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The apprenticeship of Raleb Majadele By Kobi Ben-Simhon Tags: Israeli Arabs, Raleb Majadele  It was a rough summer for Raleb Majadele. Ensconced in his favorite cafe, on Tel Aviv's Jabotinsky Street, he asks for permission to vent. He is fed up with being humiliated. He has felt like a hunted man since he was appointed minister of science, culture and sports 18 months ago. "It's obvious to me that something has lurched out of control," he says quietly. "Since becoming a cabinet minister I have been constantly subjected to minor attacks, bits and pieces of racism, but lately something has changed, it's gotten all out of proportion. I feel that this is no longer my personal issue. It is something bigger." Majadele is still shaken by an article published two weeks ago in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Headed "Minister Majadele Distributes Sweets to Murderers," it reported on his visit to Gilboa Prison for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. The article's description of the routine visit as a "dubious gesture" stunned Majadele. Advertisement "I just can't understand how they come up with these headlines," he says in a tone of deep disappointment. "The visit was to Israeli Arab prisoners and I did not distribute sweets to murderers. I didn't even visit rapists or drug dealers. The purpose of the visit was to give prisoners a holiday gift, a tradition I introduced three years ago, when I chaired the [Knesset] Interior and Environment Committee. There is nothing exceptional about that. I think it is perfectly understandable. I have to live with the reality of my society. My daily schedule begins in the village of Fasuta, in the north, passes through the villages of the Little Triangle [in the center] and ends in Lakiya [in the south]. On the way there are also prisons and prisoners. But if people need reminding: I am a member of the Labor Party, I am not one of those who visits Damascus, Qatar and Beirut. I don't understand what people want from me, why there is incitement against me." Try as he may to understand, his conclusion is invariably that he is being wronged, targeted and victimized for no reason. "There is no doubt that the headline in Yedioth Ahronoth exceeded the bounds of acceptable journalism. You can fool the readers, you can have fun with puns, but there is only one truth," he says. Placing his palms on the table, he continues: "I think that no sane person who read that item could understand what would make an editor approve such an offensive, crass and fallacious headline. The absurd thing is that when MK Haim Oron of Meretz visits Marwan Barghouti in prison, it is described in terms of coexistence. The meeting is given justification and Oron is portrayed as a humane figure when he meets with the enemy. But me they decide to portray negatively: 'Distributes sweets to murderers with blood on their hands,' they wrote about me. Is this what we've come to?" 1. The bad side This is a boiling point in a sea of turgid relations. Sources close to Majadele say segments of the Israeli media are engaged in an "incitement festival" against Israel's first Arab cabinet minister. His character was maligned without restraint or hesitation that, his aides say, it became a trend. His office staff obsessively documents his media coverage, collecting a CD filled with television reports as well as a fat clippings file. Majadele places some of the reports on the table in the cafe. In his view, they exemplify the media's cynical use of its power to harass the weak. Majadele is apparently not exaggerating, it appears as though someone enjoys ridiculing him. The Majadele-bashing campaign began with the Olympics. Even before he went to China, in his capacity as minister of sports, he was criticized for planning to stay too long. "The minister of sports is breaking records again. Majadele will spend two weeks in Beijing at the taxpayers' expense," Yedioth Ahronoth wrote. "Slamming me for the amount of time I spent at the Olympics was ridiculous," Majadele says. Yedioth decided to mount a campaign against me because I went for two weeks instead of eight days. They just forgot to mention that I stayed an extra four days to attend the memorial ceremony for the victims of the Munich massacre. What's wrong with that? If I hadn't participated in that they certainly would have condemned me." The events surrounding the Olympics became a battlefield between Yedioth and Majadele. The next skirmish occurred when he missed the Israeli flag-raising ceremony at the Olympic Village. "How many times do I have to justify myself for something I had no control over?" Majadele says in a perplexed tone. "I wasn't responsible for my arrival at the ceremonies, I didn't manage the car pool or the drivers' schedule. There were officials who told me when to leave, and they are the ones who took me to all the ceremonies. If I had been lounging at the hotel pool, fine, that would be grounds for an attack. But my Chinese driver made a mistake and drove me first to the wrong gate, that's why I was late. Yedioth made it look as though I avoided the flag-raising deliberately. Other media outlets explained why I was late and didn't turn it into a nationalist provocation." Then came the incident when you fell asleep at the ceremony for the Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics. There was a photograph of you sleeping. "I wasn't sleeping. The sun was in my eyes and they closed for a few seconds. Yedioth put that on the front page, but no one else did. The connection the paper drew was clear: The Arab minister, members of whose nation [the Palestinians] murdered the Jewish athletes, is sleeping at the memorial ceremony. That was the message. It's a pity. I know the families of the victims were very angry about that report. They know my sensitivity to their tragedy. Last year, when the Wingate Institute wanted to cancel - for budgetary reasons - its