Shmuel Eliyahu’s Arab Problem
The Chief Rabbi of Tzfat, Shmuel Eliyahu, recently called for people to refrain from renting apartments to Israeli Arab college students and in order to prevent social contact, the establishment of separate institution for Jewish and Arab students. A few days ago it seems that a group of Jews took up Eliyahu’s suggestion, getting into a fight with some Arab students at a local college and also throwing a rock through a dormitory window. Eliyahu did condemn the attacks, although I have trouble taking him seriously. Two Jews were arrested in the assault, one of them a border policeman and the other the son of a judge.
Eliyahu based his call of prohibiting the renting of apartments to Arab students on the prohibition of Lo Teḥanem. See here for the original statement signed by Eliyahu. For a discussion of the prohibition see this MA thesis and here. To sum up a very interesting example of the development of a halakhic prohibition, the majority of halakhic authorities in Israel have ruled that the prohibition does not apply to Arab Israelis. I found the following letter written in 1947 by Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook to the principal of a school in Jerusalem here, and Eliyahu should do well to learn how a true Rav be-Yisrael should behave.
היום בשעות שלפה”צ, בעברי על פני ביה”ס והלאה לרחוב יפו-בן-יהודה, ראיתי כי מתוך חבורת ילדים יוצאי ביה”ס פגעו איזה מהם, פעמים ופעם, פגיעה שבגוף והתגרות גסה בערבים רוכלי-רחוב שעברו אז שם. פעמיים – יחד בשני הערבים אחד צעיר ואחד זקן, שהיו משותפים בעניינם כנראה, התחל בצעיר והמשך בזקן בגסות מיוחדת. זה היה מרחק קטן מן שער החצר של ביה”ס. אח”כ שוב בצעיר אחד, במדרכת רחוב יפו לצד תחילת רחוב בן-יהודה. נצטערתי ונתבישתי מאוד למראה-עיני זה. מתוך מרוצת הילדים והשתובבותם לא עלה בידי להשיגם להעירם על כך. איני יודע מי הם הילדים האלה, מי הוריהם ומוריהם. יודע אני רק זה, שהם היו יוצאי ביה”ס. לא כולם – כל חבורת הילדים יוצאי ביה”ס – עסקו באותה פגיעת-התגרות מגונה, אלא איזה מהם, וכמדומני שגם מי מהם מחה נגד זה. אעפ”כ מציאות העובדה הזאת, שהכאיבתני והעליבתני, כאמור, מחייבת אותי להעירכם על הצורך בשימת-לב חינוכית יתירה ומיוחדת לבטול אפשרויות שכאלה, גם מצד עצמה של תורת היהדות ומוסרה וגם מצד הערך המעשי היישובי והמדיני, של משמרת דרכי שלום ויחסי שכנים.
בכל כבוד ויקר ובתוחלת קידוש השם לישע עמו ונחלתו
צבי יהודה הכהן קוק
(מתוך “שיחות הרב צבי יהודה” בעריכת הרב ש. אבינר חלק מנושא
הנכרי אשר בקרב הארץ.)
I am obligated to draw your attention to the following:
This morning, when I was walking by your school in the direction of Jaffa Road and Ben-Yehudah, I saw that from among a group of students leaving your school, a number of them repeatedly assaulted, physically and with gross provocation, Arab peddlers who were passing by. Twice, to both of the Arabs, one young and one old, who seemed to be together, beginning with the younger one and continuing with the older one, with specific grotesqueness. It was a short distance from the school’s gate. Afterwards, [it happened] again to the younger one, on the Jaffa promenade near the beginning of Ben-Yehudah. I was very upset and embarrassed by what I saw. On account of the running of the students and their wildness, I was unable to catch up to them and say something to them. I don’t know who these students are, nor their teachers or their parents. I do know this, that they were from the school. Not all of them, the students from the school, took part in the despicable assault, rather, it seemed to me that some of them protested against this. Despite this, the fact that this happened, hurt and disgraced me, and obligates me to point out to you the need to put an extra educational emphasis on preventing things such as these, from both the perspective of the Jewish Torah and its ethics, and from the practical and political value, of sustaining peace and neighborly relations.
With honor and value and in the effectiveness of the sanctification of God’s name for the deliverance of our people and his inheritance.
Tzvi Yehudah ha-Kohen Kook.
(From “Sichot ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah, ed. by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the section on The Stranger Within the Land.)
Update: It seems like Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef has voiced (Hebrew) his opinion. Here is an English report. (hat tip)