Israeli Arab village targeted in racial attack

JERUSALEM: Vandals daubed “Arabs out” graffiti and punctured tires in an Arab village near Jerusalem yesterday, targeting a community widely seen in Israel as a showcase for Jewish-Arab coexistence.
Unlike similar attacks that have damaged Arab mosques, homes, vehicles and olive groves, the vandalism took place in an Arab village in Israel popular with Jewish visitors, rather than in a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank.
Abu Ghosh, where the tires of 28 cars were punctured and anti-Arab slogans scrawled on walls, is located along the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and is well liked among Jewish visitors for its Middle Eastern restaurants.
“In this village ... Arabs and Jews live a normal life,” said Jawadat Ibrahim, an Abu Ghosh resident who owns a restaurant in the village.
He said he suspected Jewish militants were behind the incident, although the “Price Tag” slogans left behind by ultranationalists who have vandalized Palestinian property in the West Bank were not found in Abu Ghosh.
Condemning the Abu Ghosh attack, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett of the pro-settler Jewish Home party said on his Facebook page: “There is a small group of evildoers who want to destroy any chance of good neighborly relations between Arabs and Jews in our country ... we will not let them succeed.”