Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 9 

Israel has moved steadily leftwards politically over time 

Want to enliven a dreary dinner party conversation? Recite this sentence to the assembled company: Israel has moved steadily leftwards politically over time. (You might want to stir things further and throw in the exhortation that all true progressives should support Israel – a sentiment that permeates all my blogs and one that I plan to address specifically in the future). Then sit back and watch. Reactions will range from stunned silence to guffaws of ironic laughter. It’s unlikely that anyone will agree with you. Don’t be deterred. The truth is often counterintuitive and sometimes frankly unbelievable. 

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember how Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War began a process whereby her image morphed from that of a plucky little David to an overbearing and bullying Goliath while the Arabs (especially the Palestinian ones) moved in the opposite direction. The rot spread further, according to the progressive narrative, as the country became an entrenched occupier and settler of Arab land. You may also recall the panic-stricken editorials in the western media that greeted the election of the allegedly “far right” Menachem Begin as Israeli prime minister in 1977. We were regaled with apocalyptic predictions of war about to engulf the region following the Likud victory over a Labour Party (rebranded Alignment) that had held power for nearly 30 years. 

The prophets of doom were wrong. Ostensibly hawkish on foreign policy, Begin soon displayed ultra-dovish tendencies. When Sadat opted to be the first Arab leader to make peace, Israel withdrew from every last inch of the Sinai desert and uprooted thousands of settlers, taking a huge security risk in the process. 

Socio-economically too, the Likud was far from a traditional right-wing party that would shore up privilege and roll back the state: on the contrary, it drew its strongest support from the poorer (largely Sephardi/Mizrachi) urban working classes who had felt abandoned by (largely Ashkenazi) Labour politicians whom they regarded as elitist and intent on preserving their wealth and power across key sectors of society, notably within the Histadrut (trade union federation) and the kibbutzim. One of Begin’s first moves was to bring the third largest party, Dash (Democratic Movement for Change), a liberal offshoot of Labour, into his government. 

Since that revolutionary year of 1977, general elections have tended to send roughly equal numbers of representatives from the right and left to the Knesset. (In September 2019, the left bloc won 57 seats while the right won 55). Nevertheless, the gradual leftward policy drift within both mainstream parties continued. It did briefly stall a couple of times in the 1980s after the treaty with Egypt produced a disappointingly “cold peace,” and a series of major crises (the divisive first Lebanon War, a wildly overheated economy, the First Intifada) shook Israeli society to the core. But the public soon grew weary of the nationalist rhetoric of Begin and Shamir – although they had both demonstrated a willingness to compromise on their most cherished principles in pursuit of peace – and returned to power the old left in the personages of Rabin, Peres and Barak. Even the shock of Arafat’s bloody post-Oslo terrorist campaign, the Second Intifada, failed to dampen Israelis’ willingness to take risks for peace as the “right wing” Sharon and Olmert adopted startlingly conciliatory policies in their attempts to end the conflict. 

Just before Israeli general election in 2013, Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, in one of his frequent spasms of liberal angst about Israel, predicted (wrongly) that Israeli voters were about to elect an intransigent, hard-right government. He argued (as did many others) that this was the near-inevitable outcome of the Israeli electorate’s propensity to move steadily rightwards over the years and that the process was accelerating, making the continuation of any vestiges of a peace process impossible. If Freedland had been writing around 1985 he might have had a point. Three decades on, he didn’t. 

The charge of a rightward drift most often focuses on the twin issues of land and settlements. Foreigners regularly urge Israel to pursue territorial compromise as if this was a novel idea. If they’d been paying attention they might have noticed that Israelis have been doing just that since the early 1980s – relinquishing the whole of Sinai to Egypt, dismantling dozens of settlements and military bases in Sinai and Gaza, totally withdrawing the IDF from Lebanon, Gaza and large tracts of the West Bank, and forcibly uprooting of militant settlers from dozens of West Bank outposts. Throughout this period, the expansionist Greater Israel movement virtually collapsed despite the bitter disappointments of the land-for-peace Oslo Accords of 1993-95. The last five prime ministers have all expressed support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, with appropriate safeguards. 

Domestically, all the key political trends have also long faced leftwards: the consensus on drafting Charedim into the army, the provision of universal health care, the passage of  progressive human rights legislation, the official recognition of non-Orthodox Jewish religious streams, the banning of far right political parties such as Kach, and the recent upsurge of centrist political parties at the expense of the hard right and religious ones. These developments would have been inconceivable in the early years of the state.

Wait, I hear my wokest reader protest, what about that perennial bogeyman of the left, Binyamin Netanyahu? Isn’t he an unreconstructed reactionary that has pulled Israel sharply rightwards since gaining power? On the contrary, his dovish policies (as opposed to his rhetoric) would have warmed the heart of Abba Eban. In foreign policy, his three key acts were his signing of the Oslo-related Hebron Agreement (1997) and Wye River Memorandum (1998), his public recognition of the right of the Palestinians to achieve sovereignty, peacefully, alongside Israel, and his freezing of settlement activity for 10 months in 2009 to try to kickstart negotiations with the Palestinians. Domestically, he committed successive administrations to reducing social inequalities by a variety of means, notably via Resolution 922 that involved an unprecedented investment in the Arab sector that (according to initial evaluations) has already yielded significant social, economic and educational benefits [1].

