Racism is Everywhere Update I

Haaretz has an editorial on the issue, but they say it's Mizrahim that are not allowed to use the school. Since Spain was at one time ruled by Muslims from North Africa, it may be a moot point.

According to police reports, 100,000 demonstrators showed up. And in this article Sephardim are referred to as Middle Eastern. So I guess you could say it a matter of light-skinned people not wanting to study with brown-skinned people. This article has a nice selection of photos too.

edit: The BBC is also covering this. They have a quote from a settler saying it's not racism, it's because the Sephardi aren't religious enough. They're not modest enough and they have TVs.

Racism is Everywhere

Some non-Jews are considered anti-Semitic, or racist, for not supporting Israel. Well, some Jews are racist too. There's a segregated girls school in a West Bank Jewish settlement, and the courts just ruled that they have to de-segregate. They are segregating the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi girls.

Ashkenazim = Jews from northern European

Sephardim = Jews from Spain/Portugal

Mizrahim = Jews from Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus

For some reason, these ultra-Orthodox settlers do not want their girls to learn in the same classroom as Sephardi girls. They are planning protests and Israel is putting 10,000 police officers out there to prepare for the protests. Here's a selection from the article:

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), who met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, told the Knesset: "We, the ultra-Orthodox community, will not respect rulings, not of lower courts and not of the High Court, that contradict the Torah."

Gafni went on to say that there is an opportunity to prevent the parents from being jailed. "These pictures [of the parents being jailed] will be published worldwide and there will be no escape from thinking about what happened in other countries at other times when ultra-Orthodox Jews with side locks and beards went to jail."

Well, if the Torah says that Ashkenazi and Sephardi should be separated, then I will step out on a limb and claim that the Torah is racist.