Justified Discrimination or Just Racial Discrimination

In Israel Discrimination against Arabs citizens by the state of Israel is a well known policy; Arab schools receive lower budgets than their Jewish counterparts, and so do the Arabic municipalities. This leads to lower education levels in the Arabic sector, and poorer infrastructure in and around Arabic towns.

Yet the state and the majority of the Jewish public consider this a justified discrimination. What is there justification? The military service. Jewish citizens in Israel do between 2-3 years compulsive military service, starting at the age of 18, while Arab citizens don’t. The Jewish citizens thus have more duties, and thus deserve more benefits from the state. Sounds like a reasonable argument, yet when examined more closely, this argument does not hold water.

First not all factions of the Arabic population refrain from military service, namely the Druze youth must also do theri military service, and many Bedouin youth volunteer as well. So does the Druze and Bedouin receive benefits equivalent to those of the Jewish population. The answer is categorically NO.

Druze villages still receive lower budgets than neighboring Jewish town, and there is a growing resentment there for the establishment. The confrontations with police in the village of Pki’in, was a demonstration of the growing disgruntlement of the Druze citizens with the state. Many Druze who did their military service now feel disillusioned with the establishment. I met one such disillusioned Druze in a local barber shop, he told me had served in the army, where he had a training accident, in which he lost a few limbs and his eye sight. They say that when he was brought to the hospital in critical condition, he asked to hear ‘Hatakeva’, the Israeli national anthem, before he dies. But he servived and now he is full of hurt and disillusionment with the establishment; he told me that he learned that he will always be an Arab in their eyes. Military service also did not make the Druze villages immune to the policy of land confiscations; many Druze villages had land taken away from them and allocated to the development of the near by Jewish settlements.

A look at the Bedouin sector reveals an even grimmer reality; many Bedouins still live in unrecognized villages, villages which had existed for tens of year now, yet the establishment still refuses to give them official status, on the other hands Jewish settlements near by continue to be established by the state. The result is that this year only 500 Bedouin youth volunteered to the army, down from 2000 the years before. I guess they realized that the establishment has no intentions of keeping its part of the deal; i.e. to bring the level of infrastructure and education in the Bedouin sector to that of neighboring Jewish towns.

Secondly not all Jews serve in the army, namely some religion Jews refuse to the serve in the army and considers their prayers a sufficient contribution to the state. Does the state punish them for their choice? No at the contrary they are paid to sit all day in a Yeshiva (a religion school) and just pray all day. Other none religious Jews skip military service, because it’s against there believes, or because they just don’t want to do it. They usually employ tricks in order to be exempted by the army: They act as if they have mental issues, come up with a medical cause, or just join a ‘Yeshiva’ and pray. Neither do they suffer consequences for their choice.

The issue of school budgets raises another moral issue, is it fair to discriminate between children? Basically the establishment allocates less education money for an Arabic kid than for a Jewish kid. Is this fair? Certainly not. First the allocation is based on pure racial classification, i.e. if the kid goes to an Arabic school he will receive a poorer education, they don’t check if the kid’s father served in the army or not. Secondly basing these kids education benefits based on their parents actions is an abhorrent idea, how do you what these kids will contribute to the state once they grow up, they might still do a valuable service for state, yet the state starts to discriminate between them from birth, before giving them a chance to make a choice. Such discrimination creates a gap between the education levels between the Jewish and Arabic sectors, and later a gap in the income of the two sectors. It is worth noting thought that the supreme court of Israel, after long campaigning by human rights groups, has recently issued a resolution prohibiting the state of Israel from discriminating between children when it comes to education budgets, based on race or religion. Yet the discrimination still continues as the state of Israel declared it needs five years in order to implement this resolution.

The issue of military service maybe one of the causes of the divide between the Arabs and the Jews in the state of Israel, for the Jews the military is considered their sacred cow, more so than any other symbol in Israel, on the other hand the majority of Arabs see it an a whole different light, they see it as an occupation army. Yet I clearly showed that the argument that military service justifies the discrimination holds no water, in reality the discrimination is based on pure racial classifications.

So what should the state of Israel do: First, any benefits given by the state to its citizens should not be based on race or religion? If the state would like to provide a reward for those who do military service, especially ones who serve in combat units, and endanger there lives for the state, then be it, but these benefits should be provided on personal bases, not based on racial or religions classification, and by no means should they extend to benefits for the children, an example of such benefits could be free education, or even financial reward. Secondly provide ways for citizens to contribute to the state other than military service (and in this matter the Arab community should show more initiative). Those who do not wish to serve in the army for ideological reasons should be able to do a civil service instead, e.g. volunteer for service in community police, or as national park ranger, etc, etc.

