Arabs for hire

[Violet_Crumble]

By Gideon Levy

The Labor Party is on its way to victory. Its courageous, stubborn struggle to establish a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, against the brutal use of violence, against the occupation and for equality, is bearing fruit.

Israel's Arabs are no doubt impressed by the resolved, uncompromising struggle of the party that never renounced its principles for a cabinet seat, because tens of thousands of them are signing up as members.

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the former defense minister, who ordered the mass assassinations and the closure, is enrolling thousands of members. The popularity of Matan Vilnai, former OC Southern Command, who conducted the occupation in Gaza, is also on the rise among the Arabs. Shimon Peres, one of the fathers of the settlement project in the territories, and Amir Peretz, who did not lift a finger for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed Palestinian laborers, are leading the polls in the Arab community. Even Ehud Barak, during whose government 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead, has his Arabs.


<snip>

Who said there were no principles in politics? Israel's Arabs have proved that there is one principle that does not change in our political culture - Arabs can be bought, cheaply. The price has not risen since Yisrael Koenig, the Interior Ministry official in charge of the Northern District, bought Arab votes for the National Religious Party with licenses for hunting rifles, or since Shas bought Arab votes for building permits. The Arabs have displayed neither political maturity nor national awareness, solidarity with their Palestinian brethren or a struggle against the discrimination. Only petty wheeling and dealing, which characterizes the political conduct of those who join the Labor party.

These people are disgracing their nation and politics. It is no coincidence that about half of those who enrolled in Labor, and are also members of another party, are Arabs. Functionary Iyad Mansour, of Tira, a former Peres supporter, collected no less than 5,000 votes for Ben-Eliezer. "Fuad is the new hope of the Arab community, he is the one who can help us," he says. Fuad? The new hope?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/589358.html

[pelsar]

1. its their choice....

if they chose to vote for labor/likud/shas etc...they are responsable and nobody else. they are educated and experienced in israeli politics....and they have arab parties that are in the knesset to vote for if they chose

it seems that Gideon Levy doesnt agree with their choice hence he then does the next best thing: plays the "white european colonial" card which says that he knows better what is good for "natives" (israeli arabs).

These people are disgracing their nation and politics.

his attitude stinks...who is he to know whats best for the israeli arabs? him, who after his afternoon as a reporter, he returns to his middleclass israel?...or the israeli arabs who live as israeli arabs day after day?

his paternalistic attitude toward the minority arab citizens of israel somehow reminds me of S. Africa during apartheid, the Southern States in the US before the civil rights movement.....the attitude that "they dont/cant understand" but me, the great white person knows whats good for them, even if they dont.....its a racist attitude.

[bemildred]

2. Well, I agree, his attitude sucks, and he throws stereotypes around a lot.

And it's unlikely that how these people vote will affect the course
of events. I suspect he is annoyed because this looks bad, like
some Israelis get annoyed with Jews that "take the Palestinian's side";
the High School football game theory of politics: root for your side
no matter what.

Personally, as an aside, I think all the Palestinians should convert
to Judaism, thereby permanently resolving the problem and leading to
a era eternal peace.

[pelsar]

3. great idea....

jewish israeli arabs.....one more variation........I"ll pass it on.....

[bemildred]

4. Just make sure I get my royalties ... nt

[not systems]

6. I think someone beat you to it...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3017.htm

I am an Arab Jew

By Ella Habiba Shohatis

I am an Arab Jew. Or, more specifically, an Iraqi Israeli woman living, writing and teaching in the U.S. Most members of my family were born and raised in Baghdad, and now live in Iraq, Israel, the U.S., England, and Holland. When my grandmother first encountered Israeli society in the '50s, she was convinced that the people who looked, spoke and ate so differently--the European Jews--were actually European Christians. Jewishness for her generation was inextricably associated with Middle Easterness. My grandmother, who still lives in Israel and still communicates largely in Arabic, had to be taught to speak of "us" as Jews and "them" as Arabs. For Middle Easterners, the operating distinction had always been "Muslim," "Jew," and "Christian," not Arab versus Jew. The assumption was that "Arabness" referred to a common shared culture and language, albeit with religious differences.

Americans are often amazed to discover the existentially nauseating or charmingly exotic possibilities of such a syncretic identity. I recall a well-established colleague who despite my elaborate lessons on the history of Arab Jews, still had trouble understanding that I was not a tragic anomaly--for instance, the daughter of an Arab (Palestinian) and an Israeli (European Jew). Living in North America makes it even more difficult to communicate that we are Jews and yet entitled to our Middle Eastern difference. And that we are Arabs and yet entitled to our religious difference, like Arab Christians and Arab Muslims.

To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an ontological subversion.

