About Us Israelis - Apartheid Nation

I sometimes wish words could be taxed. Maybe then people would think twice before using them so viciously and light-headedly. Unfortunately, in a world where anyone can say or write anything, anywhere, without being held accountable, words become a dangerous tool.

Calling Israel an "Apartheid Nation", and by that labeling us Israelis as bigots and racists, is a cheap shot. The ones calling us that are the same people who are conducting a de-facto apartheid policy on the basis of political views, gender, race and religion, in their own, respective, Middle-Eastern countries. When you repeat such vicious and unfounded accusation too many times, people start believing it.

In recent years, the Muslim student association in and around US campuses hold an annual "Israel Apartheid Week". It is aimed at portraying Israel as an Apartheid nation, a mass murderer of innocent civilians, a ruthless occupier of the Palestinian People and a country which does not have a right to exist. Those groups are funded and motivated by the extremist Muslim Brothers. They are allowed to hold their protest in the name of the freedoms they are deprived of in their respective countries of origin (watch the Horowitz Freedom center presentation on the matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_vGjv29QdA&feature=player_embedded). 

South African Apartheid (1948 – 1994) was based on a political and judicial systems promoting legally sanctioned racial segregation. The regime sponsored the political, economical and social interests of the minority whites who ruled over the colored majority in the country by means of discriminatory laws. Those were enforced by repressive violent methods.

Colored people in apartheid South Africa were deprived of citizenship status and basic human rights. The government segregated the basic rights for education, medical care, transportation, social services etc., providing inferior services, if at all, to the colored majority. What was known as "Petty Apartheid" – acts of legislation and governmental decisions designed to insure the survival of the regime – prohibited mixed marriages between colored and white people, prohibited inter-race intercourse, deprived colored people from running their own businesses in professions reserved only for whites, and limited their economic activity to "colored-only" territories, set up by the regime in order to physically separate the whites from the colored. It also prohibited colored workers from forming their own trade unions, segregated public transportation and public health and public ambulance services, deprived colored people from having passports, etc.

No colored people in Apartheid South Africa could run for office or serve in the country's parliament or work for the government or practice law (let alone reside as a judge in one of the country's judicial instances), or work as a physician at a white-only hospital or teach white children, represent the country in international sports events, and again the list goes on. In Israel, all of that is legally open to all people.

Israel is not an Apartheid nation! It never was and it never will be!

Israelis are not racists! They never were and they never will be!

In Israel, all people are legally equal, regardless of race, religious persuasion, political affiliation, gender, color of skin, place of origin, cultural traditions, socio-economic circumstances, etc. People living in Israel are free to conduct their lives as they wish, free to run for office, free to practice law, free to serve in the Knesset or work in the public sector. Everyone is free to buy their own land, free to build their own house, free to marry whomever they love, free to play for in the national sports teams, free to serve as judges in Israel's various judicial instances, free to run their own business – as long as they are law-abiding citizens who do not jeopardize the lives, the happiness and the freedoms of their fellow Israelis (watch the Maoz-Israel presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eupkfyd1ulc&NR=1).  

Israel is not a ruthless occupier! It never was and it never will be!

Israelis are not insensitive to the suffering of others! They never were and they never will be! 

Israel has been a very active player in the international aid scene for many years. It has a long tradition of extending humanitarian aid in many forms and shapes – alleviating hunger, battling disease, helping the poor and the needy and rushing to the aid of other human beings all around the world in times of natural disasters or in light of terrorist attacks.

The same goes for Israel's attitude toward the Palestinian people. Israel extends ongoing medical assistance to sick Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who wishes to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Israel supplies the Palestinians school materials, gas for domestic use, supplies, medicine, etc., on a regular basis. Despite never-ending attacks by Hamas, Israel maintains an ongoing humanitarian corridor for the transfer of perishable and staple food items to Gaza. The UN relief agencies and the Red Cross are free to use this conduit for the benefit of the Palestinian people.

Israel is a democratic country, extending rights and freedoms to all its citizens; so calling it an apartheid nation is mean and unjust. Israel does not occupy the Gaza Strip or the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, so accusing it of implementing an Apartheid policy in these territories is false and deceiving.

So, don't leave out this important information when coming to form an opinion about us Israelis.

About Us Israelis - The Region's Thugs

One thing us Israelis are very used to is being labeled, "the region's thugs". 

Whatever the reasons for the turmoil in our part of the world, we usually find ourselves on the defensive. We are always the aggressors, always the one's at fault – always the ones to be blamed.

The examples are many. The three examples which best elucidate this tendency are the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1982 Peace-for-Galilee Lebanon War, and the 1998 Cast-Lead operation in Gaza.

In 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt, after Egyptian President Nasser initiated a naval blockade by closing the Straits of Tiran into the Red Sea, kicked out UN peace-keeping troops from the Sinai Peninsula, moved his armed forces toward Israel and launched a violent rhetoric attack.

In 1982, Israel launched operation Peace for Galilee, in retaliation for the assassination attempt on the life of our ambassador to The UK, Shlomo Argov; afterwards, the PLO, which had by then occupied de-facto the southern part of Lebanon, sent terrorists from its border with Israel on a mission to kill innocent Israelis and followed this with a continuous missiles barrage against Israel's northern cities.

