Needing to hate

Bradley Burston, Haaretz, April 14:

There is a quiet sense among many of us [the Israelis], that Israeli Arabs are fleecing the state, even as they grouse about inequality and nurse plans to de-Judaize the national home of the Jewish People.It is, in many ways, a form of classical anti-Semitism in which the Semites in question happen to be Israeli Arabs.

We complain that they live off the rest of us, that they flaunt our zoning laws and evade the taxes we pay, that they are happy to take our welfare while spurning the notion of defending the country.

It makes us feel somehow more secure in our own identity as Jews in a Jewish state. It makes our dislike of them, our educational, economic, and social discrimination against them, seem more of a reasoned response than what it actually is, which is institutional racism.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common