Throwing Stones In Glass Houses
by There’s a dirty little secret no one likes to discuss in Israel: racism and discrimination. On the whole, you can hear talk of discrimination against Jews, but not discrimination by the European Jews against Russian or Ethiopian Jews. Yesterday Haaretz ran a story about how the courts ordered a white man to pay a black mizrahim woman 18,000 Euros for his outrageous discriminatory behavior.
Haaretz had another good but disturbing story that bothered me enough to take to the keyboard. It seems the Chief Rabbinate has prepared a new bill that will close the Law of Return to those who convert to Judaism. Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar wants to cut down on a problem he believes exists: people converting in order to gain Israeli citizenship.
There may indeed be cases of conversion for citizenship (not unlike marriage for citizenship in America ), but this isn’t about cutting down on Jewish conversions, it’s about keeping undesirables out of Israel . This may appear to be something small, but an avalanche also starts with a single snowflake. Israel has a problem with racism, and it is growing, judging by the number of stories that keep popping up on the subject in its various forms.
America also has a racism problem and at times it’s hard to say how much progress or regression we are truly making in this category, but we at least admit we have a problem. Israel seems to be content to sweep most of their secret under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist in their utopia, which is denial.
The discrimination and in some extreme cases, the hate, is quite obvious and borders on being fanatical and frightening. Take for instance the issue with the gay pride parade in Jerusalem . Most people who honestly follow the Bible, Torah, and the Koran all believe in the same thing: homosexuality is wrong. It’s not sexist to state what is within the pages of a book. In Christianity, it is often taught that one should love the sinner but hate the sin and help the person overcome it. “Sin” in this case includes all sin, not just homosexual behavior.
A pulsa danura is also known as a death curse. Its roots come from the Babylonian Talmud and is tied to modern day Kabbala; depending on who you ask, it’s black magic, voodoo, or Jewish mysticism and some believe it to be quite effective. The believers routinely point to the July 2005 pull out from occupied territories, at which time a pulsa danura was placed on Ariel Sharon . It is well-known he has been on life support for nearly a year after suffering initially from a stroke.
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