Activist Adam Horowitz visited Israel/Palestine last month. He reports:
One of the most interesting conversations I had on my recent trip was with Ali Haider, co-director with the Palestinian/Jewish organization Sikkuy in Haifa. He was very interested in talking about Obama (this was a few weeks before the election) and said he drew many lessons from American history for Palestinian citizens of Israel. He talked about the Or Commission which was a governmental commission set up after the beginning of the second Intifada when 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by the police during a demonstration. Among other things, the commission found that:
primarily neglectful and discriminatory. The establishment did not show
sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not
take enough action in order to allocate state resources in an equal
manner. The state did not do enough or try hard enough to create
equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot discriminatory or unjust
phenomenon."
Haider
explained that this was an important moment in Israeli history: an
official acknowledgement of the "separate and unequal" nature of Israeli
society. He said it was Israel's Emancipation Proclamation, and pointed out that in the US there was over 100 years between Lincoln's proclamation and the Voting Rights Act
in 1965. That's where Palestinians inside Israel are now, and
how far they have to go; and yet he was inspired by the example and by
the fact that Obama could now be running for President.