annual race in memory of Amitzur Shapira, one of the athletes murdered at Munich, I intervened and saw to it that the event was not canceled. I think the Yedioth report violated the memory of the murdered athletes. Instead of writing that the Arab minister came to honor the memory of the sportsmen, they turned everything upside down; they turned good into bad." 2. Racists and fascists Majadele is more disappointed than surprised. He did not believe that he, a symbol of coexistence, would become anathema. "I know the racism of Israeli society," he says, crushing two lemon slices in a glass with a straw. "The press is not separate from society. But I expect greater responsibility from the top editors. That's why I met with the editor of Yedioth Ahronoth, Shilo De-Beer. It was the first time I had ever met with a newspaper's editor in chief to complain. There had never been a need. I met with him after the whole series of reports portraying me in a ludicrous, spurious light. What really upset me was that the report about Gilboa Prison - the sweets for the murderers - appeared the day after my meeting with De-Beer." Did you think they would change their attitude immediately? "I thought that maybe he wasn't aware of it. Sometimes the person inside the forest doesn't see the forest the way it looks from outside. I told him I thought he should examine himself. I represent the sane camp within the Arab public, and I believe that kind of reporting hurts the mission we all have of creating a life together. That is how those who incite against me cause harm. There is something dangerous about such headlines like that: They cause a rift and undermine the partnership between Jews and Arabs in this country." Why do you think it is happening? "Maybe that's how the editor wins support for his paper among the Jewish public. Apparently people like to see this type of picture. But we will remain here despite the opposition of all the racists and fascists. The fringe elements will not take us over." Do you feel this is symptomatic of something deeper? "It is symptomatic of a general atmosphere of intolerance, of unrestrained incitement. Channel 10 News turned me into a grotesque caricature. There was a reporter, Guy Lerer, whose rancor toward me came through in his reporting." Some will say that this may be biting criticism but it is still legitimate. "I was surprised to watch Channel 10. I think that showing me fixing my hair before filming and broadcasting it a number of times during the report, showing me asking how to properly pronounce Shahar Tzuberi's last name, constitutes an attempt to portray me in a derisive, unflattering light. I have no problem with criticism, but they have turned me into a figure of ridicule. For example, I see a difference between media outlets that were trying tendentiously to undercut my status, and my character on 'Eretz Nehederet' ['A Wonderful Country']. That was satire and is totally legitimate. We cannot be a democracy without satire. By the same token, if Channel 10 were to criticize changes I am making in the ministry, or my plans and work methods, that's perfectly legitimate. But it's all personal, all derogatory. There is nothing substantive. The Arab public expects me to be treated fairly; their conclusion, in the end, is that their minister is being portrayed like this because he is an Arab. What that tells us is that the Jewish society in Israel cannot tolerate an Arab in the cabinet. My sense is that five years ago such phenomena did not exist, I didn't feel this attitude. Things are becoming more extreme, racism is spreading." Channel 10 issued the following response: "Minister Majadele was mentioned in a number of articles concerning his behavior during the Olympics, in the wake of complaints by the families of the Munich massacre victims and in regard to an examination committee he wanted to establish after the Olympic Games. The reporting was critical but completely businesslike, and of course had nothing to do with the minister's ethnic origin." 3. A different scene Majadele's entry into politics coincided with a historic juncture, when Arabs began joining Jewish parties. Majadele joined the Labor Party's Young Guard in 1978, and recalls his deep admiration for party stalwarts Uzi Baram, Micha Harish and Yehiel Leket, who Majadele recently appointed chairman of the Council for Art and Culture in Israel. "That group fought Golda [Meir] shamelessly," he says with visible pleasure. "She claimed there was no Palestinian nation and they told her that there is a Palestinian nation. They visited our villages and waged struggles for the Arab community. That was a different scene. Their leftist political behavior motivated me to join them." That was a very unusual move. "They didn't understand me at home," he says. "Until then the Labor Party had no Arab members. The surrounding society was also taken aback. But I identified very much with the struggle of the Young Guard. They operated against the Arab Department in the Labor Party, which dealt with Arab voters in the villages. They argued that just as other sectors - the kibbutzim and the moshavim - had a representative in the Labor Party, there should be an Arab representative as well. That was the start of the very special relationship between the Arab public and Labor. Those were moments of genuine partnership for the right reasons." On the other hand, Majadele says he was "very disappointed that Tzipi Livni did not take the Arab MKs into account when she was trying to form a government. That is regrettable, because it makes the country's Arab citizens stop believing in common frameworks. I wanted Livni to call on the Arab MKs to support her on the basis of peace and equality. She should have shown leadership and brought them in, but she did not want to. As a result, she deepened the pattern of life in Israel whereby the Arab citizens have no part in the Jewish state. She missed an opportunity to restore political sanity to