ACRI vs. Ittijah on Umm al-Fahm
On October 29, 2008, the Israeli High Court of Justice approved a Jewish march through the Israeli Arab city of Umm al-Fahm. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) “welcome[d]” the court´s decision, since “freedom of expression is a cornerstone of democracy, and its most genuine test is in the facilitation of its most outrageous, extreme, and controversial forms. ” However Ittijah, a network of highly political Palestinian NGOs in Israel, released a statement condemning the High Court´s ruling as “it [serves as tacit] approval for the [raw] aggression and the ethnic cleansing movement that we saw in Acco [during the Yom Kippur riots]. ” Ittijah also “called upon our nation´s public. . .to be on high alert for any aggression in al-Fahm, and to defend our existence in our homeland” (translations from the original Arabic).