The mayors of the city of Ashdod and Ashkelon are making it tough - albeit not impossible - for Arabs from the Aza and PA-controlled areas in Yesha.
The mayor, Yehiel Lasri, along with the mayor of Ashkelon, Itamar Shimoni, have clamped down on non-Israeli Arab construction workers by having the gall to demand their Israeli-citizen employers carefully check their papers. (Try and get a job in the U.S. and, unless you are an "undocumented" [illegal] alien, it won't happen unless you have a passport two forms of pseudo-ID, "pseudo" since there is no way to prove a Social Security card belongs to the person presenting it.)
The mayors are holding up construction of some child-related projects in order to protect the children in the neighborhoods. (What do we do in the U.S. to protect our children from known predators? Do we let them work in/near schools?)
While not all Moslems in Israel, Aza, and Yesha are terrorists, there are enough that precautions are necessary. It is the primary responsibility of a government's CEO - be it a town or city government such as Ashkelon or Ashdod or the national government - that seems to have abrogated its responsibility - in Israel and, indeed, throughout the world.
Rhetorical question: Would Obama allow ISIS terrorists into the U.S. for any reason? To learn to fly jetliners? To learn to pilot huge ships carrying containers or oil? Remember, the question is just rhetorical.
The mayors are being attacked buy both the left and right, including Israel's prime minister and its president.
It seems the only people who favor the mayors' actions are the people in Ashdod and Ashkelon.
In Ashkelon, dozens of residents demonstrated in support of their mayor, bearing signs reading "guard the children," and "Bibi wake up - our children won't be abandoned."
According to an article in Arutz 7, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein weighed in on the case Thursday, claiming the move was in violation of the equal employment law. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday morning she had contacted Weistein demanding such action, and called the move illegal
For all that, the same article quotes Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin (Likud), who notes:
"There's so much hypocrisy in the media crackdown on the Ashkelon Mayor - Mr. Itamar Shimoni - and calls of 'racist' against him," Feiglin wrote on his Facebook page Thursday afternoon.
"After all, Arab workers don't enter IDF bases or sensitive facilities of the Defense Ministry," noted Feiglin. "So why is the security of kindergarten children in Ashkelon less sensitive? Why is the concern for security racism?"
In his remarks Feiglin echoed comments made by former MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, who noted earlier that from his experiences no Arab workers are employed for manual labor in the Knesset.
"Not a single Arab contractor or Arab laborer can work in the Knesset. It's a fact. I was there for four years, all of the contractors are Jews and there are no Arab laborers. Not in flooring, not in carpentry, not in cleaning," said Ben-Ari. "Let the hypocritical Bennett and (MK) Miri Regev first fight against the 'racism' in the Knesset!"
Attorney Uri Tzipori on the legal department of the Derech Chaim movement that pushes for Israel to unite behind the way of the Torah, there is nothing illegal about the move.
Tzipori argued that the equal employment law does not need to be applied in the current case, given that the layoffs are made in response to a serious security situation and a sense of immediate danger, and not out of a mere desire to fire Arab workers, in which case one would expect such steps to have been taken long ago.
IN THE BEGINNING most of the construction work in Israel was done by Jews for Jews. In fact, most of the work in Israel was performed for Jews by Jews. Slowly the Jews became "too good" to do the less than glamorous jobs and the Arabs filled the gap.
Today, more and more construction jobs are filled by Chinese. Almost all residential health care work is done by women from the Philippines. (Israel already is starting to pay the price for importing foreign workers.)
