Israel: Jewish parents block Palestinian caregivers from entering workplace

A number of Jewish parents prevented three caregivers from entering the day care centre in which they work yesterday because of their Palestinian identity, Haaretz has reported.

The director of the day care centre in Tel Aviv’s Holon suburb, run by the Na’amat women’s organisation, felt threatened by the parents and pressed the emergency panic button. The three Palestinian women from Jerusalem went home and said that they would not return to work again.

“It is a shame and a disgrace,” said the National Chair of Na’amat, Hagit Pe’er. “We will protect the right of all of our employees to work without regard to their background or religion. It is amazing that it is necessary to make this clear in the State of Israel in 2022.”

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Staff at the day care centre, explained Haaretz, condemned the conduct of the Jewish parents and said that they would strike today in protest against this “shame, disgrace and racism”.

The parents gathered and blocked the Palestinian caregivers from entering the care centre after a post on Holon’s municipal Facebook page which said that the mother of a child who attends the day care centre claimed that the new caregivers do not speak Hebrew. The post also claimed that the caregivers are neither accredited nor evaluated, and the families had not been informed that Arab women had been hired.

“Every day, we receive new employees and we do not inform the parents when a new employee starts and what her status is,” Pe’er pointed out. “This incident is racism par excellence. We will not accept such conduct by any means.”