Nomenclature

[loic]

Today's coverage of the protests, counter-protests and police response in Umm al-Fahm reminded me of a question that's been popping up in my head for the past couple of years. All of the articles I've seen refer to one set of protesters as "Israeli Jews" and the other set of protesters as "Israeli Arabs". On one side we have a religious grouping on

Comments

[tcpip]

*nods* There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish Arabs, scattered throughout the mid-east and northern Africa. Treating 'Arabs' and 'Jews' as separate nationalities, rather than a nationality and a religion is a terrible fallacy - and often perpetuated by those who want an 'ethnically exclusive' state.

[loic]

Well, it seems like it's also perpetuated by people who want a religiously exclusive state but don't want to admit that too publicly.

Cultural divide

[anonymous]

The divide does seem to be cultural. Most Israelis are not religious.
The term Israeli Arab does seem to be partly defined by what it is not.

Re: Cultural divide

[loic]

The issue is that there are 2-3 times as many Arabs in Israel who are not considered Israeli Arabs.

[accy]

Mum went to Israel in January and was quite surprised at how the (largely SemiticArab) Christian population was treated.

[loic]

It's a fundamentally racist country. That's not unique in the world or in the region, but somehow they get away with defining their national identity and laws to exclude a very large minority from the full rights of citizenship while still chumming around with more enlightened democracies.

I think it'll change, they're a young country. Fifty years into Australia's existence we were taking Aboriginal children away from their parents and not allowing non-whites to immigrate.