What is even more remarkable about this seismic shifting of the Israeli political landscape is that it has occurred against a background of perpetual warfare, terrorism, demonisation, delegitimisation, and the rise to power of an EU-subsidised authoritarian, revanchist kleptocracy in the West Bank along with Islamo-fascist, genocidal regimes in Iran and Gaza – all aimed at destroying the world’s only Jewish state.

Yet we are told that it is Israelis – not Palestinians, other Arabs or Iranians – who are jeopardising peace by drifting inexorably rightwards. It wasn’t true in the past and it’s not true today. 

Israel is not a socialist paradise nor is it free of anti-liberal elements. But the overall direction of travel is clear. Liam Hoare [2] succinctly summarised the phenomenon: While the left did indeed lose the electoral struggle after the turbulent 1990s and bloody Second Intifada, it won the war of ideas... the right and centre having appropriated part of its raison d’être.

Here’s a challenge: name another country that, in such unpropitious circumstances, has moved so unambiguously leftwards over such a prolonged period. If you can, I’ll buy you a falafel in pitta – with all the trimmings – from the most woke kiosk you can find in Tel Aviv.

[1] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/working.papers/99_final.pdf

[2] http://fathomjournal.org/israelvotes2019-2-nitzan-horowitz-the-new-leader-of-the-israeli-left/

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 8 

Relative to her population, Israel has absorbed more immigrants than any other country in history 

Visitors to Israel are often surprised when they encounter the staggering diversity of Israelis. From the moment they step off the plane, they see a myriad of faces of every conceivable ethnic origin.  “But they don’t look Jewish” is a frequent observation, and not just by a prejudiced minority. There is a common misconception that all Israeli Jews are (or at least should look like) ethnically white Europeans, and that if they’re not, they must be Arabs. Like many stereotypes, it is completely untrue. 

Another frequent (and related) accusation, especially prevalent in some modern “progressive” circles, is this: that while there may be a few black or brown Jews, Israel (being an allegedly racist, apartheid state) prioritises white Jewish immigration. This notion is so absurd it is laughable: Israel today is a multi-ethnic society that has a larger proportion of non-whites than most western nations. Look at the figures: the (approximate) proportion of non-whites in Australia is 9%, in France 15%, in the UK 18%, in the USA 23%, in Canada 27%, and in Israel 68%.

More numbers: in 1948, Israel’s population was 800,000; today, it exceeds 9 million. Most of this spectacular increase has been due to two main factors – births and immigration. Nowadays, the former contributes the overwhelming majority of new Israelis but that was not always the case. The country has received newcomers from more than 100 countries, doubling her population in the first three years of her existence and tenfold in her first 50 years, a scale of increase took the world as a whole 500 years to achieve. This makes Israel the largest immigrant absorbing nation, relative to her size, in world history. This unique achievement occurred against a background of perpetual war, terrorism and threatened annihilation. How did this demographic explosion come about?

The waves of Jewish immigration (Aliyah) following Israel’s rebirth originated from two main sources: survivors of the Holocaust and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Few were able to bring personal possessions or money placing an even greater burden on state resources. As well as having experienced serious trauma and social dislocation, many were poorly educated or lacked appropriate skills for their new lives, or were otherwise disadvantaged through sickness, disability or old age. These Olim (immigrants) inevitably posed an enormous logistical challenge to the host community. 

What about non-Jews? Doesn’t Israel strain every sinew to keep them out? That’s another propagandistic smear. The answer is emphatically no. While Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, she is far from exclusively Jewish, let alone the ethno-nationalist Jewish state that is alleged by her detractors. When most of the rest of the world was closed to the Vietnamese “boat people” in the 1970s, prime minister Begin ordered Israel to open her doors to several hundred of the Asian refugees – hence the curious modern phenomenon of ethnically Chinese Israeli citizens. Around 25% of Israel’s current population are non-Jewish, 80% of whom are Arabs, a community that also includes numerous immigrants; many Muslim and Christian Arab citizens of Israel originated from neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, Syria and, in more recent times, the Palestinian Authority. 

Indeed Arab immigration to Israel antedates the establishment of the modern state. The Zionist revival of the Jewish homeland attracted hundreds of thousands of workers from all over the Middle East; their descendants today comprise a large proportion of today’s Palestinians. In the Boston Post in 1948, Robert Kennedy wrote: “The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state.” (Incidentally, this growing non-Jewish labour force was treated exactly the same as Jews in terms of working conditions, pay, trade union rights and welfare provision). 

Since 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians, including refugees or their descendants, have immigrated to Israel, legally and officially, under the government’s little-publicised family reunification programme. This is effectively a controlled implementation of the Palestinian demand for “return” in a manner that seeks to avoid jeopardising either Israel’s Jewish majority or, more crucially, her security. The programme has been intermittently suspended due to its cynical exploitation, notably during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), by terrorists who used it as cover to infiltrate into the country and perpetrate violent attacks. In addition, there are an unknown number of illegal Palestinian immigrants.