...
Stripped of our history, we have been forced by our no-exit situation to repress our collective nostalgia, at least within the public sphere. The pervasive notion of "one people" reunited in their ancient homeland actively disauthorizes any affectionate memory of life before Israel. We have never been allowed to mourn a trauma that the images of Iraq's destruction only intensified and crystallized for some of us. Our cultural creativity in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic is hardly studied in Israeli schools, and it is becoming difficult to convince our children that we actually did exist there, and that some of us are still there in Iraq, Morocco, Yemen and Iran. Western media much prefer the spectacle of the triumphant progress of Western technology to the survival of the peoples and cultures of the Middle East. The case of Arab Jews is just one of many elisions. From the outside, there is little sense of our community, and even less sense of the diversity of our political perspectives. Oriental-Sephardic peace movements, from the Black Panthers of the '70s to the new Keshet (a "Rainbow" coalition of Mizrahi groups in Israel) not only call for a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians, but also for the cultural, political, and economic integration of Israel/Palestine into the Middle East. And thus an end to the binarisms of war, an end to a simplistic charting of Middle Eastern identities.

[bemildred]

7. Yeah, not new.

But I suggested they all do it, so I still want royalty checks.
And the Nobel.

"Think in other categories".

[pelsar]

8. strang contradictions.....

on one hand ella bitches that there is too much integration and not enough identitiy...

. it is becoming difficult to convince our children that we actually did exist there

and then in the end she concludes that the integration is essential to stop the "binarisms of war"

well she cant have it both ways...integration requires the weakenging of of the cultural identity and its customs and adaption of others that bind different peoples together...you cant have it both ways.

[not systems]

9. It seems what she want is her identity to be ...

acknowledged as legitimate, I don't know if that qualifies as "bitching".

Would it if she were a he?

The "binarisms of war" is the one that defines Arabs as the other
for Jews and Jews as the other for Arabs, she thinks that it is
a split that denies her identity. I think she is calling for an
end to this type of thinking.

She can have it what ever way she wants, it is her experience.

[mbig]

10. Yikes!

Gideon Levy and Informationclearinghouse?

LOL- why not just dissolve Israel?

[pelsar]

5. worse than racisim....

now heres the irony...israeli arabs, by voting for the party(s) that they believe is best for their own interests, have shown that they are not racists. They vote not for those of the same race, skin color or religion, they vote for the party that they believe is best for them in terms of finances and politics....and here we have this "progressive" gidon levy who is saying STOP! you should be voting as racists, vote for your own, vote for those of the same religion, the same background the same heritage! Dont vote for the party that you believe is best to advance your interests.

Maybe just maybe, these israeli arabs have looked around, at their palestenian brethren, at their syrian relatives, egyptian neighbors and at their own arab parties...and maybe they dont like what they see...maybe, just maybe this educated minority has decided to use their education in democracy and vote along true democratic lines as independants...the party that is best for them and not as racists as gidon levy would prefer them to be.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Is it racism only when it's applied to Arabs?

Do you also think it's racist when people do the same thing to Jews eg. the demand that someone must support the govt of Ariel Sharon because they're Jewish, and on finding out that just because someone's Jewish that doesn't mean they support the actions of the Israeli govt, suddenly launch into accusations of self-hating Jew etc? Me, I don't see any difference at all...

Violet....

[pelsar]

12. not at all.....

i dont see why all jews should support the govt of sharon, vote just for the various jewish parties if they dont supply the goods....thats what democracies are all about, not just the ability to vote/support those you want, but being educated to do so.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. Supporting the Israeli govt's actions towards the Palestinians...

Sorry about not being as clear as I could have been this morning. I was in a bit of a rush and garbled it a bit, I think. I was thinking more along the lines of those sad folk who on finding out people who oppose the occupation are Jewish, start flinging round accusations of self-hatred and worse. Even here in this forum, I've seen Chomsky and others labelled self-hating Jews for their opposition to the occupation. Isn't that sort of behaviour racist as well?

Violet...

[pelsar]

14. are they racists.....

i differentiate between a political ideology vs a generalization and stereotyping of a whole society.

....I do not find it bad or evil when a person turns his/her back on the way they were brought up when something "better comes along....examples being religious people who have decided that the ways of god just isnt for them (or visa versa)....kids taught one thing and later discovering that it was racists BS (blacks are subhuman).....or jews who may be considered "traitors" because they dont toe the israeli line

and I've never been comfortable with the screams "self hating jew"....but .I wouldnt call it racism as the accusation is more at an ideology and not the physcial or national characteristics or of a society...... calling a jew self hating, shows lack of tolerance but its not the blanket accusation of callng a race/nation/society-lesser human beings.

But more than that i think it 'weakens the evilness of racisim"...Racisim in my mind is very special form of evilness. It lets you declare that "those people" do not understand/cant understand, etc, but I do, for I am "smarter, have superior genes, etc.... the argument of the KKK, apartheid, etc.

if one goes and screams racism at every generalization thrown at different aspects of society it looses its meaning.

Racism is special, as it accuses a whole society being "less"... and that is the epitomy of evil if nots its base....