The Apartheid Dilemma .. Lessons for the US from Israel’s Bedouins.
The anti Zionist left castigates Israel for being an apartheid state. To some extent they are correct. Even leaving aside the harsh issue of the occupied west bank and Gaza, there is a real issue in Israel itself. How does Israel assure that its Bedouin minority is treated fairly? Does the (Jewish) majority, the ruling majority, have the responjisbility to a enforce fairness even in self governing Bedouin areas of Eretz Yisroael?
Last Spring, Rimas and Isnad, two young Bedouin girls from the village of Al-Fura’a,were murdered after their mother had asked the Arab police commander for protection. The mother came to the police station the night before the murder, warning that the girls’ father posed a serious threat to his daughters,.
In response to the outrage in the Israeli media, the government swiftly dismissed the Arab commander of the Arad police station. Amnon Beeri-Sulitzeanu, of Haaretz argues that this was not an adequate response. “Is the (dis)service that Arab police officers gave the abused Bedouin mother very different from the lack of other—more or less critical—public infrastructure services that the residents of Al-Fura’a, Abu-Ashibah, Al-Atrash, Wadi-Naam, and other Bedouin settlements receive? Do urgent calls to disconnect electricity in order to operate life-saving equipment receive a rapid response? Do cable technicians jump quickly into their van when a resident of Bir Hadaj reports reception problems? Has anyone ever given a thought to placing a train station halfway between Be’er-Sheva and Dimona, in Abu-Tlul, for example?”
“These questions might seem merely cheap, groundless demagoguery, especially since most Bedouin villages have neither electricity nor running water. The services mentioned above were never planned to reach the Bedouin who live in the dozens of villages dispersed between the government-established urban towns or townships in which 67% of the Negev Bedouin live.”
This problem is similar to the white liberal hypocrisy in the USA. When liberals here decry profiling and stop and frisk, they fail to recognize the apartheid conditions that govern lives of Native Americans, Chicanoes, and African Americans who live in ghettos. The tsk tsk of liberals in the USA mirros that of the left in israel when the Bedouins are portrayed as numerous and threatening, as violent individuals who pose a danger for ttheir own communities and families.
The alternatives in both countries are difficult. he proponents of sensitivity try to teach respect for cultural differences that can harm both the minority and the majority. The American kid who offends his teacher by acting up in class, is not going to do himself any good when he lkater needs a job. Afrocentric schools, now toned down, have taugth a sort of faux elitism that was nto going to serve balck children well.
Things are worse in Israel where the geographic separation has the force of law. How do you respect the rights of Bedouins or Lakota people to be part of the larger society while also respecting tribal rights? This gap is made worse by public bigotry. Avri Gilad,an Israeli the media celebrity, wrote a Facebook post about a visit to the Negev Bedouins :“I’m appalled by what I’ve seen….By force, by shameless criminal activity, with insolence met only by fear and submission, the Bedouin have taken over the entire Negev,” organizations (the non-profit Regavim, for example which under the mission of “protecting the national lands”, works hard to delegitimize and deprive the Bedouin population, and elected public officials, who simply covet Bedouin lands. Their motto is: the fewer Bedouin in a smaller area, the better.”
As in the US, the police in ghetto regions play a dual role. For the majority, policing services keep US safe, police in Bedouin vilgaes or American gehttoes protect US while .. hopefully .. providing police services to the people of their beats. Beeri-Sulitzeanu, asks “How can these two duties coincide? Is it really feasible to expect the police force to adopt a true service orientation toward the very population segment that it considers to be a security threat?”
Amnon Beeri-Sulitzeanu is the Co-Executive Director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a non-governmental organization that works to advance coexistence, equality and cooperation between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.