So let’s lay to rest the old canard that Israel only accepts and grants citizenship to Jews. There’s a natural emphasis on Aliyah since providing a safe haven for Jews was the raison d’etre for the rebirth of Israel, fully endorsed as such by the international community. But non-Jews have always been attracted to the country and their contribution has been welcomed. Even under the Law of Return, that ostensibly favours Jews, large numbers of non-Jewish immigrants have been successfully absorbed over the decades, including hundreds of thousands from Russia, Ukraine and other eastern European states. Today more than half of all immigrants are not considered Jewish by the immigration authorities, though many claim Jewish heritage, identity or ancestry. 

Nevertheless, we shouldn’t gloss over the problems that Israel faces in absorbing newcomers. Almost all of the multiple ethnic, religious and national groups – Jewish and non-Jewish – have complained of discrimination to some degree. In recent times, illegal African migrants, most claiming refugee or asylum status, have fared particularly badly. These migrants are predominantly men who entered Israel surreptitiously via Egypt from Eritrea or Sudan (the latter having no diplomatic relations with Israel, thereby complicating matters). Their arrival has generated heated controversy in the country and public opinion is generally resistant to their large-scale absorption. Some populist politicians denounce them as a source of criminal or terrorist activity, while liberals demand that the government (that classifies most of them as economic migrants rather than refugees) should desist from deporting them, citing Israel’s moral obligation to distressed peoples everywhere. Until their status is clarified, their future remains precarious. In 2018, however, Israel agreed a five-year plan of action with the UN that would enable the majority to remain in the country.  

Israel is far from alone in having to confront this dilemma: almost every European country is currently engaged in a similar crisis. Unlike them, however, Israel is a tiny country that, despite being permanently surrounded by enemies who strive ceaselessly to murder her citizens and bring about her destruction, has a long and praiseworthy record of absorbing people of all backgrounds. Although the consequences for security, public expenditure and social cohesion have been massively burdensome, Israel has always been a quintessentially immigrant society and is justifiably proud of that record. 

Israel has shown, time and again, that she can rise to the challenge of absorbing millions of desperate, homeless people. Many other states now face that challenge. The UN predicts that global migration will increase dramatically in the coming decades – up to one billion by 2050 through environmental causes alone. It is unarguable that Israel has much to teach the world about coping with mass immigration. The key question is: will the world listen? 

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 7

Israel is the only country in the world to have implemented a successful and entirely voluntary form of communism

Like many of the post-war baby-boomer generation, I was a committed radical socialist in my youth. Clutching my pocket-sized copy of Mao’s Little Red Book as I headed for the latest anti-war demo or campus sit-in, I was consumed by an insufferably self-important sense of political correctness and buoyed by the unimpeachable rectitude of my cause. This state of deluded faux-grace lasted a handful of years. 

What happened? It passed. It was a mere fad, a phase of adolescence. I grew up. Yet even now I sheepishly harbour a nostalgia for aspects of that distant youthful idealism. I respect the desire of many of today’s youngsters to make the world a better place in which individualistic consumerism is subservient to the wider needs of the community. I remain instinctively sympathetic to the collectivist impulse that energises so many young people today. There, I’ve confessed – I’m an unrepentant, crypto-progressive. And I don’t see any need to apologise for it. 

Except there’s a problem. An elephant-sized one.

Something seriously odd is happening to the global left. It can be summarised in a word: intersectionality. That means if you’re anticapitalist or antiracist or (especially) antisexist, you have to adopt a whole lot of other “anti-oppression” postures too. One of these is antiZionism. That’s because, as all sixth formers know, “Israel oppresses the Palestinians.”

It’s a mind-blowingly banal political theory, a sort of Buy-One-Get-Six-Free offer for the intellectually lazy, yet it is rapidly acquiring doctrinal status within the modern left. The result is that it is now de rigueur for all card-carrying progressives to express their loathing for Israel even more passionately than their deranged counterparts on the far right. This is despite Israel’s legitimate claim to be one of the most liberal countries in the world, and certainly the torchbearer for progressive values in the Middle East. Such arguments, however, don’t wash with Israel’s socialist critics.

But there’s one undeniable fact I have found to exert such rhetorical potency that it regularly reduces Israel’s “woke” detractors to speechlessness: Israel is the only country in history to have invented a successful, voluntary model of communism. I am referring, of course, to that uniquely Israeli creation known as the kibbutz (“clustering”) or collective farm. It’s an institution worth examining in detail for, amongst its other numerous virtues, its mere existence blows to smithereens the canard that Israeli society is built upon irredeemably reactionary foundations. 

The kibbutz is probably Israel’s most famous invention and yet is one of the least understood. It is based on an extraordinary synthesis of two ideologies that many, in their ignorance, regard as mutually incompatible: socialism and Zionism. The early members were largely immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe who regarded themselves as epitomising the realisation of both Jewish and universalist values. These pioneers aspired to a fully functioning, egalitarian society based on the Marxist maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” In many kibbutzim, personal financial transactions were entirely forbidden; any income generated by the members was used entirely for communal purposes. In short, the model society being promoted by the kibbutz movement was as close to being a truly communist one as is possible to achieve by voluntary means. 

