Jews and Arabs from Israel Kiss in Response to Banned Interracial Book

By Elisa Meyer --
11 Jan 2016 --

By דורית רביניאן (דורית רביניאן) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

After an Israeli-Arab love story is banned, interracial people kiss on camera in protest.

When Israel's right-wing education minister banned a book describing a love affair between an Arab Muslim and an Israeli Jew, he got a very surprising response: a video of multiple interracial couples kissing.

Jews and Arabs from Israel Kiss in Response to Banned Interracial Book[/tweetthis]

Time Out Tel Aviv produced the video, which shows six young liberal couples, both gay and straight, having their first kiss. Within just a few hours, the video had received over 100,000 views, and was being shared all over social media. However, later on that day it was removed by Facebook, presumably after being reported by some viewers, although the magazine claims that they do not know exactly why it was removed.

That's what Israeli Ministry of Education would call a vicious backlash https://t.co/kGO9zS9H11 #Borderlife
— Shota Kincha (@shotakincha) January 11, 2016

The clip was made in response to the decision by the Israeli Education Ministry to remove the book in question, Dorit Rabinyan's Borderlife, from its list of recommended reading in high school literature classes. The Ministry announced that the decision was made in order to keep up the "identity and heritage of students in every sector." According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, officials believe that "intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity," and hence saw the banning of the book from classrooms as a way of maintaining such separate identities.

The ban has also been protested by some more liberal officials, who see it as an act of racism. Knesset member Tamar Zandberg took to Twitter to write that “Censorship started long ago. Now it aims to preserve the purity of blood.” It seems like the book has enough support to circumvent the ban, though bookstores have reported a large jump in sales since the ban was announced.