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IPFS News Link • Israel

The Druze have to face that in Israel, some are far more equal than others

• https://www.jonathan-cook.net

Here's a riddle: when is a campaign for equality not really about equality? When it's in Israel, it seems.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel – those belonging to the small Druze religious sect – staged a protest in Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv. They were joined by large numbers of Israeli Jews, including former senior security officers and the two largest centre-left parties in the parliamentary opposition, Zionist Union and Yesh Atid.

All expressed outrage at the country's new Nation-State Basic Law, which gives constitutional backing to the principle that all Jews in the world enjoy a privileged status in Israel denied to the country's native, non-Jewish population. The Basic Law also strips Arabic – the mother tongue of a fifth of Israel's population – of its former status as an official language.

The crowd chanted "Equality! Equality!" and urged the repeal of a law that has been accused by legal groups of formalising a system of apartheid in Israel.


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