Invisible Discrimination

Last week a colleage of mine pointed out to me a newspaper report, claiming changes to airport security in the Ben-Gorion airport in Israel. The article reported that from now on Arabs and Jews will receive security tags of the same color; before the tags came in three different colors: Green, Yellow and Red. This report had provoked a positive reaction from Arabs, including me, but our joy was premature, apparently the colors will be the same, but the length of the security checks will remain different; instead now they will use numbers on the tag for racial profiling.

A few years something similar with done with id cards. Identification cards used to contain a race (or ethnic group) entry, usually it either said Jewish or Arabic, but then they changed it, they did not completely remove the entry, instead they just used stars; the number of star specifying whether one is Jewish or Arabic.

The conclusion? They don't want to go away with racial profiling, just hide it and make it less obvious.

In an earlier posting I made a case against racial profiling of Israeli citizens at the Ben-Gorion airport. Last week I even had a discussion with a Jewish colleague over the matter. Two days ago an Arabic Muslim religious man from Kofor-Manda, a town adjacent to Shefa-Amr, grabbed a gun from a security guard, and try to shoot Jewish people in Jerusalem. My argument was based on statistical considerations, and one single incident should not effect my rational. Yet these kind of incidents will push back any effort to reduce racial profiling. The arguments may still be rational but they are likely to fall on deaf ears.

Two Contradictory Coexisitng Realities

An Arab trying to objectively make up his mind weather to praise or damn the state of Israel, would have a hard time reaching a verdict! Let me describe a typical flow of news and events over a short period, which an Arabic citizen gets exposed to:

• Monday you wake up and hear that the government has asked Avigdor Liberman to join the government, he is a fascist politician who his public agenda is to get rid of the Arabic minority of Israel. (They hate us and want us to leave)
• Tuesday the Knesset (The Israeli Parliament) passes a legislation to establish an Arabic Language Academy in Israel, the first in any non Arabic country. (They love us)
• Wednesday you fly out on vacation to Paris, along with a Jewish friend, at the airport you are subjected to a three hour security check, while he is subjected to none; he spends his time shopping in the duty free. On the way back your flight is with El-Al, you are subjected to another long security check, in the end you are not allowed on the flight, and have to wait another day in Paris for your next flight, eventually you go in the flight, but you are not allowed to take you laptop, and when you get home you find out that many of the items taken for a security check where never returned to you, and mysteriously got lost. (They don’t trust us, they think we are all terrorists, and they don’t want us to be on the same flights as them)
• Back home somebody contacts you brother in law, offering him a temp job as a security guard; a big event that will be attended by tens of thousands of religious Jews is taking place and they need security guards, eventually he and 45 other young Arab young men from your town go to secure the event. (They trust us)

It seems that there are two distinct realities that we Israeli Arabs live in, and it that these realities, though contradicting, manage to co-exist in parallel, each unaware of the other, and as an Arabic person you never really know which reality you are living in at a certain moment, is it the hostile one or is the friendly one? You can’t let your guard down thinking you live in the friendly reality, because at any moment you could be instantaneously transferred into the parallel hostile reality and the shock of the transition can be severe.

It might be easier to believe in the hostile reality because that way one does not get disappointed, I guess that’s many Arabic people make this choice. Others might try to illusion them selves that they live in the friendly reality; but they would have a tough task in their hand. Others might decide to fight the injustice; sometimes there is comfort in action. While others might play the avoidance game; just stay clear of situations where they are likely to be exposed to the hostile reality.

I don’t believe this precarious situation can last for ever; these two realities, adversaries, have to meet one day in battle, and one reality has to prevail over the other, I just hope it is the friendly reality.

Arabs in the airport

As an Arab in Israel, I got used to lengthy airport security checks, but my last visit to the Ben-Gorion airport was even more daunting than usual; this time a security guard stopped me at the entrance to the airport, where I went through a security questioning, right there on the entrance, while everybody else was let through; they only stopped me and one other guy who also looked Arabic. The questioning took around 20 minutes, in which I was asked questions about where I am going and the purpose of my trip, the same set of questions was repeating to me at least five more times, by five different people, at different stages of the security check. At some point I put my hand in my pocket and I was to in a threatening tone to take it out. Finally someone arrived to accompany me into the airport, and from that point at no moment I was allowed to wonder around alone in the airport. What followed were scrupulous checks of every item in my baggage and a body check, where I was asked to put my pants down, and as I already mentioned, an endless repetition of the same questions.

There is always this dilemma that I go through when I am in the airport, how do I respond to this annoying and sometimes humiliating treatment, do I make stand and risk not being allowed to board the plane, or do I just tolerate it, containing that anger seething under my skin. I did try to make a stand a few times in the past, but now I just tell myself that I have a vacation to enjoy or a business to attend to, and allowing this unpleasant experience to get to me, to ruin my mode, is not worth it; I just try to be calm and cooperate with the security checks, but sometimes that anger is too much, and I can't help myself scowl at those people, or throw some sarcastic remark.

