TEL AVIV, June 17 — The remark by Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party during a meeting with police officers in Tel Aviv was broadcast by Israeli television and radio stations yesterday.
Aharonovitch, responding to an undercover police agent who apologised for his dirty clothes, said with a laugh: “What do you mean dirty? You look like a real ‘Araboosh,’” a derogatory term for an Arab in Hebrew slang.
Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi told Reuters the minister should resign for his comment “because he is a racist and this kind of statement should be dealt with zero tolerance. I feel disgrace as a human and as an Arab towards this man”.
In a statement, Aharonovitch said: “This remark does not reflect my positions or world view and I apologise to anyone who was insulted.”
Aharonovitch’s party, headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, has come under fire for introducing several bills seen as aimed at curbing the rights of Israeli Arab citizens.
Israeli Arabs number about a fifth of the population of the country. Most are descended from Palestinians who stayed in Israel when hundreds of thousands of others either fled or were driven away during fighting over Israel’s establishment in 1948. — Reuters
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