There is a legendary story about the General Motors marketing department in the 1950s. They conducted a survey of ordinary car buyers, unveiling two designs, one simple and Fordy, and another loaded with style and chrome. Then the survey asked two shrewd questions: "Which do you like?" and "Which do you think your neighbors would like?" Most said they liked the simple design, but that their neighbors would like the opulent one. General Motors produced the opulent one. They sold a lot of cars.A few days ago, I mentioned in this blog a reported study on Israeli attitudes by the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership at Harvard, conducted by Prof. Todd Pittinsky. I just read the full report and you can here. The survey asks two shrewd questions, in effect, the flip of the GM study: "How many Jewish citizens do you think have positive attitudes about Arab citizens?" and, in effect, "What do you think of Arab citizens?" (The study also asked Arabs about Jews in the same way.) The results are telling: 64% of Jews said they had positive feelings about Arabs, but only 13% said they thought other Jews had positive feelings. The Arab side was essentially similar: 68% had positive feelings, but only 33% said that other Arabs had positive feelings.
How to interpret such findings? Some will jump to assume that, again, people are projecting what they really feel onto some majority of others. I think that would be a mistake. There is no public censure in Israel for expressing doubts about the Arab minority. Quite the contrary, to say that you like Arabs makes you somewhat nonconformist, even eccentric. It is a little like admitting that you like the chrome. At the same time, when you say that most Jews have negative fee
lings, you are stating what seems a public expectation, even imperative--like the need for the frugality of a Ford.So the survey is actually teaching us that most Israeli Jews actually like the real Arab citizens in their midst, but feel they have to deny this for reasons of state and out of respect for the stereotypes. It is much the same with Arabs with respect to Jews.
ALL OF THIS means that the opportunities for integration and coexistence in Israel are at hand and growing. What gets in the way are public, quasi-official ways of supporting clannish behaviors that reinforce conformist attitudes. The wars do not help. And I have published a great deal about the legal and institutional confusions of the state apparatus.
But sometimes officially sanctioned behavior is just plain obnoxious--and easily preventable. Take this program in Kiryat Gat schools to warn girls not to date Bedouin boys. The minister of education is philosophy professor, and Peace Now founder, Yuli Tamir. Where is she?
By the way, most of these Bedouin boys will serve in the Israeli army. And Kiryat Gat is not some weird little ghetto. It is a booming town of 50,000 where Intel is investing $4.5 billion to build among the largest and most sophisticated chip fabrication facilities in the world. Should the Intel board not say something as well?
Watch the film, if you can stomach it. The pudgy teacher--obviously a Shas "welfare official"--is telling the girls that the danger of an Arab boy is comparable to the danger of speeding cars in the street and strong currents at the beach. Dating an Arab would be a "deviant event," he says; the Arab boys are merely out "to exploit" them for sex. As if Jewish boys are not.
10 comments:
Dr Avishai is surely aware that Judaism opposes intermarriage. Jews didn't set up Israel in order to create a state where the Jews would assimilate themselves out of existence through intermarriage. Thus it should not surprise him that people should educate young Jews to avoid it. The implication in this article is that the Beduin are much more "liberal" and "progressive" since they seem to welcome intermarriage, and we Jews should learn from them to be "progressive" as well. However, these Beduin (and Islam in general) partially OPPOSES intermarriage as well. It does allow Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women ON CONDITION THAT THE CHILDREN ARE RAISED AS MUSLIMS, but it also prohibits Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men, and in Beduin society, to violate this rule brings on the harshest penalties ("family honor" killings). So we see we are not talking about a situation of "primitive Jews" vs. "progressive Beduin".
Dr Avishai did bring out one important point that I may say is a big understatement regarding the difficulties in Arab-Jewish relations: "the wars do not help".
Now statistics are turned upside down using auto marketing to justify this.
Nonsense.
Simple ploy if the stats are not to your ideology why just ignore them.
They hate us and whatever cockamamie
state you propose will not come to be .
The book is a disaster. Buy it for $1.00 soon.
Dr Avishai's comment that "most of these Beduin boys will serve in the IDF" is, of course, irrelevant. As I stated above, Judaism is opposed to intermarriage, regardless of the "nationality" of the non-Jew. An American Jew is discouraged from marrying an American non-Jew as well as a non-American non-Jew. In any event, the major thrust of Dr Avishai's philosophy which states that there is a secular "Israeli nationality" that the Israeli Arabs are presumably hankering to join is a myth. To most Israeli citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish, there is no real sense of "Israeli nationality" which binds them together. Most Israeli Jews feel a part of world Jewry and most Israeli Arabs feel they are part of the Arab/Muslim "umma" people and these ties are stronger than any Israel "national" identity, i.e. the Israel Jew feels closer to an American Jew than he does an Israeli Arab, and the Israeli Arab feels closer to the other Arabs than he does Israeli Jews. Yes, there is a small group (maybe 20%) of the Jewish population that does claim that they are Israelis and not Jews and that they believe that they are part of an Israeli "nationality", but as you can see, this is a small minority of the entire population.
