I hope you all looked at the video Adam posted last night, made by Israelis parodying the Palestinian-solidarity movement behind the flotilla. Watch the credits roll at the end, and you it looks like all the Arabs and Muslims in the parody are played by Jews.
In this sense it is like the popular but verboten radio show in the US before the civil rights movement: the Amos ‘n Andy show, in which the black roles were played by white people, for a while anyway. Black people hated this show. The NAACP tried to get it off the air. Wikipedia says it stopped right after the civil rights act, 1966.
I don’t think the producers of the flotilla parody had any choice but to hire Jews to play the non-Jews. Israel is a Jewish society. Part of the pleasure of visiting Israel for American Jews, famously, is we go over there and the bus drivers are Jewish, the peddlers are Jewish, the garbagemen are Jewish.
There are more Palestinians in Israeli society (20 percent) than there were blacks in American society during Amos ‘n Andy (15 percent), but the Palestinians are second-class citizens. They are not required to serve in the military, and very few do. Their political parties are NEVER invited into the governing coalitions, which is why the Jewish Labor party ends up making coalitions with the far right wing. They’re all Jewish! So 1/5 of the population is excluded from the government!
More Amos’n-Andy-ism:
Max Ajl posted this video (the second one down) from the Knesset meeting yesterday with translations of some of the things said to the Palestinian Member of Knesset Hanin Zuabi after she returned from the flotilla. One of the quotes:
"The blue and white flag is yours. You are in the Jewish state even if your bowels turn. The hatikva is your national anthem even if your heart twists/is aghast. And if you don’t like it – drink the sea of Gaza." -Arieh Eldad (National Union).
There were times in the U.S. when such vitriol was aimed at black people.
