Monday, May 07, 2012

Tell the whole story, John Lyons

Letters in today's Australian:-

No apartheid in Israel

MORE disturbing than the context provided in the story by John Lyons on the effect of residency restrictions on Israel's Arab citizens was the headline ("Living under the cloud of Israel's cruel apartheid", 5-6/5). Stigmatising Israel in this manner is an affront to those who endured real apartheid.Israel's Arab citizens vote in Israel's elections.

There are Arab members of parliament and Arab judges in Israeli courts. Jews and Arabs use the same public transport, eat in the same restaurants, get treated at the same hospitals, share the same beaches, theatres and cinemas, shop at the same malls, attend the same public schools and universities and work side by side.

The measures Israel has been forced to take to prevent suicide bombers from the West Bank entering Israel and blowing Israelis to bits do indeed restrict contacts between Israel's Arab citizens and their relatives in the West Bank. But these factors pale in comparison to the way Palestinians are discriminated against in Arab countries.

Peter Wertheim, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Sydney, NSW

ANYONE familiar with the nature of apartheid in South Africa and the democratic state of Israel will know it is false to charge Israel with being an apartheid state.

The headline above John Lyons's article is a libel that gratuitously misinforms and besmirches Israel.

Merv Morris, St Kilda, Vic

And this article from Al Arabiya - Israeli phone center inside Arab Bedouin Mosque
Dozens of Bedouin women from southern Israel join the work force after an Israeli phone company opens a service center inside a local mosque, where women feel they can work without any inhibition.

The country’s largest telecom group, Bezeq Israel Telecom, in a joint venture with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, launched the center inside the mosque in an attempt to combat unemployment among Arab Bedouin women.
It's tragic when Al Arabiya has more insight into what is going on inside Israel than the Australian. Perhaps Mr. Lyons should be enquiring into the condition of minorities in Gaza and the West Bank under Palestinian rule just for a comparison. There are no known Jews in Gaza and we know that PA law mandates a death sentence to any Palestinian who sells land to a Jew. No discrimination there, I suppose.

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