No racism in Israel

It is highly politically incorrect to suggest that there is, or ever has been, a hint of a suggestion of a bat’s squeak of racism in Israel, so I won’t do that.

I will however refer you to this very interesting article from the 6 August 1979 Time magazine, a link to which was posted on by Ben White on the Mondoweiss blog. It concerns the treatment of Bedouins whose traditional lands seemed to be just exactly where the Israeli Air Force needed to build an air strip.

The part I like best is the response of a senior Israeli official to a request by the Bedouin that they be permitted to set up a model agricultural cooperative:

I’m not giving up good Jewish land and water to Arabs.

Read Ben White’s post here, and the original Time article here.  When you read the Time piece, see whether you can detect anything that smacks of forced labour, or indeed, of “how the West was won”.