A proposal for a new law has been submitted to the Israeli parliament which states that only Israeli citizens would be permitted to serve as tour guides in Israel (does “Israel” includes the occupied territories? That’s not clear from the law), when the tour involves non-Israeli citizens. In essence, this law would put hundreds of East Jerusalemite tour guides out of work. The sponsors of the law explained their motivation and I think it speaks for itself:
“….Israel is investing a great effort in order to improve it’s image as a modern, western, democratic and free country… it is therefore important to assure that in order to avoid a damage to this investment, only those that had gone through an appropriate training and got license would be allowed to serve as guide tours.”
Apparently, according to the parliament members who introduced the law, Israeli citizenship is a necessary part of the training a person should go through in order to be qualified for this position.
The explanation goes on:
“There are numerous touristic sites in Israel… often there is a dispute on the way they should be presented in terms of history, religious, culture and more. The city of Jerusalem is an example for a site on which such a dispute exists. Some people that are Israeli residents, such as the residents of East Jerusalem, have many times a “double loyalty”, due to the fact that they vote for the Palestinian Authority. Those residents present some times anti-Israelis views to tourist. In order to assure that those foreign tourists would be exposed to the Israeli national views, it is suggested that the organizations that arrange tours will make sure that those tours would be accompanied by a guide tour who is an Israeli citizen, that has loyalty to the state of Israel. The need to protect the national interest of presenting Israel in an appropriate way is more important than (protecting) other interests.”
Thus, it seems that presenting Israeli as a Western democracy is more important to the law’s initiators, than actually making it one. Moreover, nobody seems to care or even to notice the sharp irony. In fact it looks like Israelis want to eat the cake and still keep it full: occupy the West bank, banish the Palestinians from their land, continue building in the West Bank, expel Palestinians that are Israeli citizens, define Israel as a Jewish state, and demolish the freedom of speech; but still be perceived as acting out of self defense, still be called a democracy, still continue the “peace talks” with the Palestinians, and still be part of the Western world.
The current law proposal is only one example for this dangerous trend. Other examples are the law of the Nakba, the boycott law, and the citizenship law. The picture that emerges from this collection is that Israel is on a slippery slope to becoming a totalitarian nationalist country, with limited freedom of speech, and racist transfer laws.
Even more concerning is the silence of the majority of Israelis that learn about those laws in the morning news. Last Saturday there were 6,000 people in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, protesting against this new fascist trend. This is indeed an impressive number of protesters, but a negligible minority whose views are far left from the average. Just to demonstrate how far left they were, it is important to note that one of the tour guide law’s initiators was Illan Gilon – a member of the “leftist” Meretz party (although he later withdrew his endorsement). Apparently, this law does not seems extreme at all to the Israeli ear, even if the ear belongs to a left party.
Notably, here, as in the other proposed laws, the major concern seems to be the image of Israel in the world, and it’s potential exclusion from the “Western democracies”. An interesting question is, why this concern emerged suddenly? Few years ago, when Mordechai Vanunu was released from prison, after serving long 20 years due to exposing the nuclear secrets of Israel, he was ordered not to speak with the foreign press. Vaanunu, in return, decided to speak only in English. As a result, he was sent back to prison. Sending Vanunu back to prison was, of course, not in order to achieve any concrete purpose — the foreign press did not need Vanunu to speak in English in order to know what he said. Not to mention that Vanunu did not have any new information to reveal about Israel’s nuclear power. Sending Vanunu back to prison was a desperate act to protect the belief in the lies Israelis have been telling themselves for over 60 years – about being the just, weak “David” that only protects itself from evil “Goliaths”. Thus, it is an internal action of protecting the self-image, as much as it is an external action of protecting the image of Israel in the world. The new law, just as sending Vaanunu to prison, expresses the realization that it is getting harder and harder to keep believing in this lie – and therefore there is a growing need to enforce it.
Elinor Amit is a post doctoral student in the psychology department at Harvard University. She moved to the US from Israel in 2008.
