A Zionist friend told me recently that polls show that most Palestinians living in Israel would prefer to live there than in neighboring societies; they like the freedom. He offered this as the smoking-gun of Israel's advancement. I asked my friend Anees, who lives in Jerusalem: "A Zionist friend says:
'Palestinian citizens of Israel would rather live there than in
neighboring Arab countries or Palestine. That shows Israel is a
model.' Is it true? What's the answer to this?"
Anees writes:
It's a specious remark your friend makes. Some and perhaps many
Israeli Arabs/Jerusalem residents (IA/JR) would agree to staying in
Israel. This group would predictably say the reasons why: they are not
ready to give up the health care and social services (reliant on heavy
taxation though they are) which living in Israel allows them and their
children, compared to most Arab countries. (I don't include education
in these "pro's" because the education IAJR receive in schools inside
Israel is terrible by any standard.) But if you give them a choice to
live (or to have lived) in certain places like Amman or UAE or Cairo
or Beirut, I think some in this group might think again.
In the first 20-or-so years of Israel's existence, most IA suffered
considerable injustices: many were not allowed to leave their towns
without permits. After these restrictions eased, they found themselves
still isolated and poor in their small communities. Many came here to
Arab East Jerusalem to find a better life, and they did, especially
the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who were lucky enough to
have something to offer and thus make a decent living. Could they have
done as well if they stayed in their undeveloped towns/villages? Not
likely. Could they have done well in Jewish Israeli communites? No,
because they are not an accepted minority and discriminated against in
jobs and housing.
I am a Jerusalem resident (JR) and growing up in East Jerusalem, there
were always one or two pupils from such "immigrant" IA families in my
classroom. They came to East Jerusalem from Nazareth, from Tarsheeha,
Acre, etc. So who stayed behind in those towns and villages? I am sure not everyone who stayed behind in IA communities is starving
right now. Some may be doing OK, but they are living a very demeaning
life, always reminded of their typically much-better-off Jewish
neighbours, and of their status as second-tier citizens.
And then you
have a really destitute group among the IA, especially in Um el-Fahm.
It's the so-called internal refugees (i.e. Palestinians who in '48
were disposessed and displaced but within Israel proper). They never
recieved compensation from Israel. Today they and their children are
basically Israel's cheap manual labor. Is that a life this group is
grateful for? Doubt it.
Finally there is us, East Jerusalem residents, under threat of Israel
taking away our right to live here (the blue ID card) if we live just
across the checkpoint oustside, or abroad, for longer than half a year
or so. (Remember Moustafa Barghouti's grievance on 60 Minutes?) The
Israeli project of ethnically-cleansing Arabs from Jerusalem by
various policies and laws is making JR stick to their ground here even
more solidly. There may be dual motives to their clinging (to retain
benefit of social services vs. to be a thorn in Zionist demography's
throat), but that just goes to show it's a complex world we live in,
where everyone negotiates his/her own principles and priorities.
Anyway, the argument your friend tries to make doesn't hold water even
if all IAJR choose to stay in Israel in a hypothetical offer. "That
shows Israel is a model"? Please. That's quite a leap. It may be an
advanced nation in a sea of backward ones, but to us Palestinians it's
a model of injustice and tyranny before all else. If we, ALL
Palestinians not just IAJR, had been treated by Israel with dignity
and equality, then.. well.. a great many things would be different,
wouldn't they?
Weiss: I realized I'd forgotten to ask Anees specifically about polls. I put that question.
I think the poll might well be right, that there are a majority who answer "yes we'd stay". They are being true to self-serving nature; they don't want to give up the security of Israel's welfare system.
Ask the same Yes Group, "Do you believe Israel is being fair to you?" and the picture starts to get murky with No's.
Because if Israel were being fair to them, they'd be doing WAY better than they are, living as they are as second-class citizens. And if Israel were not killing and oppressing their brethren in the West Bank and Gaza, they might even stop harboring resentment towards it.
