Middle East Online 02 Luglio 2008

Israeli authorities deny racism while preaching girls not to date Arab Bedouin boys
 
TEL AVIV - Schoolgirls in a southern Israeli town are taught not to date Bedouins and shown a video called "Sleeping with the Enemy," but the man behind the sex education programme insisted on Tuesday it was not racist.

"I compare this with ocean outings, when the black flags are up, one should not go out. With Bedouins it's the same, they're dangerous," Chaim Shalom, a municipal social worker who runs the programme, said.

The programme has the support of the municipality and the police in Kiryat Gat, a community on the edge of the Negev desert, as well as local public schools, where Shalom gives his presentation.

"They shower the girls with presents -- jewels, clothes, cellphones -- but all that doesn't come free," said Shalom.

To illustrate his point Shalom uses Sleeping with the Enemy, a 10-minute video in which a young Israeli girl relates how a Bedouin she befriended brutally mistreated her.

Shalom insisted the "sensitisation" programme is not racist.

"If girls who go out with Bedouins would marry them, I'd have no complaints," he said.

"But that's not the case. The men abandon them once they are pregnant. There have been several cases of rape and two women were burned and killed."

About 170,000 Arab Bedouins live in Israel, mainly in the Negev desert. They lived in the land before the formation of Israel in 1948, and before the arrival of Jewish migrants from Europe and other parts of the world.

Israel is frequently criticized for its racist polices and the deliberate misrepresentation of its non-Jewish population (a fifth of the total population).

Source >  Middle East Online