What Does It Mean To Have A Jewish State
March 10, 2016 § 2 Comments
Pew on Tuesday released its study of religion in Israeli society and there are enough interesting findings and figures in it for me to mine a year’s worth of posts. The headlines have focused on one finding in particular though, which seems like a good place to start. Pew found that 48% of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel” while 46% disagreed. Looking at the poll’s crosstabs, this difference of opinion is reflected among most demographic groups with a few exceptions, and it has led people to understandably raise the question of what this means for Israel’s non-Jews and whether Israel has already chosen to prioritize Jewishness over democracy. It is a question that must be dealt with, and it goes to a larger question of what it means to have a Jewish state.
There is context to Pew’s findings on Israeli Jews’ attitudes toward Arabs. The interviews were conducted between October 2014 and May 2015, so while the current lone-wolf terrorism phenomenon is not responsible for the numbers on Arab expulsion or transfer, the polling did begin a couple of months after the most recent war in Gaza and concurrent with the start of vehicular attacks in Jerusalem and the particularly horrific massacre at a synagogue in Har Nof. The polling question itself is also more ambiguous in the original Hebrew used by Pew in the actual questioning than in the English translation and uses wording that is often interpreted by Israelis to refer to compensating Arabs to leave rather than expelling them (מישראל ערבים להעביר או לגרש צריך). The wording also leaves unclear whether this means all Arabs, or only Arabs that commit or support terrorist attacks. In addition, this comes against a backdrop of some Israeli Arab politicians openly cheering on Israel’s avowed enemies, which was demonstrated starkly this week when MKs from Hadash and Balad condemned the Gulf Cooperation Council’s decision to label Hizballah as a terror group on the laughable theory that Hizballah only seeks to defend Lebanon’s territorial integrity (that Israel is not occupying any part of Lebanon according to the United Nations doesn’t appear to matter).
Nevertheless, none of this really matters. It explains why Israeli Jews responded ithe way they did, but it does not and cannot justify it. The number of Israeli Jews that expressed support for expelling Arabs needs to prompt serious introspection. It is the ugly equivalent of Trumpism, no less worthy of condemnation and concern than the nativist throngs who cheer Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. or tell non-white protesters at his rallies to go back to where they came from. The ongoing terrorism against Israeli civilians and the 67% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who support knife attacks on Israelis are only going to harden Israeli Jews’ attitudes toward Arabs and make this situation even worse, but it is an impulse that must be resisted. Israel is a Jewish state rather than a state for only Jews, and Israel’s founders never envisioned it otherwise. Part of having a Jewish state is running that state in accordance with Jewish values, which involve treating the Arab minority in Israel with respect and absolute equality. Democracy demands no less.
Part of having a Jewish state is also focusing on the state’s raison d’être, which brings me to whether democracy also demands that Jews receive no preferential treatment in Israel at all. Shibley Telhami in the Washington Post noted that 79% of Israeli Jews agreed that Jews in Israel deserve preferential treatment, and added, “so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.” This may seem to make sense at first glance, but the analysis quickly breaks down. As Brent Sasley wrote for Matzav last week, Israel is an ethnic democracy and debating what it means to be Israeli is not a rejection of democracy but a quest to figure out the social and political boundaries of the state. Unless one believes the canard that Zionism is racism, the fact that Israel gives equal rights to all citizens but gives advantages to Jews when it comes to immigration – or that Israeli Jews would like to receive official preferential treatment in other areas – does not make Israel non-democratic, nor does it make Israel racist. It is a manifestation of why Israel exists, which is to right the wrong of millennia of persecution, discrimination, expulsions, and attempts at extermination around the world.
