Israeli hate speech against Palestinians tripled in 2021: Egyptian human rights coalition

Ahram Online , Thursday 16 Jun 2022

Egyptian Coalition for Human Rights and Development (ECHRD) issued a report on Thursday detailing a threefold increase in Israeli hate speech and incitement against Palestinians on social media in 2021 over 2020 and describing its long term harms.

Palestine
Palestinian youths sculpt the number 2022 in the sand at sunset ahead of new year s eve, at the beach in the coastal Mediterranean city of Gaza, on December 28, 2021. AFP

 

In a report titled “Hate Speech and Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” issued Thursday, the ECHRD stated that hate speech against Palestinians is rooted in racist Israeli educational curriculum and news media that is responsible for implanting hatred since childhood on.

The report also stated that the expansionist settlement policy has resulted in the Palestinians being subjected to discriminatory apartheid laws favouring Jewish settlers.

“Most of those who live in the settlements are from extremist Jewish groups that advocate the Jewishness of the state and play a role in provoking and inflaming the feelings of Palestinians with open hate speech and incitement to violence against them,” according to the report.

The report also referred to the increasing international recognition of the state of affairs in the occupied territories, which invites parallels to other historical cases of apartheid.

“In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in condemnation (within the international political discourse) of the apartheid regime, which was associated with the settlement regime in South Africa and ended in 1994... As a result of the control tools used by Israel in the occupied territories of 1967, there has been a political and geographical reality based on ethnic and hierarchical segregation in parallel with the ongoing Judaisation,” the report stated. 

The report mentioned the corrosive long-term harm of such a project, saying “The government does not care about the dangerous political and moral effects of the settlements project, nor the systematic violations of human rights of the Palestinians who have been under Israeli military rule for fifty years.”

Moreover, the Israeli leadership is not interested in the presence of two judicial systems in the occupied territories, one for the Palestinians and the other for Israelis. This trend has led to a flood of bills proposing direct or indirect annexation, culminating in the enactment of the 2016 settlements law.

The report concluded Israel cannot be considered a democratic country as it is enshrining racial segregation and discrimination in law. Instead, the government is consolidating a racist colonial legacy through ethnic cleansing and the deliberate denial of the rights of indigenous peoples on their historical land, including their their historical right to their land and property.

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