Ethnically and culturally, many of the Arab Israelis and the Palestinians are the same people. This is because they are closely related, to the point of often belonging to the same family, clan, tribe, or whatever.
In part because of those same family ties, those two groups, leaving out those Arab Israelis who are not of Palestinian background, consider themselves Palestinians, like Terr and his brother (I don’t know if he has a brother) who lives in Israel both consider themselves Israeli Jews.
It is idiotic to ignore that, but that’s what happens when someone considers the Arab Israelis and the Palestinians separate groups. They aren’t, yet. A couple more generations? Probably. But for now they apparently identify together, and the enemy of my brother (or cousin) is my enemy.
I don’t have a brother who lives in Israel. I have a brother here in the US though. I am a citizen of Israel. My brother isn’t. So I am an Israeli Jew. My brother isn’t. Hope that made it clearer for you.
You managed to put it all a hell of a lot more clearly than she ever did. Thank you.
I consider Israeli Palestinians and West Bank Palestinians and Gaza Palestinians all sufficiently different from each other to warrant the distinctive prefixes, pretty much the same way I would consider New York Irish different from Dublin Irish…or even Californians from Floridians or…what’s the word?..Arkansasers.
Stand With Us is an international education organization that ensures that Israel’s side of the story is told in communities, campuses, libraries, the media and churches through brochures, speakers, conferences, missions to Israel, and thousands of pages of Internet resources.
Stand With Us was founded in 2001 in response to the misinformation that surrounds the Middle East conflict, and the inappropriate often anti-Semitic language used about Israel and/or the Jewish people worldwide. StandWithUs has offices and chapters around the world and is dedicated to empowering Israel supporters with a wide variety of materials, resources and tools in order to be able to effectively combat the growing anti-Israel campaigns and speakers.
But the best part is reading some of the comments:
Wonderful to hear this woman speaks the praises of living in Israel as an Arab. I do believe takes people to get along and be able to live together and work together.* Only problem, I don’t know if I totally trust an Arab teaching my children. I don’t like that about myself. But in the back of my head, I can clearly hear the words “Never Again”. I don’t know if these people are terrorists plants put into these positions until needed.***
*Sorry to be a cynic. You don’t think if this woman was given a real opportunity to have Arab rule Israel that she would jump at the chance? It is after all what is ordered in her holy book the Koran. Muslims must rule and not be ruled.
She looks like she is making a hostage tape!
Oh please, give me a break, she can turn on us at any time*
Terr, you/we can do better than that. IMO it’s transparent and counterproductive. You’re only preaching to the choir, not changing minds or solving the problem.
There appears to be consistent support for a premise never actually stated. There are no laws permitting the denial of a Palestinians civil rights, many Israel-Arabs are quite happy with their lot in life, and so on.
The premise would appear to be something like the Palestinians have no legitimate grievances, they are not oppressed, and their equal participation in Israel is due entirely to their stubborn refusal to take the hand outstretched to them.
We get nuggets of evidence that would fit neatly…nay, precisely!..into that theme, but the theme itself is never baldly stated.
So, again, is it your premise that non-Jewish residents of Israel enjoy complete equality? And that all stories of oppression and prejudice against them are all a bunch of lies?
Living under different laws, with different daily concerns, and being forcibly kept apart, are not* cultural* differences.
You truly don’t get it, do you?
My emphasis. How you think they should identify with each other (or not) is irrelevant. How they feel about it is the reality.
Take the American Irish and the IRA as an example:
I am talking about the sympathy for the Irish Republican Army that persisted for decades in some Irish American communities and is only now fading away. Like British Muslim support for Muslim extremist terrorism, Irish American support for Irish terrorism came in many forms…
…There were also Irish Americans who, while claiming to be “aiding the families of political prisoners,” were in fact helping to arm IRA terrorists. Throughout the 1970s, until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked President Ronald Reagan to stop them, they were the IRA’s primary source of funding. And even after that they were widely tolerated.
The range of Americans who were unbothered by this sort of thing was surprisingly wide. Some were members of Congress, such as Republican Rep. Peter King of Long Island, who stayed with IRA supporters on visits to Northern Ireland and drank at a Belfast club called the Felons, whose members were all IRA ex-cons. Some were born in Ireland, such as Michael Flannery, Noraid’s founder, who once said that “the more British soldiers sent home from Ulster in coffins, the better,” and whose flattering obituary in 1995 described him as a man who “treated everyone he met with gentle respect.” Some were Americans of Irish descent, such as Tom McBride, a businessman who is still the chairman of the Hartford chapter of Noraid, and who still refuses to condemn IRA terrorism. “I think they are protecting a segment of the population that needs to be protected,” he told me over the phone.
They used to pass the hat around in the Irish bars here in NYC, and other diaspora Irish cities in the US.
American Irish and the IRA is not a good example - IRA never had as its purpose destruction of the United States.
How about American Germans and the Nazis. Do you think the US government (or US society, for that matter) during the war would have looked kindly at American Germans sympathizing with the Nazis? Passing the hat for the Nazis in German bars, maybe?
Palestinian society is, itself, multi-cultural. You have some secularized people, basically not religious, perhaps educated in science and law, who listen to western entertainment and read western news; next door to them are highly religious people, who observe the feasts and fasts, and who hold very strong opinions against secularism and the west.
They are not “the same culture” any more than you and I are.
Now, instead of just appealing to your own sense of truth, can you actually try to say what you believe? “You don’t get it” and “You’re proving my point” and the like are childish tautologies. Why do you reject the article I linked, which suggests meaningful cultural differences between the West Bank and Gaza? Do you reject meaningful cultural differences between California and Florida, or people of Irish descent in New York and in Dublin?
Just declaring victory – “I’m right because I’m right, and you don’t get it, do you?” – is childish. If you’ve got something to say, fuckin’ say it!
So, again, is it your premise that non-Jewish residents of Israel enjoy complete equality? And that all stories of oppression and prejudice against them are all a bunch of lies?
That wasn’t the purpose of my example. Trinopus seems to have a hard time understanding how ethnic groups maintain a shared identity even when they live in the diaspora. I was trying to illustrate how you cannot dictate someone else’s identity according to your own perspective. I just wonder why he has no problem understanding how Jews worldwide can maintain a shared identity, but can’t accept it for other groups. Anyway, not relevant to the situation in Israel, per se. And I think you do understand what Trinopus cannot.
But of course there were American Germans sympathetic to Germany at that time. I don’t know if they needed to pass the hat, since there were so many American businesses supporting the fascists, financially and otherwise. The only reason they weren’t put into detention like the Japanese was the logistics (there were too many of them). The Italians had the same problem, but avoided full detention because of Joe DiMaggio (true story!).
And no, I don’t think American Germans “shared identity” with Nazi Germans when US was at war with Germany. I also don’t think American Japanese “shared identity” with the Imperial Japan during the war either. At least I couldn’t find any supporting cites to that theory. Maybe you can direct me to some?
It’s too bad that too many of the Israeli Arabs “share identity” with Israel’s enemies, as we find out from time to time (see Azmi Bishara, Bassel Ghattas, and Hanin Zoabi). But definitely not all of them.
Yes, I need a cite for American Germans “sharing identity” with the Nazis after US entered that war. And, you know, not being persecuted for it if it was in any way known.
Please don’t conflate shared cultural identity with shared political views. American Irish did not share the political leanings of the IRA. That’s not what it’s about.
