Israel/Palestine

Little Tich

(6,171 posts) Fri Jul 29, 2016, 11:08 AM Jul 2016

Lower Galilee council head: I don’t want Arabs in our pools

Source: Times of Israel

Moti Dotan cites ‘hygiene culture’ as one of the reasons for keeping Arab bathers out of local swimming facilities

The head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council said Thursday that he does not want to see Arabs in his local community pools, alleging that they have different bathing practices and a “hygiene culture” that is “not like ours.”

The official, Moti Dotan, whose council in the north of the country comprises 18 regional Jewish and agricultural communities in an area dotted with Arab villages, made the comments during a live interview with Radio Kol Chai.

The station had previously sent a questionnaire to northern council leaders about whether or not they would let non-locals use their swimming pools. Dotan’s written response prompted the station to speak to him directly for further clarification.

“Someone once told me that leaders should show leadership and not popularity on social media. I mean every word. To maintain pools costs a lot of money,” Dotan said. “Therefore, I think that those who are not from the community and the area should pay more.

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/lower-galilee-council-head-i-dont-want-arabs-in-our-pools/

4 replies

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Highlight:

Lower Galilee council head: I don’t want Arabs in our pools (Original Post) Little Tich Jul 2016 OP

reading between the lines, 6chars Jul 2016 #1

No 6chars..... Israeli Jul 2016 #2

No it's the standard "dirty Arab" racist trope geek tragedy Jul 2016 #3

Israeli Mayor Who Doesn't Want Arabs in His Pools Is No Extremist He's in the Mainstream Little Tich Jul 2016 #4

6chars

(3,967 posts)

1. reading between the lines,

Reply to Little Tich (Original post)

Fri Jul 29, 2016, 11:54 AM

Jul 2016

they are talking about peeing in the pool.

they should probably just close the pools if they can't agree.

Israeli

(4,170 posts)

2. No 6chars.....

Reply to 6chars (Reply #1)

Sat Jul 30, 2016, 04:02 AM

Jul 2016

....what they are talking about is pure racism .....

JUSTIFICATION FOR ISRAELI RACISM AND APARTHEID
July 29, 2016

Source : https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/justification-for-israeli-racism-and-apartheid/

In a statement, the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit that promotes coexistence between Israeli Jews and Arabs, quipped: “Motti Dotan .., isn’t a racist. He simply doesn’t want dirty Arabs in his pool. For his part, he promises not to go to ‘their’ pools (the imaginary pools existing in all of the Arab communities in the Lower Galilee).”

In April, a right-wing Knesset member was slammed for saying Arab and Jewish mothers in Israel’s maternity wards should be placed in separate rooms. In a Twitter post, Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home party said, “It’s natural that my wife wouldn’t want to lie down [in a bed] next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby twenty years from now.”

geek tragedy

(68,868 posts)

3. No it's the standard "dirty Arab" racist trope

Reply to 6chars (Reply #1)

Sat Jul 30, 2016, 02:11 PM

Jul 2016

that is all too common.

Little Tich

(6,171 posts)

4. Israeli Mayor Who Doesn't Want Arabs in His Pools Is No Extremist He's in the Mainstream

Reply to Little Tich (Original post)

Sat Jul 30, 2016, 11:29 PM

Jul 2016

Source: Haaretz Editorial

The race culture that brought about Moti Dotan's statement is fed by a leadership that has made the exclusion and isolation of this country's Arab citizens the backbone of Israeli patriotism.

In saying “I don’t hate Arabs, but I don’t want them at my swimming pools,” Lower Galilee council chief Moti Dotan was expressing the essence of that deep-rooted form of racism – the kind that doesn’t masquerade as something else or cloak itself in political correctness.

In his interview with an Israeli radio station on Thursday, Dotan didn’t call for Arabs to be expelled from the country or for the torching of their village mosques. He’s not a member of the La Familia group of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans and wouldn’t shout “Death to the Arabs!”. The Lower Galilee council head is actually expressing what many Jews – if not a majority of the Jewish population in Israel – think. “In non-Jewish, Arab culture, you go into the pool wearing clothes, trying to dictate all types of clothing, and that’s why it doesn’t suit us. The culture of cleanliness isn’t the same as ours,” he declared, and in the same breath stressed that he has Arab friends.

In the hierarchy of racism, Dotan’s position can be added to those of the nightclub bouncers who refuse entry to Israelis of Ethiopian origin or anyone whose culture “isn’t characterized by my culture at places of leisure such as a swimming pool,” as Dotan put it. He later retracted his choice of words in the way that’s accepted today when it comes to racist slips of the tongue: “It’s possible that I was misunderstood.”

But it’s actually “his” culture that has nurtured this ignorant racism for years and maintains the relations of enmity with the Arab minority, as part of what shapes the national cultural identity of society in Israel. This race culture is fed by a leadership that has made the exclusion and isolation of the country’s Arab citizens the backbone of Israeli patriotism. It’s the same leadership that excludes the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish from the schools curriculum and public discourse; that is afraid of the term “Nakba”; that harasses Arab and Jewish theaters that dare highlight the Palestinian narrative; and that tries to destroy the status of the Arabic language in the country. It also allows Moti Dotan, even if not formally, to establish his own “cultural” rules to rid swimming pools in the Lower Galilee Regional Council of the presence of Arabs.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.734348

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