     

From the start, emphasis was placed on collective ownership and responsibility, and the application of cooperative principles to farming, marketing, and governance. The pursuit of profit through the exploitation of manual workers (including, notably, Arab labourers) was anathema. The founders’ prevailing ethos was one of mutual support, social equality, and the dignity of labour as espoused by the socialist visionary AD Gordon. The first kibbutz was established at Degania in the Galilee region in 1909. By 1989, 129,000 people lived on kibbutzim throughout the country.

The kibbutz lifestyle is a challenging one that is not for everyone. The intimate living conditions, the relentlessly democratic decision-making processes, and the subservience of individual needs to those of the group can generate major tensions and, in some cases, blatant abuses. In the early days, many kibbutz residents lived in conditions of austere and, at times, intolerable hardship. (The ideologically softer spinoff, the moshav, attracted many defectors from the kibbutzim and often proved itself to be an economically more efficient as well as a less demanding alternative). 

Successive Labour governments bolstered the kibbutzim politically and economically. Ironically, that partisan support became the greatest threat to their viability; the kibbutzim came to be viewed by working-class Israelis as bastions of the Ashkenazi elite, a resentment that Menachem Begin brilliantly mobilised to win power for the Likud in 1977. Thereafter, government subsidies were drastically reduced and many kibbutzim suffered serious financial crises necessitating government bail-outs. Merely to survive, the kibbutz movement was forced to adopt alternative economic models, including privatisation. 

There are currently some 250 kibbutzim in which a mere 125,000 people live. Although comprising a small minority (1.4%) of Israel’s population, the kibbutzim have always contributed disproportionately to agriculture, industry, the army, politics, and the wider national culture. The kibbutz movement is mainly secular (though there are a few religious kibbutzim). Today, kibbutzim are continuing to renew themselves in innovative ways – including the adoption of sustainable, environmentally friendly agricultural and industrial practices – and still play a prominent role in national life. Fascinatingly, most have been able to retain a contemporary version of their highly-valued ethic of egalitarianism that was so critical to their foundation in the early years of the Twentieth Century. 

To return to our misguided intersectionalists: we need to educate them about the astonishing, mould-breaking kibbutz story. When pressed, progressives generally reject forced collectivisation as practised in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cuba as an unacceptable violation of human rights. Yet they seem simultaneously unaware or dismissive of the most successful experiment in collectivisation in history, one that was implemented without compulsion or the wholesale crushing of human rights that was the norm elsewhere. 

           Voluntary collectivism is arguably the quintessence of true progressivism. Liberals, progressives and socialists the world over should unhesitatingly hail the Israeli kibbutz as an inspiration to all who seek a fairer, less materialistic and more equal society. If they don’t, their claim to be taken seriously on any subject – especially Israel – will carry about as much weight as the  lyrics of The Internationale.      

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 6     

The impact of Israel on the health of Palestinian Arabs has been overwhelmingly positive

The other day I happened to tune in to an earnest but dull discussion on the UK health service on BBC radio. I was about to switch off when a medical expert offered this opinion: “How can I tell if someone is committed to evidence? When they’re willing to change their minds.” I punched the air in agreement.

We should all be open to changing our minds if the evidence requires it of us. Sometimes it’s a counter-intuitive, profoundly painful process – like having to bid farewell to an old friend or lover. That’s why many people are extremely reluctant to do it. And that’s why “conventional wisdom” is so often misleading or just plain wrong. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the arguments that rage around Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. 

It’s axiomatic that any conflict between two groups of people is a bad thing and especially for the weaker side. As the Palestinians are unarguably weaker than Israel, as we are constantly reminded, the impact of the latter on the former must inevitably be highly toxic. Take the example of health.

In 2009 Rita Giacaman, Professor of Public Health at Bir Zeit University, wrote the following in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet:

“Between 1967 and 1993, health services for Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory were neglected and starved of funds by the Israeli military administration, with shortages of staff, hospital beds, medications, and essential and specialised services, forcing Palestinians to depend on health services in Israel.”

That sounded a little harsh to me at the time but probably not a million miles (I surmised) from the truth. 

Here’s what Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet had to say in the same year:

“The people of the Palestinian territory matter, most importantly, because their lives and communities are continuing to experience an occupation that has produced chronic de-development for nearly four million people over many decades.”

Sounds reasonable? I thought so too. The occupation (or “occupation” if you’re more comfortable with quotation marks), even if not Israel’s fault, is bound to have negative effects on Palestinian health. That’s surely an uncontroversial statement. Except for one problem: it’s untrue. Horton’s allegation was a complete falsehood, just as was the Giacaman pronouncement.

Hold on, that’s ridiculous. How could a military occupation be anything but damaging on the health of the people under the thumb of the occupier?  

Well, I have news. In this particular case, Israel’s presence in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem over the period 1967 to 1994 turned out to be enormously beneficial to Palestinian health. I know this because a few years ago I researched the subject at the request of Professor Alan Johnson, the editor of the online Fathom magazine. I embarked on the exercise with a genuinely open mind. After all, my professional integrity was on the line. If Israeli policy was responsible for eroding Palestinian health, I would be duty bound to acknowledge and report it. 

