstain.”
Pay attention please: Because I am a Jew, I am allowed to lease orchards for picking or marketing, but an Arab, only because he is an Arab, is forbidden this! The Ministry of Agriculture of the State of Israel together with the (Zionist) Settlement Authorities will persecute and prosecute the Jewish settlements for doing actions which are completely legal when done between Jews and Jews and become a grave offence when done between Jews and Arabs!
Shahak goes on to discuss this further describing how in the first offense the settlers were obliged to give large "donations" in place of fines to an unknown fund, with documented threats that
“if a settlement is caught once again leasing lands, all form of state support will be interrupted. That settlement will not receive water-allotments will not obtain credit, and will not enjoy development loans.” (Ibid.)
He goes on to document the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture's strong support of such racist ideology by quoting A. Uzan, the Minister of Agriculture:
“the domination of Jewish agriculture by Arab workers is a cancer in our body.”
a quote from from Ha'aretz, 13 December 1974 which can be found in quoted in
Shahak then asks:
Is there a worse racism than this? Do you imagine a French minister comparing the Jewish textile merchants in France to “a cancer” and “dealing” with them by similar ways?
He then goes on to his 4th issue, racial discrimination in housing policies and laws bringing out the racist nature of Israeli law and polilcies, demonstrating that Israel has
no human policy of housing as it exists in varying manners both in the USSR or the USA and Britain.
, just Jewish and non-Jewish policies.
He begins by comparing and contrasting such policies through the Ministry of Housing (which is for Jews) and the Department for Housing of Minorities (which is for non-Jews):
“Jewish” Housing
4) The right to an equality, the right of a citizen to enjoy a policy of his government, which deals with each citizen according to fixed non-racist criteria.
....Here in Jerusalem, for example, at the same time when the Ministry of Housing builds flats for Jews only inside Jerusalem, the “department for the housing of minorities” does the reverse: it “thins out” (what a word to use officially about human beings!) Moslems and transfers them out of Jerusalem.
....The State of Israel does not even pretend to care for housing for a human being because he is a human being, for a poor family or one that has many children, because decent housing is a human need. No! The State of Israel because of its Zionist aims, such as the “Judaization of the Galilee” is carrying out two contradictory sets of policies at the same time: One of maximum care for Jews and the other of discrimination and oppression of the “non-Jews”.
He goes on to explain the same issue exists in the area of health, then states:
The housing and the health in Israel are not of course the only examples. In almost every area of life in the State of Israel there exists a similar racist separation between “Jews” and “non-Jews”, a separation that necessarily causes discrimination.
He then goes onto his conclusions:
A) I do not wish to debate any justifications for that racist policy. The most important fact is that it exists. Therefore the first step consists in admitting the truth: The State of Israel is a racist state, and its racism is a necessary consequence of the racism of the Zionist movement. Facts are facts.
He goes onto explain that the State of Israel is not the only racist state. Then states:
The primary duty of all citizens of Israel, and also of all those Jews in the Diaspora who define themselves as the “supporters of Israel”, is to struggle against the racism and the discrimination which Zionism has established in the State of Israel, and which is directed against all the non-Jews who live in it. Such a struggle, which necessarily begins with the explanation of the racist character of Zionism and the State of Israel and the condemnation of their racism is neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Semitic, just as in the similar condemnation of the racism of the Tsarist-Russsa, there was no hate of Russians. Only a state which will abolish inside itself all the forms of racism, beginning with those that it enforces itself, can, afterwards, operate a policy which will bring all of us to a stable peace. Such peace can only be one in which people will not be discriminated against for reason of their origin, neither in their right to dwell nor in their right to work nor in any other area of their lives, but whatever government that will exist, will treat everyone in a manner in which human beings deserve to be treated.
http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=91&aid=307
http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=91&aid=307&pg=1
In 1974 Israel Shahak testified more fully on this subject before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements. of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. His testimony nay be found on pg 33-46 of the April 4, 1974 House Committee on Foreign Affairs report headed “Problems of Protesting Civilians Under International Law in the Middle East Conflict."