“Israel has a serious racism problem that is quickly building to a crisis. Just consider these three facts:
— Since 2009, more than 43 churches, mosques, and monasteries have been torched or desecrated in Israel and the West Bank – without a single perpetrator indicted.
— According to a survey, 70.2% of Israelis believe the government isn’t doing enough to combat racism.
— Another survey of Israelis found that 35% of Jewish students and 27% of Arab students reported they have never interacted with peers from the other group”. (Part of a newsletter from the New Israel Fund, a Jewish American group campaigning for a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict).
The perception is growing that Israel is now an apartheid society, something the Israeli government has done little to dispel. Even the black Jews and those who originated in Arab countries and were forced to leave, even these people are subjected to discrimination from the ultra-orthodox. This threatens Israel’s ability to thrive as a shared society for all Israelis. And this is without the policy of seizing the land and homes of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Unfortunately, long before the conversion of the Jews, the Rapture or the Second Coming, there will possibly be no Israel to convert at this rate. In soccer terms Israeli government policy is an “own goal”. The trick is now to persuade Israelis to clamp down on the very racism that their forebears had to historically undergo. Getting along with others is an Epicurean maxim.
I know a catholic monk who, while he lived in a monastery in the centre of Jerusalem, was frequently spat at in the street by extremist religious Jews, while quietly minding his own business. It seems the police turn a blind eye to this disgusting practice. Tourists never see this side of Israel – tourism is too important.
I completely agree with you that Israel has a problem with racism. But then again, so does virtually every human society. In Russia and Ukraine, black footballers often have bananas thrown at them. Migrants are often treated horribly in Hungary and much of Eastern Europe. In London, supposedly the greatest multicultural city in the world, people live in just as segregated environments as Jerusalem: there are hardly any black residents in much of West London, and hardly any non-Bangladeshis in Whitechapel and much of the East. Most of New York- another supposed melting pot- is either less than 2% white or 2% black.
The point is, I welcome criticism of Israel in the same way as I welcome criticism of every other country, including my own. But many supporters of Israel, including myself, feel that Israel is targeted for uniquely and disproportionately harsh criticism from much of the socialist Left (I’m not including you in this category.) I feel that we don’t talk about the discrimination in other parts of the Middle East. What is happening to Iraq’s Christians and Kurds is far worse than what is happening to anyone in Israel. Many governments in Africa need to be held account for systematic discrimination against whites, especially in South Africa and Zimbabwe. We also don’t talk enough about racial divisions in Brazil, which are far worse than even the United States. But at the end of the day, I think the majority of people in Israel, regardless of their religion, want to live in a society free of discrimination. I could not say that definitively of the Palestinians, Jordanians, Iraqis or any other society in the Middle East
The “what about other places” perspective offers one angle of vision but a culpably incomplete one, in my view. Several problems follow from structuring a discussion within such a framework. Criticisms of Israel look “uniquely and disproportionately harsh” precisely because they are inextricably linked with the “uniquely and disproportionately” gargantuan sums of money that American taxpayers send to subsidize Israeli military and economic policies. We are implicated in the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians infinitely more than we are involved in the other places named. The Congressional Research Service figures clearly corroborate this. U.S. aid payments to Israel utterly dwarf U.S. aid to anywhere else on the globe. The numbers are laid out unambiguously in the Congressional Research Service, PDF linked below.
?From the Congressional Research Service: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
“?Over the last 20 years, the U.S. has been slowly phasing out economic aid to Israel and gradually replacing it with increased military aid. In 2007, the Bush Administration and the Israeli government agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package FY 2009 to FY 2018. In 2012, the U.S. began giving Israel $3.1 billion a year (or an average of $8.5 million a day) and promised to provide that amount every year through FY 2018. During a March 2013 visit to Israel, President Obama promised to continue to provide multi-year commitments of military aid to the Israeli government (subject to the approval of Congress).? . . . Put another way, American taxpayers give Israel $10.2 million per day (in 2015).?
The United States also gives hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Palestinians, including Hamas. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf Does that mean that we are responsible for Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians? I would suggest not, just because we give aid to a country, doesn’t necessarily mean we support everything they do.
What I meant to convey, Owen, although, unfortunately, not as clearly as I thought, was not “our money and the moral culpability” whether for Israeli or Palestinian or American policies. My aim was to show that our $8.5 million a day is spent on MILITARY weapons systems to an occupying power. Palestinian aid, the relatively meager amount that it is, does not go for military weaponry, as far as I know.
For me, the criteria for reaching policy judgments are the reasons given for killing other human beings and to what justifiable end? I attended this conference yesterday which will, I think, show you how vibrant the foreign policy debate in the U.S. can be with a little courage.
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/18/neocon-bashers-headline-koch-event-as-political-realignment-on-foreign-policy-continues/
Thanks for the article, I’ll take a look.
According to a Congressional report American aid to Palestinians was cut last year from $370 m to $290m and is subject to a ” host of vetting and oversight requirements and legislative restrictions”. I think you will agree that this represents a disparity of treatment.
Aside from this, I entirely agree that discrimination is dreadful elsewhere, in the Middle East and Africa, but I think the point is that the US is not giving such vast sums to other regimes in the world. Saudis are paying for their US armaments, for instance. Israel gets by far the largest amount of aid, and it is now military. America has vast debts and a huge deficits, and American voters are now asking, “Why are we spending all this borrowed money when we can’t mend our roads or staff our tax collecting agency” (just two of a host of problems). What are the nations true interests? The whole setup is causing resentment and it ought to be acknowledged.