By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM–The good news:Israelis like all other countries and its Jewish citizens are like all other nations. Thanks to our sovereignty, we Jews have been able to excel in ways that weren’t possible before – and may not have been possible in the diaspora today, had there been no Israel.
The bad news: Israel is like all other countries and its Jewish citizens seem to be as bigoted as others. Here are some examples, all gleaned from today’s Ha’aretz which, though admittedly critical of the present government, has great journalistic integrity:
1. Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated yesterday in Kiryat Malachi, the town where former state president and now prisoner Moshe Katsav had once been mayor. The demonstrators brought evidence of continued racist discrimination, not only in the town but in many other places and sectors of Israeli society.
As has been said, Israelis are committed to immigration; it’s only immigrants that they can’t stand. Ethiopians aren’t the only ones to have suffered discrimination; Russians at the height of the influx from the former Soviet Union also faced such difficulties, as had others in their day. But the question must be asked: Are the measures against the Ethiopians also motivated by racism, as the demonstrators claimed?
2. The Knesset has just approved a law that will allow authorities to detain illegal immigrants, virtually all of them from Africa, for up to three years without trial. The measure is intended to dissuade foreigners from seeking asylum in Israel. The government is afraid that the country will be overrun by refugees. Question: Would such a law come about had not the refugees been black?
Please note the irony: while Jews, particularly from the free world, are reluctant to make aliyah – some even to come as tourists – citizens of several African countries risk their lives to get here, and then face more hardships once they arrive.
3. An Israeli Jewish woman has been denied to register her marriage to a Nigerian on the grounds that it’s not a true marriage. Question: Would the authorities have reacted differently had her husband been white?
4. Yisrael Beiteinu MK (Member of Knesset) Anastasia Michaeli has been suspended for a month from the Knesset after having hurled a glass of water at another MK, an Arab member of Labour. This was her second offence of physically attacking an opponent; last time it was a woman MK from one of the Arab parties.
Michaeli is an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who wasn’t born Jewish but converted to marry a Russian-born Israeli. Her career includes that of beauty queen of St Petersburg, model in Paris and, for several years in Israel, a TV presenter on the Russian channel. Question: Was she so outrageously abusive because the opponent in each case was an Arab?
Racism is all-pervasive but one would have thought that Jews – by birth or choice – as its perennial victims would know better. Of course, we mustn’t condemn the entire population because of individual incidents. If Israeli society will find a way of dealing with the problem – including punishing at the polls the legislators who may be guilty of helping to enact racist laws – we will know that even though Zionism has made us like all other nations, we’ve not adopted all their ways.
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. He now divides his time between Canada and Israel. He may be contacted at dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com