A colleague of mine at Kol Hair , fled from Jerusalem on Friday, 8 October, taking with him his wife and the two months old baby daughter to seek a refuge at his parents’s home in the Israeli-Arab village of Tirah. The story is chilling enough, to remind any Israeli with some sense of history the events in the weimar Republic of Germany in, say, 1932. My colleague, a young Israeli-Arab man who writes a remarkably impressive Hebrew prose, made a name for himself in Israel for his personal column in Kol Hair, describing his wife’s pregnancy and the rather nervous expectation for the happy event, in a humerous and humane manner. His column became so popular, that it was serialised by numerous weekly magazines across the country. All this took place in the relatively sane atmosphere that had prevailed until Ariel Sharon carried out his old plot to set the Middle East ablaze. In the last edition of our weekly paper, my colleague described the events in the Arab environment that he knows so intimately, and harnessed his weekly TV review to attack “journalists”, who had turned up to be collaborators with the establishment. To be honest with MEI readers, his stuff was pungent, but almost polite compared to my own column, which was printed more or less next to his. But my friend is an Arab, educated in an elitist Hebrew school in Jerusalem, brave and a bit naive. Naive enough to have his real name in the telephone directory. The anti-Arab demonstrations in his immediate neighbourhood and even the Molotov cocktail hurled at his local mini-market did not seem to deter him, but then he got some threatening telphone calls, actually informing him that the callers intend to kill his little baby. The fear was acompanied by an acute sense of betrayal. The baby had been the darling of Jerusalem even before she was born, and the intimidation campaign symbolised the evaporation of our old life in my beloved native town.
Some friends have been trying to console me, to promise that the ugly manifestations of hate are nothing but a phase, but it is all talk, stemming from understandable, but futile, wishful thinking. We can handle the shaky political situation, the danger of war and even the blatant treachery of most of our dovish-Zionist friends. These things have occurred before, during real or false emergencies, and I can make out for you a list of at least 200 good peaceniks, which behaved like monsters during the first two weeks of June 1982, when the war criminal Ariel Sharon bombarded and invaded Lebanon. But this time we have the internal factor, the heroic uprising of the Arab citizens of Israel, and the racist backlush of the oppressors.
So far, the trigger-happy Israeli police, especially in Northern Israel killed 11 Israeli Arabs. Another victim. Jewish thugs killed a denizen of Nazareth, on 8 October, and the Upper-Nazareth Jewish hoodlums continue to mame and intimidate with impunity. This is by no means a coincident. The commander of the Galilee Police, Elik Ron, is a well-known racist and Arab-basher. He is also a personal friend and political supporter of Sharon. But the minister of internal-security, the “liberal” Shlomo Ben-Ami, consistently rejects the pleading of his numerous Arab backers, to fire Ron. The bitterness of the Israeli Arabs is more than understandable. Collectively, they are haunted by the memory of the naqba, the destruction of their community in 1948 and the deportation of two third of the nation from their native land. It is undeniable, that the so-called 1948 Arabs, have assumed a complicated identity over the years. Side-lined by the Israeli democracy (primarily for Jews), they still aquired a taste for it. This is an increasingly better-educated community, its youth are acutely aware of their systematic maltreatment by Israel’s successive governments, Labour and Likud alike, and the young generation of Arab members of the Israeli Knesset are not afllicted by the cowardly timidity of their predecessors.
They are discriminated against shamelessly, and treated as suspicious aliens in their own native counrty. Their local government is deliberately neglected and under-funded, they are prevented from building in their towns and villages, their share in the budgets for health and education purposes is meagre, their land has been systematically expropriated and their graduates can not find employment in the public sector, and are snubbed by most private employers, especially in lucrative jobs including the hi-tech industries.
Despite the daily abuse and the contrived hardships, the Israeli Arabs have always been the most responsible, peace-loving and prudent group in the region. Most of them, including the much-maligned MKs, supported the peace process, mourned the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and voted predominantly for candidates for the prime-ministership and lists for the Knessed, that were deemed favourable to the Oslo Accords. Hence the massive 96 percent of the Arab voted for Ehud Barak, despite his hawkish record and personal history of commando operations which yielded several Palestinian victims. Even the relatively radical MK Azmi Bishara refrained from standing as candidate against Barak in order to prevent a Likud victory in the 1999 general elections.
Barak won, and since that day ignored and snubbed his Arab loyal consistuency much to the chargin of his fellow party leaders. He refused to consult them in the Knesset, took them for granted in the most haughty and supercillious manner, and did absolutely nothing to improve the dire socio-economic reality of the Arabs. This is not only a typical Zionist calousness towards Arabs, but also sheer political stupidity and shortsightedness. The most arrogant PM in our history (some achievement, considering the fact that Barak is Bibi Netanyahu’s immediate successor) ignored the advice of experts and politicians who know the Israeli Arabs thoroghly. There is no doubt whatsoever, that the vehement
Demonstrations against Barak reflected terrible disappointment and disilusionment. The upsurgers sought retribution for being cheated, as well as justice for their brethern in the territories. Sharon, aided and abetted by Barak, insulted Islam, and many Israeli Arab have turned to religion out of their misery and despair.
The reaction of most Israeli Jews is not all that surprising. Fascists took to the streets chanting “death to the Arabs”, and right-wingers reminded their viewers that the had always maintained that there was no difference between the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians in the occupied territories, deliberately ignoring the fact that their own contribution to the blurring of the demarcation lines between the two communities has been crucial. But the mass defection of Israeli liberal was truly alarming. The self-righteousness, self-pity and the phoney “disappointments” are sickening. The Israeli Channel One TV station, hetherto the bastion on anti-Likud dovishness, led the way in denouncing the “rioting” Arabs. All the star pro-labour bleeding hearts, Amnon Abramovitz, Ehud Yaari, Dan Margalit, Nachum Barnea and Yoel Markus sounded like spokesmen of the political right The Israeli Arabs and their super-moderate representatives in the Knesset have never been so isolated.
But this body blow to the Israeli consistent left may prove a blessing in disguise in the near future. The sense of comlacency about the Israeli Arabs has disappeared. Many liberals are genuinely worried about the proto-fascist reaction in the streets, and begin to sense, that without the active participation of the Arabs in the Israeli political game alongside their Jewish natural allies, we are all doomed to an eternal nationalist-religious regime. Involving the Arab in the struggle for democracy and civil rights is a mutual interest of all the Israeli Arabs, and the objective goal of at least half of the Israeli Jews, including those who are unaware of it at present.
If the “pinkoes” will not rid themselves of the anti-Arab paranoia, and decide instead to cooperate with Sharon (and Meretz is now capable of sitting with him in Barak’s cabinet) this will be a shameful, but a passing phase, in their unglorious history. The Israeli Arabs have asserted themselves, and they play a similar role of that of the black middle-classes in the old South Africa. They will accept nothing short of freedom, legitimacy and equall rights, and will continue to show solidarity towards their brethern in the territories, The Jews must learn to live with the new reality, unless they wish to undermine the very existence of Israel and perhaps the survival of the entire region.
ירושלמי אדום 