The eyes of those sensitive to discrimination against the Arab population brightened when they saw the headlines announcing an unbelievable development: the World Zionist Congress decided to include Israeli Arabs in the development plan promoted by the Jewish Agency. Just as the Israeli government decides to extend an emergency order that harms the right of Arabs to marry whomever they want, the "Zionist parliament" says that "reducing gaps, coexistence and dialogue" are important Zionist goals.
At the Caesarea Conference, a devastating report was revealed proving that discrimination against Arabs in education, the establishment of industrial zones, investment aid, and wage levels has led to poverty among Israeli Arabs that is three times greater than the Jewish population. And as if in response to that, the Jewish Agency now is purporting to "promote Arab welfare and education."
It's very surprising since it's well known that the "national institutions" - the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund - primarily exist to enable institutional discrimination based on ethnicity while clearing the state from accusations that it deviates from universal norms common to liberal democracies. Indeed, the people most surprised were the Agency functionaries, who called the decision "illogical," because "the basic principle of the national institutions is to take care of Jews."
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For too many years, they got used to implementing discriminatory policies based on the supremacy of extra personal and collective rights granted to the Jewish community - in the name of Zionism. No Jew with an inferiority complex in the Diaspora and with leftist-liberal tendencies is going to make them serve "Arabs, Druze and Circassians." But the opposition was minor, and even unequivocally right-wing circles, for whom Zionism is a nationalist battle cry, didn't get upset. They noticed that the decision might sound pretty, but it has no practically validity.
The decision is another one of many made in recent years to deal with the tensions among the principles of the Jewish state, Zionism and democracy. These decisions include seemingly brave positions against discrimination, but, in effect, strengthen it, because either they deal with the margins of the problem or they cannot implement the suggested solutions. The decisions mostly strengthen the illusion that painful decisions indeed were made, thereby cleaning the conscience and enabling people to feel that justice was done.
A classic example is the High Court of Justice's decision regarding the Kada'an family, which was perceived at the time as dealing for the first time with the principle of equality, confronting the Zionist principle of "redeeming the land," and presenting a victory of democracy over the apartheid inherent to the national institutions' land distribution policies. Those institutions quickly learned how to "minimize the damage" and continue with their discriminatory policy.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz made another "historic decision" in early 2005, when he forbade the Jewish National Fund from issuing tenders for Jews only. And once again, a way was found to circumvent the decision through "land swaps," which only strengthened the JNF as a discriminatory institution with racist policies.
The sharp debate that sprang up whenever there was a threat to the "Zionist" discrimination allows living at peace with discrimination in all the other areas - the economy, planning, education and more - since they do not clash with "the basic principles of Zionism."
The fact that the World Zionist Congress' decision did not spark any debate is perhaps proof that the trick of inflating positions against discrimination, with no practical results, has exhausted itself. If indeed, liberal Jews want to contribute to the campaign against discrimination against Israeli Arabs, they would best enlist in the effort to shut down the "national institutions," whose very existence is the basis for such discrimination. The attempt to harness the Jewish Agency into a war against the gaps is ridiculous.
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