If you have the time and inclination to read the full article, there’s a link at the foot of this blog. Alternatively, let me save you the trouble of wading through the paper’s numerous tables and graphs. 

Here’s a summary of what I discovered.

“Rapid and largely sustained improvements in the health status of Palestinians residing in West Bank and Gaza – as measured by infant mortality rates, life expectancy, immunisation coverage and many other indicators – coincided with the period of Israeli civil responsibility of West Bank and Gaza by Israel from 1967 to 1994.”

Just digest that sentence for a moment. Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza strip from 1967 onwards produced rapid and largely sustained improvements in the health status of Palestinians. That conclusion was entirely evidence-based and had nothing to do with my preconceived ideas (that, let me reiterate, tended towards accepting the notion that occupation – any occupation – is bad for your health). 

Here are a few specific examples of my discoveries: infant mortality (a widely used indicator of the state of a population’s health) tumbled by over 80% over the study period; immunisation rates for diseases such as mumps and measles rose to over 90%; running water and electricity in Palestinian homes became the norm rather than the exception; healthcare facilities, including hospitals and community clinics, were modernised and improved beyond recognition. 

My main conclusions, based on the data, were two-fold. First, the claim that Israel systematically harmed Palestinian health/care post-1967 was not supported by the epidemiological evidence. Second, the opposite was the case: Israel substantially improved Palestinian public health from 1967 onwards as a result of the implementation of a wide range of measures that involved the allocation of considerable organisational, political and financial resources. 

When the Palestinian Authority took over full responsibility for the health of these territories in 1994, many of the Israeli public health measures were sustained, at least in part. Unfortunately, both the Second Intifada that started in 2000 and the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza of 2007 were unhelpful (to put it mildly) and many of the health statistics began to go into reverse.  

The article was published in 2014. So far, not one of Israel’s numerous critics has been able to refute any of my findings. There’s a good reason: the data are unequivocal.

The editor of Fathom circulated the article to all of the major medical journals, including The Lancet. None showed the slightest interest in transmitting the findings to their readers. As for Dr Horton, he has never retracted his libellous and wholly unfounded charge of Israel’s “chronic dedevelopment” of the Palestinian territories. 

It seems that the old saying is true: when you make things absolutely clear, people become confused. Or perhaps their attention span contracts to zero whenever evidence is presented that doesn’t fit their preconceived narrative. Whatever the explanation, Horton, Giacaman and the army of medical “critics” who seize every opportunity to smear Israel with false allegations, are plain wrong. Israel has not only not damaged Palestinian health but has actually achieved the precise opposite. In the face of extraordinary obstacles, she succeeded in bringing about “measurable improvements” in Palestinian health, welfare and infrastructure.

This is a really good news story for both Israelis and Palestinians. It’s time that the international community (including the global medical profession) – that is seldom reluctant to offer an opinion on the conflict – celebrated the achievement for what it is. It’s also time for Dr Horton, Professor Giacaman and others who have, year after year, unfairly excoriated Israel for causing Palestinian ill health, suffering and death, to accept the overwhelming evidence that they were mistaken and change their minds, as I did. I’m not asking much – it’s what all who claim to adhere to an evidence-based approach should be willing to do. 

Five years after the publication of my research, it’s still not too late for Israel’s medical “critics” to do the right thing. (Health warning to readers: don’t hold your breath). 

You can read the full article here: http://fathomjournal.org/has-israel-damaged-palestinian-health/

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 5 

Most Israeli Jews are indigenous to the Middle East

Some years ago, I switched on one of those Sunday morning TV programmes about current affairs. I was just in time to catch a highly respected MSP (member of the Scottish parliament) angrily denouncing Israel as “an artificial state” because (she asserted) the Jewish state was established by immigrants from Europe and Russia. I couldn’t help wondering whether she regarded the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other immigrant-founded countries in the same light. Sadly, I can’t ask her as she is now deceased. 

I do know that she, like many of Israel’s “critics”, was a strong supporter of the allegedly superior national rights of the “indigenous Palestinians” despite the fact that the Palestinian Arabs were almost as heterogeneous a group, in terms of their countries of origin, as the Jews they brand as foreigners. Indeed numerous Palestinian families reveal this phenomenon in their surnames – al-Masri (Egypt), al-Sham (Syria), al-Yamani (Yemen), al-Baghdadi (Iraq), al-Mughrabi (Morocco) and many more. Ironically, the main reason for the upsurge of Arab immigration to Palestine in the early twentieth century was the search for a better life in a land that was rapidly being transformed economically and socially by the Zionist pioneers.

That Scottish politician’s jaundiced view of Israel, however, resonates with many of the country’s enemies who endlessly parrot the view that Israel is an alien, Western colonialist outpost in the largely Arab-Muslim Middle East. Does that accusation accord with reality? (Spoiler – no). 