people." The upcoming elections are likely to take Majadele out of the game. Public opinion polls are predicting a poor showing for Labor. He fears that the 19th spot on the party's list of Knesset candidates, reserved for him as a representative of the Arab sector, is not high enough to get him into the next Knesset. "The last thing we need now is elections," he says. "I don't know what we've come to. What bothers me the most with the whole thing is that none of the political players kept the good of the country uppermost in their minds. The decisive factor was narrow considerations. This election campaign will freeze the peace process with the Palestinians and the Turkish-mediated contacts with the Syrians. After the Lebanon War we learned that only a peace process, and nothing else, brings quiet. We're going to waste NIS 2.5 billion on the elections instead of investing this money in culture and aid to the needy. Shas foiled everything and now everything will have to wait: [the fight against] poverty, violence and racism." Majadele, 54, married and the father of four, lives in Baka al-Garbiyeh, where he was born and raised. He was the eldest of fourteen. "My father was a businessman and a farmer," he relates proudly. "He raised sheep and also ran a butcher shop. He had a great many occupations. We did not grow up in economic comfort. There were hard times and less-hard times. There were periods when eight children lived in one room. But we survived and we were happy with our lot. I began to help out from a very early age. By fifth grade I was already harvesting crops, milking cows and herding sheep." Majadele's childhood, in the 1960s, was dominated by the military rule under which the Arab villages of the Triangle lived at the time. "As the eldest son of the butcher shop I brought meat to the home of the military governor," he says with a smile. "I was always happy to go there; I was never afraid of the soldiers. I never witnessed shooting or violence from them. As a boy I didn't know about the massacre in Kafr Qasem, for example. [In 1956, Military Police shot and killed 49 unarmed civilians from the Arab village for violating a curfew of which they were unaware.] "As far as I was concerned, the military regime was administrative policing. Even though it was a hard time, I did not feel the burden of the military government. Until the end of military rule in 1966, freedom of movement was controlled. People who were ill, or desperate for work, couldn't leave their village without the governor's authorization. Life wasn't free. Everyone was against the occupation, but the village was divided between families who resisted actively and politically, and those for whom opposition remained at the theoretical. My family was in the latter group." Majadele became an activist at a young age. In 10th grade he led a demonstration described in the press as "the revolt of Baka al-Garbiyeh's Arab students," he says. "Our school was built on pillars. One winter, access to the classrooms was blocked by a huge puddle and the students and teachers had to walk over planks laid on cinderblocks. The situation was unbearable, so I organized a demonstration in front of the village council office. Dozens of students came from the school. I remember they called in the police. For some reason they interpreted our innocent protest as nationalistic. It all ended well. The director general of the Education Ministry, Major General (res.) Elad Peled, came to the school, heard us out and decided to fix the problem." 4. Histadrut hothouse After high school he enrolled in a teachers' college. "I wanted to be a physical education teacher," he admits with a little embarrassment. But when offered the post of executive secretary of Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed (a Histadrut labor federation youth movement) in Baka al-Garbiyeh, he left school. "I organized social and community activities for the young people in the village, and in the end I found them jobs," he says. "Back then huge numbers of students dropped out after eighth grade, especially in the Arab villages. I got them to study mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. I went on to become head of the labor council in Baka al-Garbiyeh and nearby Jat." Politics did not interest Majadele, who by then was 23. "The youth movement was affiliated with the Histadrut, which had a social mission," he says. "At that time I didn't even consider the possibility of entering politics, certainly not of joining the Labor Party. That wasn't what I wanted. Labor had a very poor image and was connected to Arab satellite parties led by the old generation. That was a generation of yes-men, politicians who looked after their cronies instead of society." The Histadrut, though, was a hothouse in which Majadele learned the ins and outs of politics. He gradually made his way up the winding corridors of power in the national union. His breakthrough came in 1994, when he was elected to the Histadrut executive and made head of the union's education and sports department. He held the position for two consecutive four-year terms. Concurrently he was a member of the Olympic Committee, served on the executive of the Sports Federation of Israel, was in charge of the Hapoel sports clubs in Israel and was chairman of the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club. In July 2004, after 29 years of Histadrut activity, Majadele entered the Knesset following the resignation of Avraham Burg. A few months later he was elected chairman of the Interior and Environment Committee, in an internal party election, raising a furor in the party. "People were a bit angry at me because I defeated Amram Mitzna," Majadele admits. "I can understand that. It was no simple matter to have an Arab MK who has been in the Knesset only five months defeat a legendary mayor [of Haifa] and former GOC Central Command." Mitzna said after his defeat that those who voted for you "were revealed in all