Arab Zionism
By Ephraim Reiner
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the
same. Arab-Jewish relations can be seen as an illustration of this truism. Once upon a
time, Israeli Jews thought that the economic discrimination suffered by Israeli Arabs was
transforming them into a hostile minority community. If the Arabs were
"assimilated" into the Israeli economy, so this argument goes, as America's Jews
are integrated into the American economy, the media would not today be reporting events
such as those that led to the creation of the government commission of inquiry probing the
riots of Israel's Black October.
Nowadays, the economy has lost its supreme status and has been replaced by concepts such
as "culture" and "identity." What is important today is not the
standing of the individual Israeli Arab, but rather the collective standing of the entire
Palestinian community in Israel, as well, of course, as that community's economic
standing. However, there is considerable disagreement over the validity of the idea that
the rise of the Arab collective in Israel's economic hierarchy will free Israeli Jews from
the worry that they could be injured in a shower of rocks hurled from the shoulders of the
Wadi Ara Highway (or rather, the Nahal Iron Highway, as it is known in Hebrew).
"Workers of the world, unite!" was the rallying cry of the socialists of
a bygone era. What they meant was that the only really important
conflict in history has been the struggle between social classes, and
not between nations or ethnic groups. As the socialists saw this clash, it was an ongoing
confrontation between exploiter and exploited. Their belief, in a nutshell, was:
"Remove the exploitation of one social class by another from your lives and you will
thus create a single, united human society - a society whose members will earn their
livelihood by laboring on their own behalf, rather than by exploitation of the work
performed by others."
Incidentally, this belief was the condition for membership in the "old"
Histadrut general labor federation. Only workers were invited to join
its ranks. All the workers? No, the condition was that they had to be
Jewish, not Arab, workers. After all, the federation's official name was "The
Histadrut - The General Federation of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel."
What is being done today to Israeli Jews by Israeli Arabs, as the latter organize
themselves and try to advance their independent collective standing, is strongly
reminiscent of the strategy used by the Jewish minority community in British Mandatory
Palestine during the pre-state period. Then, as now, there were acts of violence, as, for
example, demonstrators championing the cause of "Jewish labor" clashed with
members of the Mandatory authorities' police force. True, Israeli Arabs have not learned
from the ideology of "constructive" Zionism how to create their own economy, or
how to set up their own independent school system or how to create their own health
maintenance organization.
However, from the political and cultural
standpoints, Israeli Arabs are
faithful to the concept of "auto-emancipation," the program advocated by one of
modern Zionism's first ideologists: Leo Pinsker.
Apparently, the old concept of "class war" has been superceded by the
"national question." In fact, there is no political force in Israel
capable of establishing an alliance between, on the one hand, Sephardi Jews living in
development towns and disadvantaged neighborhoods and, on the other hand, the Arab
proletariat in Israel. The New Histadrut labor federation has shed its nationalist goals
and is now trying to turn itself into a labor union without all the nationalist trappings.
Yet, how many Arabs have joined this New Histadrut recently?
Nonetheless, there is a world of difference between the might of a
national conflict fueled by economic discrimination and a national
conflict that is free of such discrimination. The recommendations that will eventually be
published by the Or Commission will not, it seems, include a chapter on the economic
discrimination suffered by Israeli Arabs. Yet the crusaders of neo-liberal economics, who
condemn every demand for social justice as populist, must surely realize how much the
Israeli economy would benefit from the effective economic integration of Israeli Arabs -
whether as individuals or as a collective. Israel would certainly profit from the
existence here of an Arab high-tech industry that turns its entrepreneurs into
millionaires.
It has been often said that the economic growth generated by the
activities of a high-tech industry increases productivity but also
promotes inequality. Even if this statement is true, it is in Israel's
best interests to have a situation in which the level of per-capita
production in its "Arab sector" equals that in its "Jewish sector,"
even if the level of inequality within the Israeli Arab community comes to equal that
among Israeli Jews. Such a situation would certainly reduce the inequality between Israeli
Jews and Israeli Arabs across the board. If the next finance minister and the
conservatively inclined senior officials of the finance ministry succeed in bringing about
such integration, they will surely go down in Israeli history as the architects of a
social revolution |