It seems that the initial profiling they do is based on looks, anybody who looks Arabic gets the special treatment from the start, I have a friend who is half Arabic; Arabic father, Polish mother. Like his father he also found himself a Polish girlfriend, they live in Holland at the moment, but last year they dropped by for a visit, as neither of them looks typical Arabic (if there is such thing), and my friend had his Polish name used in his Israeli passport (he was born in Poland). They were put through the express lane, and they were about to be released, when they were asked a question over an item they had, they casually answered that they had bought it in Tamra; an Arabic town. The security personal found the answer strange, and he asked what where they doing in Tamra, and when they told that where they stayed their during the trip, the whole attitude to them completely changed, and people started scurrying around in panic as if they had just discovered a bomb, needles to say they were made to go through a lengthy security check.

It amuses me when people think they can recognize an Arab by looks or accent, I have seen many Arabs, who completely fooled me, neither their external appearance nor their accent gave any hint of their 'Arabness', only when they spoke to me in fluent Arabic did I realize the fact. This should come to no surprise to anyone, Arabs are a diverse ethnic group with diverse external appearances, you can find African looking Arabs, or blonds with blue eyes, and anything in between.

Flying back to Israel no more pleasant, I had my flight with El-Al; after being stuck in Bolivia for three weeks, because Bolivia airline company went bankrupt, I took what ever flight back to Israel I could get, without giving much though to what company I went back with. I arrived three hours before my flight, but that did not help me; I went through another scrupulous security check, by El-Al security personal this time, and I was very patient and understanding during the whole ordeal, alas that did not help me much; I was not allowed to go in the flight. I was told that I would be transferred to an air France flight instead, which would leave 12 hours later. That was when my patience ended, and after a combination of strong protestations and pleading, they agreed to let me go on an earlier El-Al flight, albeit without my laptop and some other items in my luggage, which would be sent separately in another flight, and no amount of arguing or pleading made them change their minds. I went on the following flight, and arrived 10 hours later than planned, and my laptop arrived the day after, but some other items that were taken out of my luggage did not arrive: My Nike tennis shoes, a bottle of wine I brought with me from Bolivia, my digital camera and some other electronic gadgets. At the moment El-Al does not know what happened to my missing items!

I don't take airport security checks lightly, I am a person who flies often, and that last thing I want to is for a plane exploding in mid air, or getting hijacked while I am on board, those thwarted bombing attempts in London a few month ago, send chilling waves through my body, I could have been on one of those planes; I flew before through London, and will probably fly again. In Israel We have security checks everywhere, at the entrance to central bus stations, malls, theaters, governmental institutions, no body complains about them, because everybody goes through the same security checks, and we all understand that they are necessary in light of the security situation we live in.

But someone decided that 1.4 million citizens of the state of Israel are considered potential terrorists the minute they set there foot in the airport, a decision I do not find justified; more than a million Arabic people live in Israel, and we share busses, beaches, restaurants and apartment buildings with our Jewish ‘cousins’, as we like to call them in Arabic (it comes from the Biblical story of Abraham having two sons, Jacob and Ishmael, the former being the father of the Jews and the later the father of the Arabs). Now the decision to consider Arabic citizens of Israel a security threat at airports, can be justified if it is made on the background of attacks by Israel Arabs on Israel Jews, but that background simply does not exist. If an Israeli Arab wanted to kill Jewish people, or hijack them, he would have plenty of opportunities to do it outside the airport, the fact they don’t do it, is just an indication that it is not on their minds. In fact, judging by recent events, it is the Arabic citizens of Israel who in are in need of protection from the Jewish citizens, not the other way around; the soldier who killed four Arabic people on a bus in Shafaa’mar, and the attack by a Jewish family on Church of Annunciation in Nazareth, are two incidents in which Jewish citizens of Israel attacked people of the Arabic community.

At work a Jewish colleague of mine told me that it was no longer fun to fly around Europe, because of the new strict airport security introduced lately, flying never was fun to me, and you think those security checks are not fun, it is nothing compared to the checks I go through here at Ben-Gorion, I thought to my self but did not say it. Another Jewish Israeli traveler who I met in Colombia complained to me that the new security checks in the US are very intrusive, but then told that she absolutely supports strip searching Arabs in the airport! I flew quite a lot around the globe: North America, South America, Europe and the Far East, but the irony is that only when I fly from and to my own country, that I am discriminated against; everywhere else in the world I am treated like a human being, here I am treated like a potential terrorist!

Until lately I never paid attention to what was written on the first page of my Israeli passport, waiting in the El-Al security room in Paris, with nothing to do, I examined my passport and noticed text on the first page (written both in Hebrew and English): "The Minister of Interior of the State of Israel hereby requests all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer of this passport to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him such assistance and protection as maybe necessary."; a message intended for other states, asking them to respect the citizens of Israel. Apparently the state of other does not feel obliged by its own words.