their emptiness and nothingness." "He claimed I was an unworthy choice. His words were disproportionate and inappropriate for a person like him. It was a bit of a racist reaction but was spoken out of anger. I judge it differently." Why is that? "I believe there is a great difference between a remark like that and racist comments about me that reflect a fundamental political position and are spoken quietly and calmly." Are you referring, for example, to MK Esterina Tartman (Yisrael Beiteinu), who described your appointment as Israel's first Arab minister as "the wielding of an ax against the tree of Zionism" and said "we must remove the blight from our midst"? "Yes. In my opinion, the public should have condemned her. I expected the democratic bodies to express revulsion at such statements, but that didn't happen. The [Knesset] Ethics Committee let her off after a discussion. The implication of what she said is that there is no place for the Arab minority in Israel. But in my opinion this is first of all a problem of Jewish society, even if the Arabs are the victim. Racist manifestations in Europe, such as the [Joerg] Haider phenomenon, are deplored here. And rightly so. But we cannot teach them democracy when similar racist utterances are given a free platform here." Who do you blame for this? "In my opinion the government and the law enforcement agencies aren't doing their job against demonstrations of racism. Every manifestation of racism that is not dealt with today validates future racist actions. If the Tartman episode had been dealt with properly, maybe MK Aryeh Eldad [National Union-National Religious Party] wouldn't have said 'if the police don't deal with the events in Acre the Jews will have to take up arms.' I consider this to be incitement to murder. He sent the Jewish public to defend itself with firearms against the Arab public. That is appalling. Naturally, he was neither questioned nor prosecuted. It's alright for a Jewish MK to say things like that. Imagine the reaction if an Arab MK had suggested to the Arab public that it defend itself with firearms. He would have been arrested the same night. It must be realized that the wild fringes are nourished by this bad atmosphere. It is against just such a background that social disturbances of the kind we saw in Acre are ignited. "There are moments of trouble and anger, but we must not allow them to take control of us. There is no other way but coexistence. The majority who believe in life together must take the lead and not allow fringe elements to lead them. The wild, racist fringes must remain a minority. I believe that events such as those in Acre could not occur in Haifa. Not a chance. In Haifa there is a foundation for life together. The mayor, Yona Yahav, says at every opportunity that the mosque is part of his city's landscape. That approach should serve as a model for emulation, as it leaves no place for the fringe elements to cause trouble. In Acre, regrettably, the leadership did not prove itself to be of that caliber." Majadele also maintains that government policy in the West Bank helps foment racism in the Israeli society. "The government cannot broadcast a message of peace with the Palestinians by on the one hand negotiating with them and on the other hand giving the extremist settlers free rein. There cannot be one law for us and for the settlers, and another for the Palestinians. In this light, there is no cause for surprise at comments such as those heard earlier this week, when Jewish settlers said they hope IDF soldiers rot like the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit. People must understand that racism here begins against the Arabs but ends against the Jews." 5. Meeting place After a year and a half as minister of science, culture and sports, Majadele is still adjusting to his new job. It has not been a smooth ride. His attempt eight months ago to get rid of the head of the Culture and Arts Administration, Micha Yinon, failed. Unusually, it also led dozens of directors of cultural institutions to unite against Majadele. They viewed his move as an attempt to oust a recalcitrant professional who was protecting their interests. Nor were they alone: Deputy Attorney General Michael Balas also attacked Majadele's actions. The dispute simmered until about a month ago, when the heads of the country's cultural institutions were invited to a meeting intended to rebuild mutual trust after a three-month break in relations. "We had legitimate disagreements," Majadele says, downplaying the depth of the rift. "Regrettably, every budget shift hurts someone. It's a pity that there is no culture law on the books here and that the budget is not bigger. When I wanted to take affirmative action in favor of Arab society and the periphery, clearly it was going to come at someone's expense in certain cases. Not everyone liked that." In the meantime, Majadele learned a thing or two from the battle - and also fell in love. "It's a position that became available, I didn't choose it," he says while explaining his initial difficulties in the ministry. "But today, if asked to choose a cabinet portfolio I would certainly say 'science, culture and sports.'" Despite the difficulties? "Yes, because I think that these are three areas that truly reflect the shared life of Jews and Arabs in this country. It took me time to grasp that. Today I could not choose a better place to be. I am happy to be here. Two days ago I returned from a visit to the particle accelerator project in Geneva. I met scientists from Pakistan and Jews and Palestinians working together. We have Arabs on the Israeli national soccer team and Jews who play on Arab teams. In the music festivals, Jewish and Arab culture intermix. Culture makes for sanity. It is a place of meeting between peoples. I feel that here I can best advance my worldview, namely that even though we are different we have a common Israeli culture." 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