To understand why Israeli Jews believe they should receive preferential treatment, one only needs to look at the Pew numbers on anti-Semitism. 99% of Israeli Jews view anti-Semitism around the world as common, 64% view it as very common, and 76% say it is increasing. The first instance of religious persecution in recorded history was committed by the Seleucids against Jews, giving rise to the Hasmonean revolt and the Hanukkah story. Jews during the Middle Ages were expelled at various times from England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. History’s most devastating and unprecedented genocide was carried out against Jews. Israel was and is deemed necessary to guard against the historically inevitable, and to suggest that Jews should not be able to ensure that Israel remains majority Jewish or that Jews don’t deserve a little affirmative action is to be remarkably blind to Jews’ travails. Few fair-minded people deride the United States’ claim to providing full equal rights for all its citizens because of admissions and hiring preferences for minorities who were subject to past injustice or mistreatment. That Jews have their own state rather than being a minority elsewhere does not change the basic rationale that makes it acceptable to give Jews in Israel a boost the way that affirmative action is acceptable here. It is not racist to have a Jewish state, and it is not racist to worry about what happens if that state one day is no longer majority Jewish.
Nobody should downplay the survey results showing unacceptable levels of intolerance toward Arabs in Israel. Intolerance of minorities is indeed fundamentally antidemocratic, and those attitudes can never be allowed to manifest themselves in Israeli policy. But nobody should turn other numbers in the study into an indictment of Israel as an inherently racist or antidemocratic project. To do so is not only to ignore acceptable practice right here at home, but to ignore the long and terrible history of why Israel is necessary in the first place.
Israeli Rays of Light
August 28, 2012 § 1 Comment
Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians was dealt a big blow yesterday with the announcement that bitterlemons.org was shutting down after twelve years. For those who aren’t familiar with Bitter Lemons, it is a website that publishes Israeli and Palestinian views across the spectrum on the peace process and wider Middle East issues, and it was founded and run by Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib. In explaining why they are ending their website, Alpher and Khatib both emphasized that dialogue and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians are at their lowest ever point, and that not only is there no peace process at the moment but there is not even a prospect for one to emerge. More disturbingly, both asserted that this freeze at the top has filtered down to society. Khatib informed us that in the past, “despite the feeling among many in the Arab world that contact with Israelis is tantamount to accepting Israel’s occupation, seldom did authors decline an invitation. Lately, we have observed that this has changed, that even once-forthcoming Palestinians are less interested in sharing ideas with Israelis just across the way.” Alpher echoed this theme, writing, “Here and there, writers from the region who used to favor us with their ideas and articles are now begging off, undoubtedly deterred by the revolutionary rise of intolerant political forces in their countries or neighborhood.” When an outlet dedicated to advancing a wide and diverse array of ideas and perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feels like it has reached a dead end, it is a terrible sign of things to come.
While the Israeli-Palestinian front grows increasingly dire, there are a couple of encouraging reasons for optimism when it comes to the polarized environment that exists between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Following the attempted lynching of Jamal Julani, an Israeli Arab teenager, last week, eight suspects have been indicted for racially motivated aggravated assault and a ninth suspect has been indicted for inciting violence. The indictments and investigations are important but are also the ordinary course of the justice system at work, so this is neither uncommon nor unprecedented. What is, however, is that Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar ordered all Israeli junior high schools and high schools to dedicate a special lesson on the first day of school yesterday to the Julani beating and to discuss racism and violence in Israeli society. The treatment of Israeli Arabs is an uncomfortable topic in Israel, as they enjoy full citizenship rights but are routinely discriminated against, and the attack on Julani in the heart of Jerusalem exposed a dark undercurrent of racial violence that exists in some quarters. Ordering a national discussion in schools about the incident is a small step but an important step nonetheless, and it shows a heartening willingness on the part of the Israeli state and society for introspection. Certainly this will not heal all wounds or eliminate the problem of racism and violence toward Israeli Arabs, but it is a start toward building a more tolerant and aware Israeli polity.