Contrary to a popular misconception, European and Russian Ashkenazi Jews – all of whom arrived in the West after taking the “high road” from Judea following their expulsion by the Romans from their homeland – are a minority in today’s Israel (though a majority among Jews worldwide). Along with the descendants of Jews who had remained in Israel throughout the generations, over 60% of Israel’s Jewish population today are Mizrachi (“Eastern”) Jews who hailed mainly from the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. This community adheres to many of the religious and cultural traditions of Sephardi (or “Spanish”) Jews with whom they are often confused, and indeed there is considerable overlap between them. (In passing, it’s worth noting that the distinctions between these various so-called Jewish ethnicities is somewhat artificial: genetic studies have shown a strong connection between them all – an unsurprising discovery since they all originated from their common ancestral homeland).  

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, almost 900,000 Jews who had lived for centuries in the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa fled in fear of their lives or were ruthlessly and often brutally expelled. Unlike the Palestinian refugees and their descendants, with whom the world empathises through countless UN resolutions and massive financial support via specially created UN agencies, the Mizrachi Jewish refugees and their descendants are today all but invisible. 

Many of these Jewish refugees arrived penniless in Israel, receiving no compensation for property or other assets they were forced to leave behind, and no international recognition as refugees deserving sympathy and support. Even more remarkable, the Jewish exodus from Arab countries, unlike the parallel Palestinian displacement, was not the result of conflict: most of these Jewish communities had lived in relative peace (despite being treated as second-class citizens) for generations in their host countries. They were entirely innocent victims of a wave of visceral, lethal, state-sponsored hatred that was deliberately unleashed against them by Arab regimes enraged by the establishment of the world’s only Jewish state. The contrast with the Palestinian refugees, whose plight was the direct result of a war of annihilation launched by five Arab states (reinforced by contingents from two more) against the embryonic Jewish state, could not be starker.

A short quiz: how many UN resolutions have been passed highlighting the plight of the Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa? Answer: zero. How many times has the UN Human Rights Council or any other UN committee condemned the Arab states for their inhumane treatment of their Jewish citizens and their continuing refusal to offer recompense? Answer: zero. How much money has the international community allocated to support the Jewish refugees who had to flee their homes having had their possessions stolen and their homes appropriated? Answer: zero.

This double standard is self-evidently scandalous.Yet the Mizrachi refugees didn’t complain. They looked firmly to the future and set about creating new lives for themselves and their families in Israel, a struggling young country that welcomed them with open arms. Life was tough in the ma’abarot – hastily erected shanty towns that were, in essence, refugee camps – and the new state was overwhelmed by demands on its limited resources. Ethnic tensions between Ashkenazim andSephardim sometimes reached breaking point; the latter felt, with justification, that many of the former treated them with contempt. But somehow the newcomers were nevertheless housed, fed, rehabilitated and ultimately integrated. Modern Israeli culture, language and politics have been hugely influenced and enriched by the Mizrachim.

Why does all this matter? Three reasons. First, it explains many aspects – political, social and economic – of modern Israel that would otherwise baffle the outsider.  Second, it’s a largely untold story that most of the world, shamefully, has chosen to ignore or even erase from history. Finally, it nails the lie that Israel is a country of incoming “Western” colonialists that have no connection with the region. 

Jews are not immigrant interlopers in the Middle East. The roots of all Jews lie in Israel, the country to which they have yearned to return for almost two thousand years. Most of those who undertook the journey home since Israel's rebirth have done so from within the Middle East itself. Denying that reality is simply an attempt to delegitimise the entire Zionist enterprise. 

This isn’t a matter of “competing narratives” but of incontrovertible historical facts (remember those?). Jews rather than Arabs – who arrived on the scene around 1700 years after the establishment of the first Kingdom of Israel – are the true indigenous inhabitants of Israel. 

In the words of the late Charles Krauthammer: “Israel is the only country in the world with same name, the same language, the same faith and inhabiting the same land as it did 3,000 years ago.” That is an inconvenient truth for many Israel-haters but it’s one that they will have to swallow if there is ever to be peace between Israel and her enemies.    
            

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 4 

Israel does not (and never has) opposed freedom for the Palestinians

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Anyone who has witnessed a pro-Palestine demonstration will have heard those words being chanted with feeling. But what do they mean?

“From the river (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) sea” asserts that all of Israel plus the West Bank are Palestinian and that Israel is therefore illegitimate. “Palestine will be free” implies that the Palestinian nation is being held captive by the State of Israel that occupies their land. 

In other words, the absence of freedom from which the Palestinians suffer is directly attributable to the existence of Israel. The corollary is that Israel must disappear to enable the Palestinians to acquire their freedom. 

It seems, then, that Palestinian freedom is contingent on Israel’s demise. Sympathetic as many Israelis may be towards the Palestinians’ aspirations to freedom, they are understandably reluctant to commit suicide to pave the way for the fulfilment of this vision. 

If the above logic is valid, it consigns Israelis and Palestinians to endless conflict, or at least until one side prevails over the other. The prognosis is indeed gloomy if that is the case. Isn’t this the classic zero-sum-game? Fortunately for all of us – and especially for Israelis and Palestinians – it isn’t. The contested territory may be a tiny strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea but there’s ample room for both peoples. All that is required is for each to acknowledge the right of the other to self-determination. What’s more, one side – Israel (and the pre-state Zionist movement) has done exactly that for close to a century – while the other has not. 

