Soccer Dad

Unhappy 60th

The New York Times isn't likely to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary with unadulterated joy, so it features an article showing how Israeli Arabs feel, After 60 years, Arabs in Israel are outsiders:

As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.

On Thursday, which is Independence Day, thousands will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the “nakba,” or catastrophe, meaning Israel’s birth. For most Israelis, Jewish identity is central to the nation, the reason they are proud to live here, the link they feel with history. But Israeli Arabs, including the most successfully integrated ones, say a new identity must be found for the country’s long-term survival.

The question is to what degree is that outsider *status* enforced by the Israeli majority, and to what degree is it self-imposed.

While the reporter, Ethan Bronner writes about land issues, he also acknowledges

Antagonism runs both ways. Many Israeli Arabs express solidarity with their Palestinian brethren under occupation, while others praise Hezbollah, the anti-Israel group in Lebanon, and some Arabs in Parliament routinely accuse Israel of Nazism.

Still the focus on land is something that's bothersome. Barry Rubin in his recent debunking of an AP "celebration" of Israel's 60th wrote:

Yet most countries are founded on expropriation, often of Jewish property. For example, Oxford University, where recently debates were conducted calling for Israel's destruction, was started on property stolen from Jews expelled in 1290. Far more recently, many Arab states received a huge infusion of capital from the expropriation of Jewish property after Israel's creation. Does France's or Britain's or Belgium's independence day require discussion of colonial depredations? We don't read articles that Japan's independence day is blighted by Chinese or Korean suffering, though the Japanese did engage in mass murder of those people. What about the fact that every country in the Western Hemisphere is based on the suffering of the indigenous natives? Or even in the case of Russia, given Czarist and Soviet behavior? In no case, however, is far worse behavior said to have poisoned any other country's very existence.

A few months ago, David Hazony presented a survey showing that Israeli-Arabs are integrating into Israeli society at a higher rate than most would assume and that the Israeli-Arab members of Knesset are a lot more hostile to Zionist enterprise than those who elected them.

This is something that Bronner does address:

Arabs here reject that idea partly because they prefer the certainty of an imperfect Israeli democracy to whatever system may evolve in a shaky Palestinian state. That is part of the paradox of the Israeli Arabs. Their anger has grown, but so has their sense of belonging.

In fact, the anxious and recriminating talk on both sides may give a false impression of constant tension. There is a real level of Jewish-Arab coexistence in many places, and the government has recently committed itself to affirmative action for Arabs in education, infrastructure and government employment.

“We know that they need more land, that their children need a place to live,” said Raanan Dinur, director general of the prime minister’s office. “We are working on building a new Arab city in the north. Our main goal is to take what are today two economies and integrate them into one economy.”

It's a difficult issue that's handled reasonably well. Still why is this the article that defines Israel's 60th anniversary for the NY Times?

It also wasn't enough for critics of Israel. Mondoweiss writes:

The new historians suggest that Zionists did plenty of attacking on their own. This account is, plainly, one-sided.

Weiss is wrong in suggesting that Bronner is unfamiliar with the new historians. He wrote a positive review of the movement in the Times a few years ago.

Israel is a great success story, thriving in the face of adversity. In fact one of its great accomplishments was integrating the Jews who were forced from Arab lands. It's a shame that the media is seemingly incapable of accentuating the positive.