In this vein, a friend directed me toward this remarkable interview with Forsan Hussein, an Israeli Arab who is currently the CEO of the Jerusalem YMCA. Hussein grew up in Sha’ab a small Arab village near Acco, managed to win a full scholarship to Brandeis (where he was two years ahead of me, although I didn’t know him), and later got a masters from SAIS and an MBA from Harvard. It is mind-boggling that he accomplished all this despite the fact that Sha’ab had no high school and Hussein spoke almost no English when he came to the U.S. to start college, but that is not what is most remarkable. What is most remarkable is that despite growing up in Israel as a clearly disadvantaged minority and in a community that feels very little connection to the state, Hussein spent his teenage summers establishing and running a peace camp for Jews and Arabs and then returned to Israel after working for an investment fund in the U.S. and is emphatic about the need for Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs to work together to improve their country. Despite his background and growing up with what he describes as a one-sided narrative, he is proud to be an Israeli and wants to improve Israel rather than tear it down. He ends the interview as follows: “My dream and vision is to work on the business side of peace — to be an ambassador for Israel in the Arab countries, and for the Arab countries in Israel. One day.” That someone like this exists provides me with hope that Israel is not as lost as its detractors claim, and that there are many more Forsan Husseins out there who embrace their country despite its faults and are able to overcome their understandable resentments in working toward building a stronger and more integrated Israel.
Cracks Appearing In All Sorts Of Coalitions
June 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
Apparently Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy of expanding his governing coalition in an effort to deal with the crisis precipitated by the Tal Law’s expiration didn’t solve the problem but only kicked it down the road. Following the news that the Plesner Committee, which was charged with coming up with a viable plan to rectify the military and national service exemptions for Haredim and Israeli Arabs, has decided to essentially give Israeli Arabs a free pass, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party quit the committee. The news that Haredim were going to be treated differently than Israeli Arabs obviously did not sit well with Shas and UTJ either, who were already upset that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima are insisting on severe penalties for draft dodgers that are squarely aimed at the Haredi sector. So in a nutshell, the two sides that were pulling on Netanyahu from opposite ends during the last coalition crisis are now both angry again, and this is all being driven by Kadima, Netanyahu’s new coalition partner that was supposed to give him room to maneuver and put an end to the constant worrying about the coalition breaking apart.
Netanyahu and Mofaz are meeting today in an effort to try and resolve the impasse after the prime minister made clear that he was not ok with the Plesner Committee plan (which is being pushed, if not outright dictated, by Mofaz), but this is just a reminder that Israeli coalitions are never fully stable no matter how large they are. This is not going to bring down the government, but if forced to choose between Mofaz and Kadima on the one hand and Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu on the other, Netanyahu is going to go with Mofaz, which will set off all sorts of problems with the settler community at the worst possible time for Bibi given that the Ulpana evacuation just went off shockingly smoothly.
Speaking of Ulpana, the events there this week revealed another important split, but this one has nothing to do with coalition politics. Instead, there seems to be a growing divide between the camp containing the majority of the settlement movement and the more extreme militant wing (often referred to by the shorthand “hilltop youth”), with some in the settler leadership waking up to the fact that violence turned outward almost always inevitably migrates inward as well. It began when Ze’ev Hever, who is in charge of the settlement movement’s building and construction, found his car tires slashed, prompting a set of mea culpas from him and from Yesha head Danny Dayan, who both admitted that they have stayed silent for years in the face of settler violence against Arabs. This acknowledgement and promise to begin cracking down on the violent extremists within their midst unfortunately came too late for the Defense Ministry subcontractors visiting Ulpana earlier this month in preparation for the evacuation who were pelted with rocks for their efforts to ensure that Ulpana’s residents would be moved out as painlessly and seamlessly as possible. Then if that weren’t enough, the Ulpana families – who were fully cooperative and left peacefully – had to spend their time skirmishing with hilltop youths who were trying to prevent those very families from evacuating by barring their way and then barricading themselves in one of the vacated apartments. If it wasn’t clear to the settler leadership that they have a serious problem within their midst while violent settler extremists were torching mosques and carrying out odious “price tag” attacks in the West Bank, it has become abundantly clear now. All of this is a useful reminder that, as Jeremy Pressman aptly put it yesterday, the term “settler” papers over the fact that settlers are not a monolithic group and the settlement movement is not a unified whole marching in lockstep. These divisions within Israeli politics and Israeli society bear close watching over the next few months as tensions that have been buried are now starting to bubble up to the surface.
