WORLD : U.S. Assails Israeli Arab ID Badges
WASHINGTON — The United States today criticized as offensive and undemocratic a system requiring Palestinians in a West Bank settlement to wear identification badges.
The State Department used strong language in response to reports that the Israeli settlement of Ariel has ordered Arab workers to wear white identification badges bearing the words “foreign worker” in Hebrew.
“We would find this practice offensive and in our view . . . incompatible with democratic values,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing. Critics have compared the tagging system to the Nazi order that required Jews to wear Star of David emblems.
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