Sep 30, 2016

Jerusalem restaurant owners claim that members of the radical right group Lehava — the Hebrew acronym for Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land — are threatening them with violence if they employ Arabs. In addition to making threats, Lehava activists have also carried out a series of violent attacks in Jerusalem against Arab laborers, taxi drivers and passersby. The attacks began soon after three Israeli youths were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinians in the West Bank in June 2014, and according to city restaurateurs, there has been a dramatic rise in such incidents since then. They claim that dozens of Lehava thugs go “Arab hunting,” especially on Thursdays, when yeshiva students begin their break for Sabbath, and on Saturday evenings, when they head back to their seminaries.

“It has become routine,” the owner of one of Jerusalem’s better known restaurants told Al-Monitor, requesting anonymity. “Each one of us restaurant owners knows that Thursdays and Saturday nights are terrible days on which we declare an emergency alert.”

Business owners and their Jewish employees are having to physically defend Arab workers and confront the right-wing radicals despite the danger in doing so. “We don’t relax until the last of the Lehava activists disappears from the center of town and the pedestrian mall, and we make sure our workers don’t go home on their own,” the owner said. “We always try to make some arrangement to avoid a catastrophe. Saturday evening is the worst. They [yeshiva students] don’t go back to their schools until they have finished venting their rage on the Arab staff and threatening the employers.”

He added, “A series of brutal attacks by Lehava activists have taken place in my restaurant in recent weeks, because most of my employees are Arabs.” Calls to the police, he said, are usually met with indifference.

Lehava, also the Hebrew word for “flame,” was founded in 2009 by the right-wing extremist Ben Zion “Benzi” Gopstein. Its declared aim when established was to prevent the assimilation of Jews, but over time and in light of the hundreds of people who have joined the group and support it, its activities and targets have expanded. Now the group openly declares on its website that it is agitating for “Jewish work in the Holy Land.” It regards the employment of Arabs by Jewish business owners, or in places where Jews are employed, as leading to assimilation, something that must be stopped at all costs by attacking Arab employees and threatening Jewish employers.