Following this summer’s Gaza conflict and increased tensions between Jews and Arabs, the issue of Israel’s treatment of its Arab minority has recently come to the fore. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin has recently made great efforts to confront what is undeniably a genuine problem for Israeli society.
Enter the New York Times‘ contribution to the debate – an op-ed by Rula Jebreal that deals with an important issue by pushing an extreme agenda. Jebreal is an Italian-Palestinian journalist, novelist, and screenwriter with both Israeli and Italian citizenship. She was a commentator for MSNBC where she admonished the network and other American news networks live on-air, accusing U.S. media of being biased towards Israel during the Gaza conflict.
Jebreal has already demonstrated that she has an axe to grind when it comes to Israel and she pursues it with zeal in the New York Times where she:
- Accuses Israel of deliberately implementing legislation designed to curtail the civil rights of its Arab minority.
- Attacks the Law of Return as being discriminatory against Arabs.
- Removes vital context from security legislation to paint Israeli laws as inherently racist.
- Portrays the IDF as being dominated by religious soldiers, which in turn leads to religiously inspired racism.
- Misrepresents the policies of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
According to Jebreal:
Israel is increasingly becoming a project of ethno-religious purity and exclusion.
She attacks Israel’s Law of Return and links to a database of “50 discriminatory laws” as maintained by the Adalah organization. NGO Monitor states that “contrary to Adalah’s ongoing attempts to portray Israel as anti-democratic and racist, including frequent events in the UN and other international platforms, many of the laws listed have nothing to do with Israeli Arabs nor could they be described as “discriminatory”.”
Regarding the Law of Return, Alexander Yakobson and Amnon Rubinstein point out that it
does not discriminate between citizens within the country. It does not make the citizenship of non-Jews in any way inferior. Rather it is directed entirely outward, to the Jews of the world. Therefore, implicit in the condemnation of the Law of Return is the assertion that Israel is forbidden to privilege Jews in its laws of immigration and citizenship.
They continue:
Once we recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people and as the realization of its right to self-determination, we cannot deny it the right to open its gates to members of that people. The Law of Return is a law of repatriation (returning to a national homeland). Its legitimacy derives from the existence of the Jewish people as a typical diaspora people and the existence of the State of Israel as the nation-state of that people. It is the right of a nation-state to grant preferential treatment in matters of immigration and acquisition of citizenship to members of its own ethnicity who are citizens of other countries.
Is Jebreal’s attack on the Law of Return, which is central to the Jewish identity of the Israeli state, evidence that she has a problem with the very legitimacy of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people?
Jebreal writes:
Palestinian Israeli citizens, meanwhile, are subject to a ban on family reunification: If they marry a fellow Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they are prohibited from living in Israel under the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law.
She does not mention that this law, which is worded as a temporary order, was passed in the wake of the so-called Second Intifada due to legitimate security concerns. The most recent extension of the law was approved as:
The Shin Bet believes that the population of those requesting family reunification poses a risk, due to the proven threat that it could provide assistance in carrying out terror attacks and espionage.
In addition, it believes the security risk increases in light of regional developments, with an emphasis on the security situation in the Gaza Strip, the strengthening of extremist Islamic factions, the permanent nature of the Hamas government in Gaza and the strengthening of Islamic Jihad.
Jebreal claims that even before the passing of a controversial law, it was “virtually impossible for a Palestinian to buy or rent a home in any majority-Jewish city.” In fact, the Admissions Committees Law that she cites, applies in practice to small communities and villages that have historically admitted new residents based on selective criteria. Under Israeli law, there is nothing to prevent an Arab citizen of the country from buying or renting anywhere, including in majority-Jewish cities.
Jebreal further maintains:
Further ethnic separation is maintained by the education system. Aside from a few mixed schools, most educational institutions in Israel are divided into Arab and Jewish ones.
In fact, this division is a result of Israel’s efforts to protect minority rights by giving its Arab population the opportunity to learn in Arabic according to the community’s cultural norms. This is not a policy of negative discrimination as Jebreal would have the New York Times’ readers believe.
