Adalah Demands that the Mayor of Ramle Yoel Lavi be Disqualified from Running for Re-election Next Month due to his Racist Statements against Arab Citizens
On 12 October 2008, Adalah together with local NGOs sent a letter to the Attorney General (AG) and the Chairperson of the Elections Committee in Ramle demanding that Mr. Yoel Lavi, the mayor of the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Ramle for the last fifteen years, be disallowed from standing as a candidate for the elections, and that his political party list be disqualified. The letter was sent by Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the General Director of Adalah; Jamal Salameh from the al-Dar Association; and Arafat Ismail from the Popular Committee for Arabs in Ramle in light of racist statements made by Lavi against Arab citizens of Israel in the media.
In the letter, Adalah argued that Lavi has made racist statements against Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel during the 15-year period in which he has served as mayor of Ramle. The letter included quotations of statements made by Lavi, including the following, “If Arabs want to deal with me in nationalist issues I will be the first to open fire on them. I have a lot of life experience. Every time I have opened fire on Arabs I have managed to stay alive and they have died.”
Lavi’s inflammatory statements have provoked strong reactions among Arab and Jewish citizens alike; even the AG cancelled the nomination of Lavi to the position of Director of the Israel Land Administration (ILA) on the basis of racist statements he had made.
In March 2008, Shatil, the Association for Distributive Justice, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah and al-Dar Association sent a letter to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Construction and Housing and the AG, objecting to the candidacy of Lavi to the position of ILA director. Following the letter, the AG cancelled his nomination.
In the letter of 12 October 2008, the organizations emphasized that Lavi’s repeated racist statements exceed the bounds of freedom of expression and violate the principle of equality. Furthermore, the content of the statements reflect the objectives of his political party list, which is an indivisible part of his vision and that of his colleagues within the list.
In addition, a person serving in the position of mayor enjoys wide authority and has great influence over the lives of Arab residents of Ramle. As the organizations argued in the letter, “The trust between the residents of the city and the mayor is important; that is not present in the case of Mr. Lavi and the Arab residents of Ramle… Lavi’s statements are indicative of his clear intention to follow a discriminatory policy against Ramle’s Arab population.”
The organizations further stressed that the difficult economic situation of Arab citizens of Israel living in Ramle and the severe overcrowding they face increase the need for a fair and non-racist mayor.