Arabs in Hi-Tech

Six month ago I returned to Israel after living abroad for six years, since then I have been searching for a job, I expected the situation to be difficult but it turned out to be desperate.

I am software engineer, I got my degree at the Technion institute with excellence, started working already at a student in 1995, then joined the same company as a full time employee, when I graduated in 1996, in 2000 I moved to the US where I worked in Silicon Valley for two years, then I relocated to the Netherlands where I spent three years. In total ten years experience in software development, five of them as a team leader, tens of software project, two major software products released under my supervision.

When I returned here in May, six month ago I decided not to waste much time looking for a job, I mainly used the Internet, I checked the leading job assignment web sites in Israel, TripleTec, Nana, ManPower, etc. I applied for tens of positions that I thought were a good match for my experience. I did not get even one reply, not to mention being invited to interview, not even one ! I started asking my self why, was it the general situation of Hi-Tech sector in Israel ? was my field of specialization too foreign for the type of software being developed in Israel ? Was my resume badly written ? Or was it because I am Arab ? After a few conversations with friends, I became convinced it had to do a lot with the later.

One friend who is also a software engineer, now works as a web master maintaining a web site, he has been looking to progressive his career, and has been relentlessly looking for a new job, a few months ago he was invited for interview at a leading web services company in Israel, after he passed a two hour technical interview, he was invited to a second interview, where he was asked about what he thought of working with Jewish people. Then he was asked to express his political views of the government of Israel, the actions of Israel in Gaza. He did not get the job!

A second friend, a technician working as an operator of chip testing machine, also eager to advance his career, posted his resume on web sites for over a year, he received zero approaches. He decided to make an experiment, he reposted his resume, but this time he changed his name to a Jewish name, and changed his address to Kiryat Ata, a Jewish town, two days later he received a phone call from a company interested in hiring him, I was sitting next to him when his mobile rang and somebody asked if "Yoel" was available (the Jewish name he chose).

Things were different when I was graduated, I used to get calls into my office by job assignment companies offering me jobs, so what changed since then? Well first those were the years of the Hi-Tech bubble, there was a shortage of engineers, after hiring the Jewish and the Russians, and everybody else, the companies were still short of man power, and hired the Arabs as well, now that the Hi-Tech bubble had burst, and there is less demand and a sufficient supply of engineers the companies can get choosy and a lot of them choose not hire Arabs, the Arabs are the last to be hired and the first to be fired, as one friend put it. The other thing that changed since 1997 is the political atmosphere, then there was a peace process, optimism regarding coexistence, things changed since the second Intifada in 2001, resentment between Arabs and Jews grew stronger.

A third friend a graduate of business management, had a job in Hi-Tech company, in his position he got to talk to people in the HR department, and one of them explained to him how things are done, there is person in HR who does the initial screening of resumes, they receive plenty of resumes these days, much more than they need to hire, so they do this quick initial screening, that person would go over the resumes and choose the most promising ones, an Arab name appears on the resume, and he just skip to the next one, the resume doesn't go past the initial screening, no body will even examine it's content. My friend the technician , tried once to recommend an Arab friend for a position in his company, when his company was looking for people, he was plainly told that though they intend to keep him, they don't want hire any more Arabs.

I asked a friend of my who was a lawyer about the legal aspect, he told me that in Israel there are laws against discrimination based on race, religion, gender , etc. . But in reality there is little one can do, he can't just go to court and file a suit against all Hi-Tech companies for discrimination against Arab people, he would have to pin the case on one company , and even then you would have to present two comparable cases, one of Jewish engineer who was hired, and one of an Arab engineer with superior credentials who was rejected, and even if he does manage to prove that he was discriminated against, what will happen ? The court will force the company to hire him ? will he be willing to work for a company that does not want to hire him, no functioning work relationship can result from that, who wants to work in a hostile enviroment anyway, and this is no America so he can forget about getting millions in punitive damages, what he might achieve is ruin his career, if his case reaches the papers, who would want to hire a "trouble maker".

In the end I did get a job offer, from the same company I have been working for the last ten years, in Israel, US and then the Netherlands, and now again in Israel. They have a development group here but it is small, and they already have a manager for the group, but they said they could use my services on a project, and offered me a freelance work, with rather lucrative pay, the only problem , is that when the project ends, I would have to go on a job hunt again, or , something I have been giving some thought lately, give up on my Engineering career all together.

A few years back one could argue that the Arabs in Israel, benefited from living inside Israel, especially because of the access to high quality education, but thing are turning around, and I feel that we are reaching a tipping point, where living in Israel is starting to hinder our progress.