Winning a Debate with an Israel-Hater: How to Effectively Challenge Anti-Israel Extremists in Your Neighborhood by Harris Michael

Author:Harris, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by the author

Arab citizens of Israel have been represented in every Knesset since the founding of the state. There have been Arab justices on Israel’s Supreme Court, and Arab diplomats have represented the State of Israel abroad. The presiding judge at the rape trial of former Israeli President Moshe Katzav was George Karra, an Arab from Jaffa.

source: Wikimedia Commons

Ismail Khaldi, former Deputy Consul General for the State of Israel in San Francisco. A Muslim Arab. (He clearly didn’t get the memo about Israel being “apartheid.”)

Does Israel’s Arab population share equally in the economy? No. Neither do the ultra-Orthodox Jews. Both communities are marked by problems endemic to poorer families in every community in the world: larger families, less educational achievement, and yes, discrimination. There is indeed discrimination in the work force in Israel against ultra-Orthodox Jews.

News flash: racism against Arabs does exist in Israel-- just as racism against African-Americans and Hispanic- Americans exists in the United States, just as racism against Arabs exists in France, just as racism against Turks exists in Germany, just as racism against Jews exists, well, almost everywhere. And while media outlets feast on completely inexcusable acts of violence and intimidation aimed at Israel’s Arab citizens, there is a small country in which over 100 mosques were vandalized (many by arson) between 2005 and 2010. Yet one doesn’t see the Netherlands routinely charged with being a “racist state.”[17] But the comparison to apartheid-era South Africa-- in which the educational and employment opportunities for the black majority were limited by law, in which public facilities were segregated by law, and in which the majority was not given the right to vote for those who governed it—is not only ludicrous, it’s a malignant slander. While I doubt that 60% of black South Africans under apartheid had a positive view of their country, in a September 2017 poll 60% of Arab citizens expressed a positive view of Israel.[18] And a majority of them described themselves as “Israeli” rather than “Palestinian.”

The charge of “apartheid” is often coupled with the charge that Israel is a “settler-colonial” state, in the model of European colonies that were established across much of Africa and Asia in the 19th century—run for the economic benefit of the home office in London, Paris or Berlin and without rights of self- governance for the indigenous peoples. This overlooks the unique situation of the Jewish people who were returning to their own historic homeland, and leaving the lands of Europe behind due to persecution and violence, rather than carrying the flags of those nations. Although political Zionism did indeed result in a mostly European population of Jews during the pre-state years, Israel has subsequently become a multiethnic country in which people whose recent heritage is from the Middle East and Africa—including Arabs-- are the majority.

The attempt to label Israel as racist revives the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution that passed the United Nations General Assembly in 1975, marking the point at which that body finally lost the last

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