by Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Speech at the June 9 Tel-Aviv rally

...For forty years now, racism and megalomania have dictated our lives. Forty years during which more than four million people do not know the meaning of freedom of movement. Forty years, in which Palestinian children are born and raised as prisoners in their homes that the Occupation converted into a prison, deprived at the outset of all the rights that human beings are entitled to because they are human.

Forty years during which Israeli children are educated in racism of the type that has been unknown in the civilized world for decades. Forty years during which they have learned to hate the neighbours just because they are neighbours, to fear them without knowing them, to see a quarter of the citizens of the State as "a demographic danger" and an "enemy within", and to relate to the residents of the ghettos created by the policy of occupation as "a problem" that must be solved.

Only sixty years ago, Jews were residents of ghettos and seen in the eyes of their oppressors as a problem that needed to be solved. Only sixty years ago the Jews were enclosed behind ugly concrete and electrified walls topped with watchtowers manned by erect armed figures, and deprived of the ability to make a living or to raise their children with dignity.

Only sixty years ago racism exacted its price from the Jewish people. Today racism rules in the Jewish state, tramples people's dignity underfoot and deprives them of liberty, condemns all of us to lives of hell.

For forty years now the Jewish head has unceasingly been bowed in worship of racism while the Jewish mind is devising the most creative ways to devastate and demolish and destroy this country...

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