Weiss comment: A great coalition of liberals, blacks, Christians, and Jews liberated my country, America, from southern Jim Crow in the 1960s. Today Hollywood makes glorious movies about this. Let us come together again to end the discrimination that our country supports in Israel/Palestine before Anees's children have to experience it too.
Meantime, Anees sent me another note:
I keep thinking: Some Israeli Arabs also might not want to leave Israel... simply because it's their homeland.
Funny, all your friend did was state that if offered the best places in the arab world to live, rather than Israel, some arabs would leave. So what?
This is really funny given how many American Jews do not themselves want to live in Israel. If Israel is so great, how come they aren't all running over there to settle? Doesn't the fact that so many Jews leave Israel (Olmert's kids come to mind) work against this argument too?
Zionism was originally about LIVING in Israel proper. If American Jews refuse to leave America, and if even the former Prime Minister's kids won't live there, then how can Zionism be said to be successful?
Again, the South African comparison clarifies many things. Many blacks realised that living in South Africa under Apartheid had some advantages, not just in economic terms, but even in relation to the rule of law, certain political freedoms, and so on, in comparison with Zambia, Malawi and so on, many of which were one-party kleptocracies and the like. Of course western colonialism has its organisational virtues derived from the societies from which it sprung. But its intense bigotry to justify white supremacy, or jewish supremacy, and any Afrikaaner making the argument that these Israel-defenders were making would be correctly and immediately identified as a irremediable bigot.
So Olmert's children have left. Millions of other children don't leave. You give one anecdotal example and then you extrapolate to millions of other people. I left the US to live in Israel and am glad. There are tens of thousands of American Jews in Israel today and the number coming is slowly but steadily increasing. There are 10 times as many Jews in Israel today then there were in 1948, so somebody is doing something right. Of course, Israel bashers like to find faults in Israel society to prove it is failing but that is an incomplete picture. Israel is pulling further and further ahead of the Arab countries socially, economically and politically.
Regarding the Israeli Arabs…they can prefer living in Israel and hate Israel at the same time. I saw a poll taken in Iraq during the height of the violence before the surge and it had something like 60% of Iraqis not wanting the American troops to leave at that point, but also 60% supported violent attacks on the American troops. Thus, there was an overlap of at least 20% who wanted to see the Americans stay and to kill them at the same time. Orwellian doublethink thrives in the Arab world. Similarly, many Iraqis feared and loathed Saddam Hussein yet were proud of him for /invading Kuwait, Iran and shooting missiles at Israel. Another example is Saudi Arabia quietly cooperating with Israel as part of an anti-Iranian-anti-HAMAS-anti-HIZBULLAH front, yet encouraging terrorist attacks against Israel at the same time.
Jews leaving Israel for… wait for it… wait for it… Russia!
http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/08/12/jews-leaving-israel-returning-to-russia.htm
And the numbers dip:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/828415.html
Jews vote with their feet, just like everyone else.
I believe it was a formal study done by the Jerusalem Post and an Israeli university a decade or so ago that showed that Israeli Arabs (though many preferred the description "Arab citizens of Israel") appreciated the advantages they had living in Israel, but acknowledged how in so many circumstances they felt like second class citizens. They also were aware of the bigotry, subtle and otherwise, their supposed countrymen often exhibited towards them. I posted this in the LA Jewish Journal forum years ago if anyone can find it.
I think that study is probably pretty much as valid today as it was then, such as the numbers from some more recent studies noted below.
—–
From: link to en.wikipedia.org
Public attitudes
There are significant tensions between Arab citizens and their Jewish counterparts. As with all such surveys, polls differ considerably in their findings regarding intercommunal relations.
