Racism Inside Israel - An Interview with Phyllis Bennis
By Max Elbaum
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE CURRENT PALESTINIAN UPRISING?
What's going on right now can be summed up in one word: occupation. Contrary to the U.S. media's portrayal, the
Israeli occupation of Palestine is at the root of what the media identify at most only as a disproportionate use of
violence by the Israelis on the West Bank and Gaza.
Not only has Israel taken over historic Palestine, but since 1967 it has illegally and brutally put the Palestinian West
Bank and Gaza under military rule. Certainly the Israeli troops' use of helicopter gunships, of machine guns mounted
on tanks, and so on is profoundly disproportionate when used against a Palestinian civilian population armed only with
stones and a few old Kalashnikov rifles.
But the real issue is the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, which is not only inherently violent but a violation
of international law and contrary to United Nations resolutions. Even if Israel used only proportionate violence,
it would still be absolutely illegal, because the occupation
of Palestinian land is illegal.
AND WHY IS THERE AN OCCUPATION?
From its origins in the 19th century, Zionism centered on the idea of creating a specifically Jewish state in which Jews
would be protected and privileged over non-Jews. Zionist occupation of Palestine was at first meager, amounting to
about 10 percent of the population by 1900. By 1947, Jews were still only about 30 percent of the population of Mandate
Palestine and owned only six percent of the land. However, by means of the 1947-48 war, Israel took over huge new expanses
of land and forcibly expelled about 750,000 Palestinians. This travesty was the basis for the official founding of the
Israeli state in 1948.
IN THIS LATEST INTIFADA, THERE HAVE BEEN NUMEROUS PROTESTS BY ARABS LIVING WITHIN THE PRE-1967 BORDERS OF ISRAEL. WHAT
ARE THEIR NUMBERS AND THEIR CONDITIONS LIKE?
Inside what is called the "Green Line"--the unofficial borders of Israel before the 1967 war--there are still about one
million Palestinians, just under 20 percent of the total Israeli population. Most Palestinians are Muslim, some are
Christian. A small number of non-Palestinian Arabs also live there.
From 1948 to 1966, the Palestinians within Israel lived under Explicit military rule. They were considered a military threat
to the Israeli state, and they were ruled under a completely different set of laws than the Jews. After 1966, military
rule was lifted, but it was replaced by a set of Jim Crow-like laws designed to discriminate against Arabs in Israel.
Israelis must carry a card, which identifies them as either a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian. All non-Jews are second-class
citizens, legally and practically. The Israeli Supreme Court has literally dismissed all cases which dealt with equal
rights for Arab citizens.
CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT HOW THIS DISCRIMINATION WORKS AND WHAT IT MEANS?
All Israeli citizens, including Palestinians, have the right to vote in elections for members of the Knesset (parliament)
and for the prime minister. However, under Israeli law, any political candidate who indicates "a denial of the existence
of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people" shall be disqualified--anyone who advocates for equal rights
for Arabs is thereby ineligible.
Other rights are legally defined as nationality rights and are reserved FOR JEWS ONLY. If you are a Jew, you have
exclusive use of land, privileged access to private and public employment, special educational loans, home mortgages,
preferences for admission to universities, and many other things. Many other special privileges are reserved for those
who have served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory for all Jews (male and female) but excludes Palestinians.
According to Adalah, by 1993 over 80 percent of the land within Israel that was once owned by Palestinians had been
confiscated. Today, 93 percent of Israel's land can only be used by those who are legally defined as Jewish. Moreover,
despite Israel's booming economy, Palestinian unemployment stands at about 40 percent; in 1996 twice as many Arab
citizens (28.3 percent) as Jewish citizens (14.4 percent) lived below the poverty line. Less than five percent of
government employees are Arab and only three of 641 managers of government companies are Arab. Eighty percent of all
student dropouts are Arab.
Unlike any other country in the world, Israel does not define itself as a state of its residents, or even a state of its
citizens, but as a state of all the Jews in the world. Jews from anywhere in the world can travel to Israel, declare
citizenship, and be granted all the privileges of being Jewish that are denied to Palestinians who have lived in the
area for hundreds of years. By contrast, there is no chance for a non-Jew to acquire Israeli citizenship, let alone be
granted equal rights.
...On the West Bank and Gaza, as well as inside the Green Line, police randomly fired live ammunition into crowds of unarmed
Arab demonstrators that were throwing stones. The racist double standard is everywhere. A mob of Israeli Jews even
attacked the house of an Arab member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara. But the police would not act against the rioters.
Unfortunately, the years of occupation have created, or have allowed to flourish, an incredibly racist vantage point
among the majority of Israeli Jews. The majority of Israeli Jews are willing to accept the killing of Palestinians and
collective punishment of the Palestinian population as
justified state policy.
YOU ARE PAINTING A PICTURE OF AN ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, WITH THE SUPPORT OF A SUBSTANTIAL PART OF ITS JEWISH POPULATION,
WHICH AIMS TOWARD PERMANENT SUBORDINATION OF PALESTINIAN ARABS WITHIN ITS BORDERS, ALONG WITH DOMINATION OVER
SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BE CALLED A PALESTINIAN STATE BUT WHAT WOULD REALLY AMOUNT TO A DEPENDENT BANTUSTAN. THIS IS
ESSENTIALLY THE SAME VISION THAT MOTIVATED APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA.
Yes. And there are even more complexities. Within Israel there are really four levels of citizenship; the first three being
various levels of Jewish participation in Israeli society, which are thoroughly racialized. At the top of the pyramid
are the Ashkenazi, the white European Jews. The huge contingent of recent Russian immigrants--now about 20 percent of Israeli
Jews--are being assimilated into this European-Ashkenazi sector, though they are retaining a very distinct cultural
identity.
The next level down, which is now probably the largest component of the Jewish population, is the Mizrachi or
Sephardic Jews, who are from the Arab countries. At the bottom of the Jewish pyramid are the Ethiopian Jews, who are black.
You can go into the poorest parts of Jewish West Jerusalem and find that they're predominantly Ethiopian.
This social and economic stratification took shape throughout the last 50 years as different groups of Jews from different
part of the world came, for very different reasons, to Israel. So while the divisions reflected national origins, they play
out in a profoundly racialized way.
The Yemeni Jews in particular faced extraordinary discrimination. They were more or less transported involuntarily
from Yemen to Israel. On arrival they were held in primitive camps, and many Yemeni babies were stolen from their mothers
and given for adoption to Ashkenazi families. In the early 1990s a high-profile campaign began to try to reunite some
of those shattered families.
Beneath all these layers of Jews come the Palestinian citizens. A legally defined and highly racialized hierarchy orchestrates
Israeli social life. The most significant difference is in the world's perception of this reality. For the overwhelming
majority of the world's population, South Africa was always considered a pariah state. But Israel is not in that position.
Israel is given a pass, if you will, on the question of racism. Because Jews were subject to the Nazi Holocaust there's a way
in which Israeli Jews are assumed to be either incapable of such terrible racialized policies, or that it's somehow
understandable.
But the new intifada has refocused attention on the nature and extent of Israeli racism. There are new reports from Amnesty
International looking at the Israeli treatment of its Palestinian citizens--minors, children, being arrested, beaten
and held for days. Israel treats Palestinians inside or outside the Green Line as being less human than Jews. This is rooted
in the very definition and basic laws of the Israeli state.
****************Copyright, ColorLines Magazine 2000*********************
Phyllis Bennis, a longtime analyst and activist around Middle East issues, is now head of the Middle East Project at the Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
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