Such an "Israeli nationality/Hebrew Republic" is historically artificial and may be considered no different than Western colonialism that drove the white settlers to Rhodesia and other such colonies. Whereas the Jewish people have deep roots in the country going back to long before the Arab/Muslim conquest of the 7th century, "Israeli nationalist" or a "Hebrew Republic" is a modern invention lacking all roots in the country. The Arabs of the Middle East do not have any memory of a secular "Hebrew" nation that they felt a part of in the past, it only appeared with the beginning of the Zionist movement. Such a "Hebrew Republic" is a threat to traditional Arab/Muslim values and so those who think that having Israel shed its "Jewish" values for "Israeli/Hebrew" ones will make Israel more palatable to the Arab/Muslim world are very wrong. Wheras Jews and Judaism are not a missionary people, the secular "Hebrew Republic" DOES have a missionary aspect, tempting the Arab/Muslims of the Middle East to abandon their religion and values and to adopt secular, Western commercial-materialist values. Thus, we see that the secular "Hebrew Republic" is a much bigger threat and challenge to the Arab/Muslim world than the already existing Jewish one and this would only exacerbate the tensions between the Jews and Arabs.
Just to be clear: a boy and a girl are individual human souls, not personified categories. The question is not what "Judaism" or "Islam" thinks. It is what he or she thinks, and whether the state should act to prevent a boy and a girl from enhancing, or complicating, their lives as they see fit. Perhaps we should all go see, and cry at, Romeo and Juliet, and then blog some more.
"...It is what he or she thinks, and whether the state should act to prevent a boy and a girl from enhancing, or complicating, their lives as they see fit."
This is why they invented Las Vegas. ;-)
What happens in Kiryat Gat, stays in Kiryat Gat.
Touche. :-)
The "state" makes all sorts of demands on its citizens and doesn't treat all its citizens equally. Israel demands that its Jewish citizens do military service, Arabs are exempted (although some do volunteer). Thus, they get a head start in careers and univesity education. The state also takes huge amounts of our money in taxes. The state financially coerces us to recycle our cans. The state bans the importation of whale meat for "environmental" purposes.
The state imposed a homosexual parade on Jerusalem even though the large majority of residents, Jewish, Muslim and Christian opposed it. Thus, it is not illogical for Jewish or Muslim religious authorities to use state facilities to preach against intermarriage, since "progressives" and others use it themselves to promote their agendas as well.
"...So the survey is actually teaching us that most Israeli Jews actually like the real Arab citizens in their midst, but feel they have to deny this for reasons of state and out of respect for the stereotypes. It is much the same with Arabs with respect to Jews."
Most native Israelis(as well as some olim)show a great interest and affinity for arab culture, food, customs, and even language, from such phrases as; "Yallah, Yallah" all the way to some quite excellent Arab expletives I learned while in the army, ;-). I still remember a time when going out to eat in Israel didn't mean a trip to McDonalds and a sack of drek burgers. It meant hopping into the peugeot and popping over to some amazing steakiata in Bethlehem for steak, pitot, salatim, and coffee afterwards served with all the respect and ceremony that such coffee deserves. During the relative peace of Oslo, I know that many Israelis were making such trips quite often. I have a friend who lives up on a moshav in the Emek Jezreel. He produces custom made farm and sorting machinery for the foreign and domestic markets. He frequently sub-contracts out work to the sheet metal shops in the local Arab villages. I asked him if they were cheaper than Israeli sheet metal guys. He said; Not really. I just like going over there.
I believe the source of this fascination and affinity is rooted in the ethos of the first and and second aliyot. The need to be an authentic tribe, authentic middle easterners if you will, the need to be; "of the place" instead of being seen (and seeing themselves) as foreign tresspassers, was quite powerful. Suddenly I'm reminded of that black and white sepia photograph of The Shomrim mounted on arabians, kahffiyot drapeing upon their shoulders.
In addition to what the "pirate" Shoded Yam stated, I think it should be MANDATORY for all Israelis to study the Arabic language, and I mean both literary Arabic as well as the local spoken Arabic (what little Arabic that has been taught in Israel is only the literary version which is of little use in trying to strike up a conversation). Israelis don't feel this is important, thinking that Israel is part of Europe and not the Middle East, which is ironic since the Europeans made it quite clear in the early 1940's that they don't want to have anything to do with Jews. I guess you could call this unrequited love.
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