On April 29, 2007 Haaretz reported that an Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) poll of 507 people showed that 75% of "Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, while 23% said they would oppose such a definition."[188]
A poll published in the Nazareth-based Arabic newspaper A-Sinara in 2007, reported that the majority (78%) of Arab citizens of Israel would prefer to remain under Israeli rule rather than move to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.[citation needed] Similarly, a 2008 poll on intercommunal relations by a Harvard Kennedy School associate found that 77% of Arab citizens of Israel would rather remain in their native land, as Israeli citizens, than in any other country in the world.[189] The poll also found that "Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities’ liking of the 'other.'"[190]
In contrast, a 2006 poll commissioned by the Arab advocacy group, The Center Against Racism, showed unexpectedly negative attitudes towards Arabs, based on questions asked to 500 Jewish residents of Israel representing all levels of Jewish society. The poll found that: 63% of Jews believe Arabs are a security threat; 68% of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab; 34% of Jews believe that Arab culture is inferior to Israeli culture. Additionally, support for segregation between Jewish and Arab citizens was found to be higher among Jews of Middle Eastern origin than those of European origin.[191] A more recent poll by the Center Against Racism (2008) found a worsening of Jewish citizens' perceptions of their Arab counterparts:
* 75% would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents.
* More than 60% wouldn't accept any Arab visitors at their homes.
* About 40% believed that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote.
* More than 50% agree that the State should encourage immigration of Arab citizens to other countries
* More than 59% think that the culture of Arabs is a primitive culture.
* When asked "What do you feel when you hear people speaking Arabic?" 31% said they feel hate and 50% said they feel fear, with only 19% stating positive or neutral feelings.[192]
A 2007 poll conducted by Sami Smooha, a sociologist at Haifa University, found that:
* 63.3% of Jewish citizens of Israel said they avoid entering Arab towns and cities
* 68.4% of Jewish citizens of Israel fear the possibility of widespread civil unrest among Arab citizens of Israel
* 49.7% of Arab citizens of Israel said Hezbollah's capture of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid was justified
* 18.7% of Arab citizens of Israel thought Israel was justified in going to war following the kidnapping
* 48.2% of Arab citizens of Israel said they believed that Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel during that war were justified
* 89.1% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed the IDF's bombing of Lebanon as a war crime
* 44% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed Hezbollah's bombing of Israel as a war crime
* 62% of Arab citizens of Israel worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state
* 60% of Arab citizens of Israel said they are concerned about a possible mass expulsion
* 76% of Arab citizens of Israel described Zionism as racist
* 67.5% of Arab citizens of Israel said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
* 28% of Arab citizens of Israel deny the Holocaust; among high school and college graduates the figure was 33%[193]
A range of politicians,[194][195] rabbis,[196] journalists[197] and historians[198] commonly refer to the 20-25% minority of Arabs in Israel as being a "fifth column" inside the state of Israel.[199][200][201]
Of course the numbers are dipping… Who but a fanatic zionist wants to go and live in a potentially doomed country? Doomed by sleepwalking into de jure Apartheid. Even the most fervent and prominent American Jewish Zionists don't move there (must be all that terrifying anti-Semitism in the US that holds them back!) No, prominent American Jewish neocon zionists are needed in Holy Land II. But British Jews don't seem too keen anymore either. Perhaps they can fast track a few more Peruvians?
Diaspora Jews worldwide are increasingly divesting from Israel. That leaves a few religious nutjobs and a few committed Zionists as potential new Aliyas.
I can guarantee you that if black Americans in the 1950's were asked if they would prefer to live in the US versus living in Africa, the vast majority of them would have preferred the US. I'm also sure that their reasoning would have been similar to the reasoning of the current Palestinian citizens of Israel. Does this negate or diminish the bigotry of the times? Of course not. It's sad to realize that anyone living in the US today would think the way your Zionist friend does. If he'd made his statement about blacks in the US, I'm sure he'd realize that he was making a very bigoted statement.
Discrimination and oppression are universal problems with universal applicability. Why do Zionists think that somehow oppression by Jews is in some magical way different from or more noble than oppression of Jews? Oppression is never noble and bigotry is a human failing that is racially, religiously, and ethnically invariant.
Gert fails to realize that there is a greater chance of her being hit by a lightening bolt in Antartica tham Israel failing in her greatgrandchildren's lifetime. If someone is stupid enough to impregnate that darwinian reject.
Tree, the statement is not bigoted, it is a matter of fact. Just another eason to ignore you despite your occasional acorn.