Let’s look at the historical facts. 

Two years after the Balfour declaration of 1917, the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, reached an amicable agreement with Faisal, son of Emir Hussein of Mecca and the undisputed leader of the Arab world, whereby the right of self-determination of both Jews and Arabs was recognised. Faisal later tore up that accord under pressure from radicals. 

When Great Britain was granted the Palestine Mandate by the League of Nations in 1920, the territory allocated to the embryonic Jewish National Home spanned both sides of the Jordan. In their desire to accommodate Arab hostility to the Mandate, the British decided to create a large Arab state, Transjordan, that had no prior historical, political or cultural identity, in 78% of Palestine. This was a unilateral decision (to which the Americans are believed to have given a discreet green light) that was taken without consultation with the Zionist leadership who were, understandably, displeased – particularly as this new country, carved out of the prospective Jewish homeland, was utterly barred to Jews. But in the interests of peace, Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist luminaries, adopted a policy of compromise that would characterise all key future Jewish decision-making in the region, and reluctantly agreed to this first partition plan. Unfortunately, the Arab leadership was far less inclined to adopt a similar strategy and conflict became inevitable. 

Although a Palestinian Arab state had existed since 1922, the Zionist leadership twice more accepted proposals for a second Palestinian state – first in 1937 (the Peel Commission) and again in 1947 (the UN partition plan). In both cases, the Arab leadership rejected these attempts to establish two-states-for- two peoples. Despite their profound reservations about all of these ideas, the Zionist leaders accepted proposals to partition Mandatory Palestine – and establish a second Palestinian state alongside Israel – decades earlier than any other Middle Eastern country. 

There then followed a long litany missed opportunities for peace and mutual coexistence. I can only skim the surface here: the Rhodes armistice conference of 1949 that was supposed to lead to peace treaties but was frustrated by Arab intransigence; UN Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) that were met by the Three Noes of the Arab League; the 1978 Camp David accords (between Sadat, Begin and Carter) where an empty chair for Arafat symbolised his utter abrogation of responsibility for the future of his people; the 1993-5 Oslo accords that Arafat appeared to embrace but then refused to follow through with a negotiated peace; the 2000 Camp David summit where Israel’s PM Barak offered Arafat 94% of the West Bank and shared sovereignty of Jerusalem; the 2001 meet at Taba where Bill Clinton set out his Parameters for Peace and was snubbed by Arafat who was too busy whipping up the murderous Second Intifada; the 2003 initiative of the US’s President George W Bush who set out a Roadmap for Peace; the historic 2008 conference at Annapolis when Israeli PM Olmert offered Abbas even more than Barak had offered Arafat – 94% of the West Bank plus 6% in land swaps; the recurrent efforts throughout 2014-16 during the Obama administration when the Kerry-Allen and Biden plans were tabled and dismissed by Abbas. 

Every one of these attempts to grant the Palestinians their freedom was crushed to dust by the Palestinian leadership’s irresponsible posture of unremitting hostility to the idea of a Jewish state behind any borders. 

Israel even unilaterally withdrew from territory (from all of the Gaza Strip in 2005) in an attempt to facilitate the realisation of Palestinian self-rule leading ultimately, should that be their choice, to Palestinian statehood. None of these high-risk efforts by Israel have ever been reciprocated. On the contrary, they have been met by increased aggression and terrorism. 

Recognition of rights has to be mutual or it is meaningless. Here’s the rub: Arab and Palestinian leaders have remained steadfastly opposed to the existence of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the Middle East for a hundred years despite some latterly professing approval of the “two state solution,” a hollow phrase in the absence of definition. Today in 2019 we see yet another attempt – Trump’s so-called Deal of the Century – to kickstart a diplomatic process. Because the Palestinian leadership has rejected it in advance, it too looks destined for the dustbin of diplomatic history. 

Far from Israelis opposing Palestinian freedom, the historical record shows precisely the opposite – Israelis have consistently accepted the right (and desirability) of the Palestinian Arabs to achieve their national goals, while the Palestinians and most Arab leaders (plus some Muslim countries, notably Iran) have repeatedly refused to accord reciprocal rights to Jews and Israelis. This double standard is immoral and indefensible. Once again, conventional wisdom about this conflict is not just flawed but the exact opposite of the truth.   

Next time you hear the Israel-haters chanting From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!, reflect on the poor quality of Arab leadership over the decades and remind anyone who will listen to the truth exactly who is and who is not responsible for the lack of Palestinian freedom.    

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 3

The only ethnic or religious group that faces systematic discrimination in Israel are Jews

I happened to eavesdrop recently on a group conversation about Israel that had become heated. One of the participants, an earnest young Jewish woman, took exception to a discussant’s demand that Israel should cease discriminating in favour of Jews. “Hold on,” she insisted angrily, “If there are all these Christian and Muslim states, why aren’t we allowed one country in the world that favours Jews?” It’s a fair question but it rests on a false premise. 

