Not too long ago a "hesder" yeshiva was opened in Ajami, in an old synagogue that had been standing neglected for some 40 years. Neglected, because the Jewish community of Ajami had left to better neighbourhoods (better at the time they left, when Ajami was one of the worst slums) and there simply was no need for a synagogue. The Jews (some 20%) still living in Ajami are predominantly secular.
Palestinians and Jews in Ajami live together, quite peacefully enjoying a relation of good neighbours. My very devout Muslim neighbours have the key to my flat, in case they need to get on the roof (which can only be reached through my home) or, more often, in case i loose my keys or forgot to water the plants on a very very hot khamsin day. We often meet for a coffee to exchange the latest gossip or a good cake recipe (usually followed by and exchange of the sweet results).
We dance at marriage parties and weep at burials, rejoice in the birth of yet another daughter or son. We each have our sources of good olive oil, za'atar and the best coffee and share those, while bragging ours is just that little bit better. Neighbours.
Enter the yeshiva. Let it be said, i have nothing against religion. However, i do have a problem with religio and its institutions being abused as tools for justifying violent acts and racism.
After the disengagement from the Gaza strip, many of its expelled settlers started to see the mixed (Arab Jewish) cities (most of Israel is very segregated) as the "next front" for nationalist activity. They do not hide their ideology. Just go to their websites.
They are also supported by Lieberman's fascist ideology and extremist right-wing Jews from the US and elsewhere.
They claim they want to "strengthen the weak and threatened Jewish communities". If so, why didn't they select Yafo Gimmel, which indeed is a weakened, predominantly Jewish neighbourhood.
In Yafo gimmel, there are many ppor Jews, recent and not so recent migrants from the ex soviet union territories and Ethiopia).
Instead they selected Ajami, where there is no Jewish community to speak of and the few Jews living there tend to be well educated and economically strong and yes, also secular (some having a strong cultural and or ethnic Jewish identity) and having little interest in this particular yeshiva's brand of fundamentalism.
The very well-funded yeshiva is buying up property wholesale, in expensive Ajami, for its community, intending to turn Ajami into a religious Jewish community. Disregarding ofcourse that its Palestinian residents have no reason to close their shops and restaurant businesses on shabat, their best business day and the Jewish holidays.
The settlers like to walk around in groups, carrying flags and making a nationalist show of themselves, in absolute disrespect of the feelings of their neighbours. Part of their behaviour appears to be aimed at provoking violence, perhaps to convince more peope like themselves to come and "save" Jaffa.
Save from what? It exsists only in their imagination and ideology. We have no need of "being saved".
Last week they won a tender for a piece of public land very close to my home. Publicly owned land, which should have gone to the Palestinian community, from whom it was stolen in 1948, (and once more some 4 years ago, when the municipality closed the market which functioned on that particular piece of land) and with whom there is a legally binding agreement to construct 400 public housing units to solve the very bad Palestinian housing situation.
Yet the land went to an ultra religious building society who sell land only to religious Jewish families. Imagine a group of ultra nationalist whites in the US buying up publicly owned land in the middle of a poor black community and then selling the land only to selected similarly minded whites who publicly proclaim they want to turn the community into a whites only area.
Non-religious Jewish friends of mine contacted the company and asked if they could buy a flat. in the project. They were refused as flats are only sold to "our people".
Well, that's what is happening in Jaffa, in Ajami.
And it is happening in all the mixed cities: in Ramle, in Lod, in Acco and in Haifa.
We have seen the horrid results of this type of activities in Acco, when the homes and cars of several Palestinian families were torched by Jewish extremists.
In Acco, as a result of these actions, most Arab families left their nice homes in the middle class "Mizrach" neighborhood, scared for their lives after the days long progrom carried out against them by a mob of some thousand crazed "religious" nationalists encircling their homes for hours, until the police and the ambulances were able to save them.
It happened last year.
The Jaffa yeshiva receives support from the municipality and other offical state institutions. We are not talking about a small bunch of crazed idealists but about a very well-organized ,coordinated and well funded country-wide effort (with international financial support), aimed at creating a separate society. In other parts of the world they would call it "apartheid".
Are we next?
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