'Weiss comment: A great coalition of liberals, blacks, Christians, and Jews liberated my country, America, from southern Jim Crow in the 1960s.'
If you had polled the black population of Sunflower County, Mississippi in 1963, very few would have expressed a desire to live anywhere else.
Those who wanted to ride the Illinois Central up to Chicago had already left.
Such a poll result would in no way be an endorsement of the political system which existed at the time. Emigration was not an option for most of these people, nor should it have been. Everyone, everywhere, is entitled to live free of individous discrimination.
'invidious' — i ain't illiterate, just a bad typist.
One of the hardest things to do for Zionists right now is to see the way that the situation with African Americans during segregation lines up with Israeli treatment of the Arabs still in Israel. American Jews have, for years, used American racism as a club to beat the WASP power establishment. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they sure don't like to be on the receiving end of the guilt trip, do they? This leads us to ask how sincere any leftist Jews were about ending racism – was it a deep part of their morality that applies to Jewish racism and chauvinism as well? Or is it only a posture to use opportunistically against the goyim – and to be discarded as soon as it is no longer useful?
Phil Weiss has demonstrated how sincere a leftist he really is. If others refuse to join him, then their phony egalitarianism will be exposed for what it truly is – a front for one particular and hypocritical ethnic agenda.
There's a common thread here between Jewish Iranians and Palestinian Israelis, although Jewish Iranians are likely much better off, and their standard of living is likely better than the average Iranian. People want to live in their home and fight for their rights there, unless death is likely, sometimes even when it is. That's because it's their home and their heritage and their culture. They can see their future. Heritages and cultures can't just be picked up and moved, unless you want to have another heritage and culture, or unless you have to. American Jews don't want to move to Israel because it's not their culture, even to become dominant in that culture (that is, unless they're fanatics). It's been much easier to support Israel and use it (and the Holocaust) to elevate the stature of Jews in America. Along with economic mobility, it's worked pretty well.
Of course no self respecting Palestinian living in Israel would accept being transferred to another country (either physically or through jurisdiction changes).
Think about it. If they accepted that then they would be accepting the permanency of Zionist rule over Palestine. As long as they are Israeli citizens their refusal to accept Zionist dominion has political meaning and they can work in Israel for change.
A second reason is even more compelling. Palestinian Arabs living outside the Green line are subject to aerial bombardment, targeted assassinations and bull dozer attacks. As yet the IAF is not bombing the Irsaeli-Arab towns.
I posit this to Annes: maybe another factor is how poorly the Palestinians fair in other Arab countries such as Syria and Lebanon where they are also treated as a fifth column (especially Lebanon).
Also: the comparison is very ugly. Israel is comparing itself to some very unfriendly nations; why not put the question to one which Israel wants to view itself (part of the West).
The average palestinian arab is not subject to targeted assasination, unless you are stating that the typical palestinian is a terrorist with blood on their hands.
Very interesting, because the 1949 ceasefire amendments brought those Jordanians into Israel as Israeli Arabs, particularly in the Wadi Ara/Little Triangle area. Add to that the roughly 100,000 returnees after the war and the 100,000 family reunification cases, and you have a population that has only INCREASED through border modifications. So the areas that are in discussion were Jordanian and were not actually conquered by Israel, rather they were given up to "straighten the line", unlike other land taken from Jordan deep within Israel, like Umm Rashrash, which was "Jewish" in the '47 partition but held by Jordan until '49, until the Jordanian garrison was peacefully outmaneuvered.
Israeli-Arabs in the Wadi Ara/Little Triangle area were thus peacefully transferred to a state they have no wish to leave, unlike West Bank Jews, who were violently transferred from Jordan and saddened to be giving up the Old City of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter but relieved at being removed from danger. Israeli-Arabs kept their homes and citizenship while the line moved to include them, whereas East Jerusalem's pietistic, quietist Jewish community were relieved of Mandate citizenship, freedom of movement, their schools, synagogues, and homes. And of course "except for Jews", any West Banker became Jordanian.
