Home > Action Alerts > CJME Alert #30

Mayor of Ramle, Israel (Kansas City's Sister Cities) makes racist comments against Arabs residents - what you can do about it!

An opportunity has arisen to intervene locally on behalf of Palestinian rights. On the heels of the Sabeel conference - the most significant event ever put on in Kansas City to draw attention to human rights priorities in Israel/Palestine - we now have the chance to effect the most significant change to come out of this city regarding the human rights tragedy in the Holy Land.

As you heard at the Sabeel conference, Palestinians in the Israeli Occupied  Palestinian Territories (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) undergo a host of daily humiliations and rights violations. To name just a few
 
  • They have their homes demolished as a form of collective punishment, as a tool of land theft, and as a way to displace the Palestinian population, as recounted by Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD).
     
  • A massive wall being built in the West Bank bisects Palestinian communities and separates Palestinians from their land and their neighbors, as Anna Baltzer explained.
     
  • They are ruled over in every way by the Israeli government but not given the rights due the governed, creating a system of legal apartheid in which Palestinians are not granted the rights enjoyed by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank who take their land, as many speakers at Sabeel and President Jimmy Carter have testified.

Across the green line inside Israel, Palestinian Israelis (Israeli citizens who are among or who are descended from the minority of Palestinians not run out of the present-day borders of Israel by Jewish forces in 1948) experience some of the same injustices. Though they are by and large living with more rights and a higher standard of living than Palestinians in the OPT, Palestinian Israelis - who make up nearly 20% of the Israeli population - have far fewer rights and a much lower standard of living than their Jewish Israeli countrymen. In fact, the very tools of discrimination and domination listed above are also utilized inside Israel, directed in a racist manner by the Israeli government against its own citizens of Palestinian origin.

The city of Ramle, located inside Israel, provides a prime example of this. Ramle is an official "sister city" of Kansas City (see the Kansas City Sister City Association website for more information about sister city relationships). It is through this official relationship with this Israeli city that an opportunity exists to draw local attention to the apartheid rule under which Palestinians live, both inside Israel and in the OPT.

Recently, in Ramle, the mayor was quoted in the Israeli press making virulently racist remarks about the Palestinian Arab population of his city (see press release #1 [Adobe PDF format] and press release #2 [PDF] for details). As reported in the KC Jewish Chronicle (read article here), Lavi's hate speech came in response to a request that some streets in Ramle with Hebrew names be given Arabic names. Both languages are official languages in Israel, and Ramle has a large Arabic-speaking population. To this request, Lavi responded:
 
“Why should I change the name, because Jamal wants to change the name? Because Ahmad wants to change the name? He should change his god. They all should go get (expletive deleted) . . . If Arabs don't like it, they can go to Jaljulia [a neighboring Arab village].”
To the reporter inquiring about the street names, who like Lavi is Jewish, Lavi said,

“So have you, too, become the bitches of every (expletive deleted) Arab?”
But this hate speech is just the tip of the iceberg. Human rights groups and Arab leaders in Ramle (Mosaic Communities; Al-Dar: the Popular Committee of the Arab Residents of Ramle; SHATIL- Mixed Cities Project; Ramle Councilman Fayeze Mansour) claim that the local government engages in racist policies against Palestinians that bear a striking similarity to some of the apartheid policies in the OPT (see the attached letters outlining the racist treatment of Arabs in Ramle). Jeff Halper and ICAHD and numerous other national Israeli peace and justice organizations have decried this situation in Ramle as well (see here [PDF]). 
 
In a letter written to the KCMO government [PDF] last month, Al-Dar, the Popular Committee of the Arab Residents of Ramle, provides descriptions of the racist policies levied against Palestinian Arab citizens of Ramle, Israel. They include
  • selective “demolition of homes” and “refusal to issue building permits” in Arab neighborhoods
  •  “erection of separation walls and fences, more properly referred to as apartheid walls and fences, around certain Arab quarters”
  • “calculated neglect of the Arab quarters of the City with regards to infra-structural development”
  • And, the letter goes on, “This list is far from being exhaustive."