In 2008, after being hit by hundreds of missiles against southern Israeli towns, fired by Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with no prior provocation, Israel launched operation Cast Lead, in order to put an end to the ongoing assault on the lives of us Israeli civilians.

In all cases, we found ourselves defending our right to defend ourselves. In all cases, we found ourselves being blamed for the situation. In all cases, voices were heard, labeling us "the region's thugs".

Well, I think this time I'll use one of Bob Dylan's songs to make our case. Yes, Dylan is Jewish. Yes, he's a Zionist. And, yes, he is a great supporter of the State of Israel. He is also one of the greatest song-writers of all times, who has often written about immoral behavior and human injustice, regardless of race, color, nationality or religion. In 1983, fed up with the way Israel was being covered by the international media, Dylan released the epic song, "The Neighborhood Bully". I think it would be best if I let the song speak for itself. 

Bob Dylan

It goes like this:  

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully's been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?

Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

For a song written three decades ago, it sure sounds contemporary, doesn't it?

Now, please consider this when forming your opinion about us Israelis. 

About Us Israelis - The Unifying Element of Judaism

In a previous blog entry titled The Burden of History, I tried to explain how Israelis of the Jewish faith are born into complex circumstances, carrying on their shoulders from day one, not only the weight of their people's long history, but also that of their embattled homeland's. This complicated reality is also one of the most important and overwhelming elements in our identity. It glues us Israelis together, despite the so-many differences dividing us on other fronts – mainly on the political, cultural and religious ones. This glue is called Judaism.

I don't want to tire you with huge questions, like: what is Judaism? Who is a Jew? Or, what it means to be a Jew? I am not an expert on the matter, and it won't serve my blog's purpose to help you understand us Israelis any better. My intention is to try and explain in a short article how Judaism works to connect us Israelis together, no matter what the internal or external circumstances are.

Judaism for Jews all over the world, but especially for us Israelis, is not simply a word which describes a chosen religious path. Judaism has to do, first and foremost, with our identity. Being a Jew means being a member of a people, distinct from other peoples ethnically, religiously, culturally and historically. As such, distinctions amongst us Israelis of the Jewish faith, like the place of origin and its distinctive culture and traditions, have a lesser impact than they might have elsewhere. In this respect, Judaism allows us to share a common infrastructure of beliefs and values that we consider superior to anything else.

Judaism also symbolizes our common fate. This element in our Jewish identity is so powerful that it influences the way we catch and interpret national and international reality. Israel was created, among others, to safeguard our fate as a people – the Jewish people. Jews were mistreated and persecuted throughout history, not because of their political views or for being unfaithful to their respective homelands. They were mistreated for being Jewish. Remembering history and learning from it has left us with the firm conviction that being stateless and weak is something we cannot afford – if we wish to survive as a people.

The Western Wall - One of Judaism Holliest Places

(Photo Courtesy of Israel Ministry of Tourism)

In his monumental book, The Clash of Civilization, Samuel Huntington claims that a civilization, economically rich and strong as it might be, would still be in great danger if immigration into it would not meet two conditions, one of them being the assimilation and integration of the immigrants into the host society, without changing its identity or succumbing to its distinct cultural pressures for change (the second one is less relevant to our case, dealing with the utilization of the most skilled of immigrants for the benefit of the hosting civilization). He goes further to claim that a civilization cannot survive if, inside of it, other distinct civilizations struggle for dominance. 

How is this relevant to our case?

Judaism is the "super-glue" that keeps us Israelis of the Jewish faith together, giving us the capacity to sustain a country or a civilization – as Huntington might put it – despite being so culturally diverse. For the last two decades, Israeli governments have been encouraging cultural diversity and teaching inter-cultural tolerance. Israel is an immigrant society by definition, and we feel committed to absorb Jews from everywhere, anytime. The result is a very colorful and multi-facetted society, where Jews from Ethiopia, Russia, France, Morocco, Iran and the United States live together in the same apartment building, while their children attend the same classes in the neighborhood's school. I won't lie to you, it is not always silky smooth and we do have our share of problems, but we do our best to fix things as we move along.

Where in other societies, scholars, like Huntington, see societies with diverse cultural identities as a source of social disintegration and political instability; we see it as a beautiful characteristic of our society and are confident in our ability to sustain our unique civilization nonetheless. Our confidence derives from relying on something that has never failed us – our common super-infrastructure in the form and shape of our Jewish identity and values. In this respect, the Israeli experience is proving to be distinctive, defying Huntington's otherwise very sound historical conclusions.  

Thus, for us Israelis, Israel must be a Jewish state. It should remain the country that was created to serve as the safe haven for Jews all around the world if and when the serpent head of anti-Semitism rises again. This is also why most Israelis, for the past decade, have supported the concept of a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – despite the painful territorial cost in terms of the promised land of Israel it might involve. Most Israelis believe today that the One-State Solution, once a very popular idea amongst Israelis, left and right of the political wings, would result in the continuing clash for dominance of the two main civilizations sharing the land – the Jewish and the Arab.

Jews Praying In front of the Western Wall

(Photo Courtesy of Israel Ministry of Tourism)

In trying to understand us Israelis, one must take into account that we see ourselves first and foremost as Jews. Anybody out there who thinks he can get to second base with any of our future governments regarding a future political settlement without accepting the fact that Israel is and always will be a Jewish state, deems his efforts to complete failure.

So, keep this also in mind when forming your opinion about us Israelis.