Middle East Online 13 Giugno 2008

Palestinian taxi drivers live in terror while facing attacks from racist ultra-Orthodox Jews in Arab Jerusalem

JERUSALEM: Taxi driver Ezzedine Nassar will never forget the night last October he was hailed by three young ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. They knew he was a Palestinian as soon as he opened his mouth.

They smashed his face in with a rock.

"They were waiting for an Arab to come along," said the 48-year-old who now picks up fares during the day only and also tries to avoid areas of the Holy City inhabited by ultra-religious Jews.

Local media recently broadcast surveillance footage of dozens of teenage Jews ganging up on two Palestinians in the illegal Jewish settlement of Pisgat Zeev in the east of the city.

Arab east Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the 1967 war (initiated by Israel) and then annexed, a move never recognized by the international community.

One was stabbed in the back and the other was beaten senseless.

Hostility from some sections of the Jewish population in Jerusalem towards Palestinians is nothing new.

It is most evident in the ultra-Orthodox areas, where the bearded men are clad in black coats and hats and the women wear long skirts and headscarves.

"Sometimes they get in, see the plaque with the driver's name on it, and get out again," said Nassar. But often they just take a quick glance inside the taxi to check before gesturing to the driver to move along.

One of Nassar's Palestinian colleagues has a trick up his sleeve -- a skullcap for his head. He keeps a kippa in his glove compartment and puts it on as he nears certain areas in the hope he will be mistaken for an observant Jew.

"I imagine some Jews are frightened of us, but with others it's racism pure and simple," said another Palestinian driver who operates from an upmarket hotel in the Old City and has been a taxi driver for the past three years.

The most feared are those nicknamed shababniks, rogue students who attend Yeshivas, schools for the study of the Talmud. The name is a reference to "shababs" -- Arabic for adolescents.

"It's especially risky after an attack or during Jewish holidays -- Purim especially" when drinking alcohol to excess is encouraged, said Nahjat Salhab, whose taxi was stoned six months ago in the Beit Israel religious quarter.

"When I heard about the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva I went straight home," he said, recalling the March 7 attack in west Jerusalem when eight students were killed and nine were wounded by a Palestinian gunman from Arab east Jerusalem.

Although the Israeli police are unable to supply statistics on random street attacks by Jews on Palestinians, sociologist and expert on the ultra-Orthodox world Menahem Friedman says the phenomenon "has been going on for years."

"These young people are marginalised even in their own community," he said. "They may be in Yeshivas but they don't really study. They hang about in the streets looking for trouble."

Friedman said such "easily manipulated louts" have extremist views, and many are followers of the late Meir Kahane, a racist rabbi shot dead in New York in 1990 who founded a movement of violently anti-Arab Jewish militants.

For the most part they are not Zionists, believing instead that creating the state of Israel before the Coming of the Messiah was heresy. "But they are still patriotic Jews," Friedman added.

Arafat Bakir Aslan, 30, now works with the Palestinian Al Aqsa taxi company whose clients are mainly tourists, journalists and non- government organisations.

"Now no one wants to know if I'm an Arab or not," he said.

Source >  Middle East Online