In a previous blog, I touched on the widely misunderstood primus inter pares status of Judaism in the Jewish state (and on the equally misrepresented Law of Return, that has no bearing on civil rights within Israel). I demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, Judaism is not the official religion of Israel; it is merely one of several that are recognised by the state. But what about Jews as a group, or as an ethnicity? Surely our young Zionist must be right? Whatever the status of Judaism as a faith, isn’t it self-evident that the Jewish State of Israel, by its very nature, discriminates in favour of Jews and against non-Jews? 

The systematic and institutionalised legal discrimination against her non-Jewish citizens is a charge that is often levelled at “apartheid” Israel by her detractors (including some Israeli NGOs). Superficially, it’s a powerful tool in the antiZionist armoury and one that often hits the target. Indeed of all the criticisms of Israel that her enemies can muster, doesn’t this one look like a potential debate-clincher? Well, yes, except for one small problem (from the anti-Israel perspective): the accusation is false. 

Let me reveal a well-kept secret: Israeli law does not discriminate in any way against its non-Jewish citizens. If that statement surprises you, you’re not alone. Even many Jews are unaware of that reality.

The corollary is even more astonishing: the only religious or ethnic group that faces systematic, legally enforced discrimination in Israel (and the territories she entered, in self-defence, during the 1967 Six Day War) are the Jews. 

That may seem an absurdly counter-intuitive statement. Yet it is entirely evidence based.

Sceptical? Let’s look at the facts. 

As in most countries, the Israeli majority sometimes display casual prejudice against several minorities (including some Jewish groups). Given the history of virtual civil war between Jews and Arabs over many decades, it would be surprising if a degree of mutual antipathy between them was absent. But the Basic Laws (Israel’s constitution) guarantee complete equality under the law for all her citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish. This offers all Israelis legal recourse to challenge any discriminatory behaviour that they may believe they have suffered. 

Within pre-1967 Israel (i.e. within the Green Line agreed at the Rhodes Armistice conference in 1949), most of the complicated laws relating to religion are rooted in the historical Status Quo regarding religious communities. These regulations date back to the Ottoman Empire and were sustained during the British Mandate and by successive Israeli governments. For example, only Orthodox strands of Judaism are recognised by the Chief Rabbinate thereby creating difficulties for non-Orthodox Israeli Jews in the realms of citizenship, marriage and burial. No such restrictions apply to other faiths in the country. As for residency, the Supreme Court has ruled that Jews are not permitted to exclude non-Jews from any of their communities while Arabs may exclude Jews from theirs. 

Regarding military service, the burden of defending the country falls almost exclusively on Jewish shoulders. Conscription is compulsory for all Jewish Israelis except Charedim (ultra-orthodox Jews) – and efforts to remove that exemption are ongoing. In addition to the physical danger to which soldiers are exposed, the disruption to family life, education, career advancement and economic well-being that is caused by both regular and reserve army service is considerable. Non-Jews (other than Druze and Circassian men) are not required to serve though they can volunteer (and many do).

Israel has always striven to protect and grant access to the holy places of all faiths, particularly following her entry in 1967 into the areas historically known as Judea and Samaria and renamed “The West Bank” by Jordan when that country annexed them in 1949. Yet while Christians and Muslims are guaranteed the right to worship at their holiest sites, Jews are not. On religious festivals, you can witness Christians flocking to the Churches of the Holy Sepulchre and Nativity, and Muslims to the Haram al-Sharif (the Islamic name for the Temple Mount); by contrast, Jews can hold prayer services only at the foot of the Western Wall – a structure that lies close to but not within the Temple Mount precinct itself, the most sacred spot in Judaism. 

Jews are also banned from visiting most of Hebron, the second holiest city of their faith, and one that was for centuries home to a substantial Jewish community until they were massacred or expelled by Muslim extremists in 1929. Under the Oslo Accords (1993-95), Jews are not permitted under any circumstances to live in large swathes (40%) of Judea, the historical Jewish homeland that is largely located in areas A and B. West Bank and Gaza Arabs, on the other hand, may (and do) choose to live throughout all of these territories (Areas A, B and C) except in the 1% of those territories (located mostly adjacent to the Green Line in Area C) where Israeli settlements have been established.

There you have it: Israeli Jews are restricted, by a raft of domestic and international legal instruments, in their ability to pursue the kind of lifestyle that most of us take for granted. In particular, they are denied the right to worship at – or even visit – their most sacred sites, or to live in a large part of their historical homeland, despite being required, for the duration of much of their adult lives, to put their lives on the line for the purposes of defending the state. All of these obstacles to normal life stand in stark contrast to the position of every other ethnic or religious group that resides in the country. If that doesn’t amount to systematic discrimination, what does? 

That extraordinary state of affairs begs a further question: why were these draconian prohibitions on Jewish rights implemented over many decades by successive Israeli administrations? The answer is simple and commendable, though far too rarely acknowledged: to avoid provoking Arab/Muslim sensibilities. This is a unique and unprecedented policy: where else in the world has a government voluntarily renounced the rights of the majority of its citizens to live in their historical homeland, or pray at or visit their holiest sites, solely in the interests of achieving peace treaties with their neighbours?

Next time you hear someone stridently denouncing (or, for that matter, defending) Israel for “favouring Jews" or "discriminating against non-Jews," speak up and protest. Having read this blog, you now possess the evidence to set the record straight.