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Why Israel’s Beersheba buses dropped Arabic announcements

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointing a finger at Israeli Arabs for wildfires, it's no wonder that the city of Beersheba removed announcements in Arabic from its public buses.
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man looks out from a condensation-covered window of a bus in Jerusalem December 11, 2013. High winds and heavy rain showers poured across Israel on Wednesday with local media reporting by mid-morning 45 mm of rain in a central town near Tel Aviv, and snow had covered Mount Hermon near Israel's border with Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM - Tags: ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTX16DZI
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In the week that headlines in Israel blared “arson terrorism,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Arabs, Beersheba Mayor Ruvik Danilovich asked the Ministry of Transportation to stop the Arabic-language announcements on the city’s buses. Danilovich, a young and energetic mayor, appears to have given in to pressure from passengers in the capital of the south, who protested against the announcement of bus stops in Arabic, in addition to Hebrew. In response, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz of the Likud Party instructed the municipal bus company to immediately silence the public address system in Arabic.

Many of the passengers on Beersheba’s buses and trains are Bedouin residents of the city and its environs, and the public address system in Arabic is designed to serve them. “True, most of us speak Hebrew,” Haroun Abu Jama from the nearby Bedouin town of Lakiya told Al-Monitor. “But the minute we’re told that Arabic is not wanted here, we’re actually also being told that we’re also not wanted here."

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