School Principal In Jaffa Prohibits Arabic

Wednesday December 29, 2010
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

On Tuesday, dozens of residents of Jaffa held a protest in front of a school after its principal decided to prohibit Arab students from speaking Arabic inside the classrooms. The issue pushed the protesters to accuse the Jewish principal of racism, Israeli Ynet News reported.

Arab member of the Tel-Aviv Yafo city council, Ahmad Mashrawi, said that Arabic is an official language in Israel, and added that “maybe the school principal should prohibit Israeli foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, from speaking Russian at the Knesset”.

A student of the school said that the principal just walked into the classroom and told the Arabs students that they should not use their mother-tongue in school.

“This is humiliation”, the student said, “he should have acted as a mediator, and should have found another way to address us”.

Another student stated that this issue represents the growing level of racism in Israel, and that the principal is acting like a dictator.

Associate Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meital Lahavi, said that he did not know about the issue until Mashrawi told him about it several days ago, and added that integrated schools should not favor Jewish students over their Arab colleagues.

The Ynet News said that, so far, the school principal himself made no comments on the issue.

In July this year, dozens of municipal Rabbis in Israel signed a letter prohibiting selling or renting lands and apartments to non-Jews.

The Halachic “rabbinical ruling” was signed by more than 50 rabbis who work for several municipalities in Israel.

The Rabbis, from the Safad area, said that renting apartments to Arabs is forbidden, while chief Rabbi in Israeli, Ovadia Yosef, also affirmed the ruling.

The Ynet reported that one Rabbi from the Petah Tikva hesder Yeshiva, Yuval Sherlo, stated said that although its is preferred to rent apartments to Jews, yet it is not right to ban renting to Arabs.

Source: International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC).
Link: http://www.imemc.org/article/60290.