So Israel's more liberal dealings with Israeli-Arabs are likely to continue as such. After all, it is very unlikely to divest itself of peaceful citizens acquired by peace accords against their will. Except for the riots, uprisings and terror those peaceful citizens commit, which is a criminal and not a citizenship-law problem.
As a matter of fact,my 5 year old olive trees ,just outside nazareth are producing ,I swear,the best tasting,dipping olive oil in the world.Few years back I bought 5 acres,planted olive and fruit trees.as an investment,and a thorn,and iam leaving the USA to tend to my trees few years from now .And that health care comes handy too.Its my right.
It doesn't make any sense to say that "America" was liberated from something that was only happening in the South. It was people in the South who were. I don't think even the Viet Cong would have claimed they were liberating the North Vietnamese when Saigon fell.
Speaking of South Africa, does anybody here think it was a good thing that Rhodesia has become Zimbabwe? If any of you were around before that occurred, did you denounce Ian Smith and other Rhodies as bigots? Do you think a Palestinian state would do a better job than other post-colonialist regimes? My main concern is stopping my government (the U.S) from taking my tax dollars and sending them overseas, but I think the rest of you have more altruistic motivations so it's something you'll have to grapple with.
Among the most ambiguous and subjective terms in the english language is "fair". About the closest I can come to a meaning is "not as good as some party would like". Of course that is pretty much always the case and so merely saying that it isn't fair indicates little. We would be less vague if we pointed to a system recognized as unfair and then claimed that the lot of the Palestinians was even less fair. Some have done this with apartheid. I am reminded of how Ron Radosh made some imbecilic comments recently about Roger Cohen visiting Iran and pointing out that it wasn't nearly as unfree and hostile and it's made out to be. Radosh provided the helpful example of Cuba (which he alleged was not as bad as some other communist states, but still recognized by Cohen as an awful place today). To that I would add Putin's Russia and say that the mullahs' Iran is closer to modern Russia than Cuba, though of course less free than Russia.
I normally dislike the completely unaware of himself David Bernstein when he yammers on about Israel (stick to the law, professor), but I thought some of you might consider his post Israel and Palestinian Poverty relevant.
I can sum it all up in four little dictums:
1. Israel rocks!
2. Arabs suck! But sometimes that won't get it, so we go to:
3. You suck! Even that won't do it sometimes, so we go to:
4. The whole world sucks!
And now, my son, you know the whole of Hasbara
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-make-case-for-israel-and-win.html
You must be talking to your son the moron, or Phil. Not much difference.
Like all liberal pseudo-logic, this comparison is posited in a geopolitical vacuum, in which countries, like the 'free individuals' of liberal ideology, are all equal, and have interchangeable histories. It's like saying, on the level of class politics within some given nation, that all working class activists would rather have been born into wealthy families. It is trivial, trite, irrelevant, tendentious, misleading drivel,whether or not it is true in any individual case. It is also an excellent example of the extreme stupidity of liberal 'thought' (worse than mere naivety; in fact, disingenuity, if one wants to use this confusing word).
Does anyone think Mexicans or Central Americans come to the US because they love "Liberty" or think they are treated so fairly here?
People will flee (or avoid) impoverished homes if that means a better material existence for them and their families — even if they are treated as second-class residents in their new location. For African-Americans it was clearly better to become factory workers in Detroit or Chicago — though still facing racism and segregation — than remain share-croppers living under a terror regime in Mississippi.
Why should Palestinians want to be expelled to non-citizen limbo in the West Bank or Gaza, subject to violence and brutal dispossession, rather than fight for their rights where they live in Israel?
Is that so hard to understand?
Or why should well-integrated and comfortable US Jews in any large numbers want to move to a racist and theocratic Zionist regime? How would they respond to an attempt to compel them (against their will) to leave the US for their "true" national home in Israel?
The question should be "Why don't Palestinians want to live in a palestinian state where they will be treated as any typical arab would in any typical arab state?".
This specious sound bite is no different from saying that if Jews said they'd rather live in the USSR than in Nazi Germany, then the USSR couldn't be faulted for its actions towards Jews.