An Israel Equal For All, Jewish Or Not

[Purveyor]

By Patricia Marks Greenfield September 26

Patricia Marks Greenfield is a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

An American colleague and I traveled to Israel at the end of June to continue research with an Israeli team composed of Jewish and Muslim researchers from Ben Gurion University in Beersheba. Our team studies how rapid social change has shifted values among Arabs in northern Israel, Bedouin Arabs in the Negev and Ethiopians Jews in southern Israel — Israeli citizens all. In the course of this work, we have been warmly welcomed into the homes of our Arab partners in northern Israel. We also saw the home of a newlywed Bedouin couple that had been destroyed by Israeli bulldozers because some Bedouin ancestral lands are not recognized by the Israeli government, and we learned about racial discrimination against Ethiopian Jews.

Given these experiences, it seems more important than ever to state two things clearly and forcefully: Israel is a full-fledged multiethnic, multireligious society, and it must provide equal legal and day-to-day treatment to all its citizens, no matter their ethnic or religious background. Unfortunately, this is not the case for those who are Arab or Ethio­pian or whose religion is Muslim or Christian.

In this respect, Israel is out of step with much of the world. Over time, nations have become more ethnically and religiously diverse; populations have become more urban and educated; and economies have become more commercial. In response to these social and economic changes, many nations have left behind the notion of a favored state religion.

It is time for Israel to do the same. It must be a fully secular state.

What was necessary for Israel after the Holocaust is no longer necessary and has even become counterproductive. As long as being Jewish holds such a preeminent place in Israel, then Muslim and Christian Arabs will always be second-class citizens, vulnerable to discrimination in housing, employment, education and other areas. Nor can Ethiopian citizens be truly equal so long as their Jewishness and religious heritage are called into question by powerful religious authorities.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-israel-equal-for-all-jewish-or-not/2014/09/26/83151758-3a05-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html

[marble falls]

1. Wonderful, just and unattainable goal.

[yurbud]

2. What's significant is that this appeared in the Washington Post

Which shows that this idea is getting some traction with DC establishment.

[Mosby]

3. Bizarre op-ed on Israel by Patricia Marks Greenfield in Friday’s Post

There are a lot of strange things about this op-ed, which tries to paper over the gap between a reasonable call for Israel to treat its minority citizens more fairly and a highly unreasonable call for Israel to integrate the populations of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Palestinian diaspora into one state that by some magic she doesn’t identify will still somehow not only remain culturally Jewish, but with the assent of what would likely be a strong majority Arab population.

To take one example of the oddity of this op-ed, the author argues that rising income and exposure to technology is leading to permanently lower birthrates among Arabs in Israel. A sentence later, she notes that the Jewish birthrate is rising as the Arab birthrate is falling. But wait, don’t Israeli Jews also have rising income and exposure to technology? It’s not often one sees simplistic cause and effect analysis self-rebutted a sentence later. (And by the way, why unlike among almost all other population groups in the world the Israeli Jewish birthrate is rising, including and especially among the non-religious population, is a fascinating question that deserves, but to my knowledge has not received, some serious research attention).

But the really bizarre line in Greenfield’s op-ed is this one: “Many Jewish Israelis subscribe to the unfortunate demographic myth that high birth rates among Arabs and Ethiopians mean that they will soon outnumber Jews of other national and racial origins.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/28/bizarre-op-ed-on-israel-by-patricia-marks-greenfield-in-fridays-post/

I think Greenfield is extraordinarily naive to think that that adding 11+ million Muslim Arabs to Israel is going to lead to a western style secular paradise in the middle east and furthermore it's beyond arrogant for her to lecture Israelis about why they won't destroy Israel to create a new country. I wonder what other countries she thinks should be joined? None of course, it's only little Israel that offends her sensibilities.