Also, in this letter and in two others sent to our city government (see letter from Mosaic [PDF] and letter from Ramle council member [PDF]), we in Kansas City are asked to stand up for equality and against racism in Ramle. Specifically, the KCMO city government, as a sister city of Ramle, is asked to

  1. Publicly condemn the unjustifiable and racist words and policies of the Ramle government, and to communicate to the Ramle government Kansas City's opposition to actions which deny equal rights to all citizens of Ramle.
  2. Set up a committee to review Kansas City's relationship with Ramle to see if further action needs to be taken in light of Ramle's policies toward its minority population, the accordance of these policies with national Israeli law, sister city founding documents, and Kansas City's commitment to equal rights.
  3. Charge the Sister City Association of Kansas City in its Ramle sister city capacity to direct its efforts to cooperate with and support civil society groups in Ramle that are working against racism and for equal treatment of all citizens before the law.

CJME is devoting its efforts to ensuring that these requests are satisfied.

TAKE ACTION: How can you help to make this happen.
  • Inform yourself using the supporting links/attachments and then contact members of the city council, the mayor's office, and the International Office making the above demands (Phone numbers and emails are found here or at the end of this email). When you do so please let CJME know (at the email address that sent this letter). If you live in KCMO or in one of the council member's districts be sure to tell them that. Call one council member and the mayor if you can, if you can call them all even better.
  • Write op-eds, letters to the editor in the Star, KC Jewish Chronicle and other papers condemning racist speech and policies in our sister city.
  • If you know personally people in the press, be it TV, radio, or print, encourage them to cover this story. If you know personally government officials lean on them to take action.
  • Send this email to other groups and individuals. Civil rights groups. Minority groups. Neighborhood associations. Churches. Everyone. Get them to join up with CJME to demand our government take action.
  • Send thanks to the Sister City Association of Kansas City (which is not part of the government but only an affiliated non-profit) for already making a public statement against the racism of Ramle's mayor. The statement reads: "SCAKC wishes to record its disappointment at the recent unacceptable remarks of Mayor Yoel Lavi of Ramle, Israel, a Sister City of Kansas City, Missouri. His comments and attitude are inconsistent with the principles of sister city relationships and hinder efforts to achieve the mission” of SCAKC.
  • Bring a CJME speaker to inform your group about the broader rights situation in the OPT and in Ramle.
     
The residents in Ramle are asking specifically for Kansas Citians' solidarity and action in support of their rights. Please join us.

"In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel‚s tanks suppress Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel proper, in the unrecognized villages and Palestinian neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to be demolished 54 years later."

- Jeff Halper, Director, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

For a succinct summary of the many avenues of discrimination against Palestinian Israelis, citizens of Israel, reference the Arab Association for Human Rights.

_________________________________________________________________
MAYOR
 
Mayor Kay Barnes  816 513 3500    mayor@kcmo.org  
 
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CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS (for districts go here)

Deb Hermann:  816 513 1624 | write to - terri_wolfe@kcmo.org
Bill Skaggs: 816 513 1619 | write to - lisa_minardi@kcmo.org
Bonnie Sue Cooper: 816 513 1601 | write to - jackie_burton@kcmo.org
*John Fairfield: 816 513 1622 | write to - amy_dahlstrom@kcmo.org
Troy Nash: 816 513 1605 | write to - troy_nash@kcmo.org
Saundra McFadden-Weaver:816 513 1608 | write to - saundra_mcfadden-weaver@kcmo.org
*Jim Glover: 816 513 1616 | write to - jim_glover@kcmo.org
George Blackwood: 816 513 1617 | write to - george_blackwood@kcmo.org
*Rebecca Nace:816 513 1633 | write to - mary_jacobi@kcmo.org
Terry Riley: 816 513 1629 | write to - schylon_clayton@kcmo.org
*Alvin Brooks: 816 513 1602 | write to - ramonda_doakes@kcmo.org
*Charles Eddy 816 513 1615 | write to - charles_eddy@kcmo.org
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KC INTERNATIONAL OFFICE

Jody Edgerton   816 513 3521  international_office@kcmo.org