In Israel, there is a growing number of initiatives – from official bodies and rabbis to private organisations and groups of local residents – to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a psychologist.
In 2008, the southern city of Kiryat Gat launched a programme in its schools to warn Jewish girls about the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video called Sleeping With the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an “unnatural phenomenon”. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu once told a local newspaper that the “seducing” of Jewish girls is “another form of war” and a religious organisation called Yad L’Achim conducts military-style rescues of women from “hostile” Arab villages, in co-ordination with the police and army. In 2009, a government-backed television advertising campaign, later withdrawn, urged Israeli Jews to report relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying non-Jews.
It is no wonder that, according to a poll from 2007, more than half of all Israeli Jews believe that intermarriage should be equated with “national treason”. Adding a note of ridicule late last year, Rabbi Ari Shvat, an expert on Jewish law, allowed for an exception: Jewish women are permitted to sleep with Arabs if it is in order to gather information about anti-Israel activity – but it is more appropriate to use unmarried women for this purpose.
The first thing that strikes one here is the gender asymmetry.
[Extract. Appeared in New Statesman, on March 4th, 2011. (full text).]