Breaking an iron rule

[Classical_Liberal]

Breaking an iron rule

By Amira Hass



Every Jew, man or woman, citizen of any country in the world, has potentially more rights in Israel than any Arab native citizen in the state. The Jew will have more chances to find a job, respectable housing, financial aid for higher education, personal advancement. Every foreign Jew has, de facto, more rights in the West Bank and Gaza (depending on what the Likud referendum decides) than Palestinians.



It is doubtful these facts are clear to contemporary anti-Semites. And, even if so, there is no justification for a revival of the devilish prejudices against Jews as Jews, whether in desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, threats against Jews, beatings, or Der Sturmer-style cartoons; for regarding every Jew, as a Jew, to be representative of the Israeli occupation; and for condemning the Israeli occupation with expressions that prove it's not the injustices of the occupation that bother them but rather the fact that those committing the injustices call themselves Jews. That last fact, at least, apparently makes things easier for some members of Western Christian civilization, who want to relieve themselves of some of the burden of the memory of the German-European industry of murder that came from its midst.

Every Jew in the world, at any given moment, can move to Israel and win the full rights of a citizen of Tel Aviv or Haifa, and more than that if they choose to live in Ma'aleh Adumim, the Old City of Jerusalem or Hebron. But an Israeli citizen from Umm al-Fahm cannot move to Efrata, for example. If a man from Umm al-Fahm chooses to marry and live in Bethlehem, he could lose his Israeli civil rights. His spouse will not be allowed to live with him in Israel, and he will face difficulties registering his children as Israeli citizens.

A Palestinian from Hebron of the Deheisheh refugee camp cannot take the opposite route of a native of Ra'anana or Ramat Gan, and build a Palestinian neighborhood in the heart of a Jewish city on the coast. In fact, Arab citizens of Israel don't have the right to start such a new neighborhood, either. After all, some 80 percent of state lands - "national lands," a large portion of which were privately held by Palestinians in 1948 - are inaccessible to them, whether for leasing, farming or building........

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/417673.html