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.