Theo Bikel’s Op-ed on Negev Bedouin

Theo Bikel’s Op-ed on Negev Bedouin

This article by our board chair, Theodore Bikel (quoted and linked to below), was published at the website of JTA (the American-Jewish news service) and is being distributed to its subscribing Jewish publications:

Op-Ed: Israel must develop Negev for benefit of all
Israel could adopt a hostile policy that displaces thousands of Bedouin or ensure development of the region to benefit all its residents.

From YouTube video on Bedouin
This past May, I made a YouTube video with the Israeli NGO Rabbis for Human Rights that drew a parallel between my role as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which the Jews in Sholem Aleichem’s tale faced expulsion from the Russian shtetl of Anatevka, and a Knesset proposal to forcibly displace up to 40,000 Bedouin-Arab citizens. The video included anguishing footage of the July 2010 demolition of the unrecognized Bedouin village of El-Araqib.

The proposal, known as the Prawer-Begin plan, has reportedly been withdrawn, but this is not certain. A Knesset committee debated the bill even after the supposed withdrawal. There are also indications within the governing coalition that force may yet be used to expel thousands from their desert homes with a law shaped to be more punitive than Prawer-Begin. 

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By | 2013-12-26T14:39:00-05:00 December 26th, 2013|Blog|0 Comments

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