Racism in the State of Israel and the World Zionist Movement

by Israel Shahak in Matzpen No. 80, February 1977

(Opening section)
By any standard the State of Israel must be considered a racist state. After all, citizens of this state fall prey to a perfectly legal and firmly institutionalized discrimination, depending on nothing but their ethnic origins. Far from being marginal, this racist discrimination affects the most basic needs and vital interests of its victims. In my view it originates with the Zionist ideology. Consequently, the Zionist movement organisations, acting in concert with the state authorities, are the primary carriers of racism.

To prove my point, I am going to cite laws, regulations and events serving as legal precedents with the help of which the Israeli government executes its policies. These facts are public knowledge: they can be known to anyone who cares to know them. Being concerned with institutional aspects of racism, this article will ignore its popular manifestations and individual ventures in proffering racist apologetics.

Discrimination against non-Jews qua non-Jews is in the State of Israel practiced primarily in four domains:

1. Residence rights

The right to live, to reside, and to open a business at a location of one’s choice is being denied or curtailed to non-Jewish Israelis and to resident aliens.

Most of Israel’s lands are being administered [by the Israeli Land Authority] according to the regulations issued by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an affiliate of the World Zionist Organisation whose policy is openly racist. JNF denies the right to reside, to open a business, and often also to work, to anyone who is not Jewish, only because he is not Jewish. The legality of this policy in Israel stands in stark contrast to the illegality of an analogous discrimination against Jews in most states of the world. But besides being perfectly legal, the JNF policy is encouraged by Israeli governmental authorities. For example, the towns like Carmiel, Arad, and a number of others, are quite openly defined as ‘Arab-free’ (or, ‘non-Jew free’). Other towns, like Upper Nazareth, reserve a single neighborhood for Arab habitation. Arabs seeking to purchase or rent apartments from Jews have to contend with the firm resolve of the government agencies concerned (i.e. the ministry of Housing, the local municipality, and especially the secret police) to foil the deal, in addition to the Jewish neighborhood resistance which is often encouraged by the police. At the same time, nothing stands in a way for a Jew who wishes to rent or sell his apartment in, say, Upper Nazareth to other Jews. According to a racist definition legally binding in Israel, a Jew is the one who can prove that his mother, grandmother, and the grandmother of his grandmother were Jewish. A person meeting this characteristic is considered as acting within his rights when he rents an apartment there. He encounters no opposition on the parts of either the authorities or local residents. The opposition is mounted only if it is found that the prospective tenant’s mother was not Jewish.

Let me give a concrete example which occurred not far away from Upper Nazareth. Mr. Mohammad Ma’aruf, a [Druze] Israeli citizen from Deir al Assad village, wanted to open a factory in Carmiel. He could not do so it legally because the town of Carmiel was defined as ‘off limits’ to non-Jews. After political influence was exerted on his behalf, his factory was ultimately built beyond the boundaries of Carmiel’s ‘purity’.

The Jews are not prohibited from opening businesses or taking residence anywhere in Israel. This means that prohibiting the non-Jews from doing the same in the bulk of Israel’s territory constitutes a case of racist discrimination. For example, I may live whereever I want, open a business whereever I want (provided, of course, I purchase or rent the site from its owner), because my mother was Jewish. An Israeli citizen whose mother is not Jewish cannot do so. And he suffers such forms of racial discrimination throughout his lifetime.

Let me now make the following contentions:

A. The issue in question has nothing to do with what in Israel (and even more in the circles of its supporters abroad) goes under the name of ‘security’. The described restrictions rest on the criteria of race, applying to all non-Jews alike, including those who, for example, have served in the Israeli army, and who have distinguished themselves or have been wounded while serving. The same restrictions apply to the elderly whose offspring or kinfolk have served or are serving. Mr. Ma’aruf is a Druze, which means that all males in his family are subject to compulsory service in the army just like the Jews. But since he is not Jewish, he is denied the right to live in Carmiel which every Jew has. A Jewish thief, robber, or murderer has the right to live in Carmiel after having served his prison term, even if he has never served in the army. A Druze or any other ‘Goy’ [Gentile], has no right to live in Carmiel regardless of whether he has or hasn’t served in the army. Only because he was born to the wrong mother! It is as simple as that!

B. The attitudes towards this racist discrimination have nothing in common with the customary distinctions between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, or between the ‘hawks’ and the ‘doves’, within the Zionist movement. Contrary to appearances, the two camps which in their racism surpass anybody else, are the Zionist ‘Socialists’ and the religious Zionists. The holy alliance between these two camps rests in my opinion on racism. For example: at the time the Sebastia settlement [of Gush Emunim in the West Bank] was established, militants from [the left-wing party] ‘Moked’ and from kindred organisations held a demonstration near the farm owned by general (reserves) Ariel Sharon, protesting against the employment of Arab workers on that farm!

I am implacably hostile toward what Sharon does and means to do, but I also firmly believe that [the writer] Amos Oz, who distinguished himself n protesting Sharon’s employment of Arabs, is a more dangerous racist than Sharon. After all, Sharon has the perfect right to employ farm laborers irrespective of their race, religion, or nationality.

C. Apart from religious nationalists, the most fervent racists in Israel are in my view the kibbutz members, including those affiliated with the Mapam party. It is because they blend their racism with a particularly revolting sort of hypocrisy. A non-Jewish Israeli citizen wouldn’t be admitted to membership in any kibbutz, even in the case of love relationship with a kibbutz member, who often get so involved with non-Jewish volunteers or hired laborers.

D. If applied in another country against the Jews, all such discriminatory practices would instantly and justifiably spark massive public protests against anti-semitism. Where is the difference, then? What is the difference between prohibiting a Jew qua a Jew from living in Saudi Arabia and prohibiting a non-Jew qua a non-Jew from living in Carmiel? Let us compare it with how the Jewish organisations in the U.S. react when they discover a club which refuses, or merely avoids accepting, Jewish members. Instantly, the club becomes a target of a furious public protest campaign. Yet a club is no more than a private affair. The Israeli policy of preventing non-Jews from residing or making business in specific Israeli cities is, by contrast, a public affair. Isn’t it much worse? But in fact, the Zionists here and the anti-Semites there are on the same side of the fence. The State of Israel and the Zionist organisations succeed here in what the anti-Semites are trying, usually without success, to bring about in other countries.

There is no space here to discuss all existing forms of discrimination…

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