Israel’s Mizrahi Activists Are Fighting the Racist Nation-State Law
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Mizrahi Jews in Israel (“Arab Jews”) join Palestinian citizens of Israel in campaigning against the explicitly racist nation-state law.
Author Jen Marlowe also harks back to an earlier struggle of Mizrahi Jews in the Black Panther movement of the early nineteen-seventies.
This article was originally published by The Nation on Wed 27 May 2020. Read the original here.
Israel’s Mizrahi Activists Are Fighting the Racist Nation-State Law
Echoing the country’s Black Panther movement of the early 1970s, they’re challenging the false binary of Arab vs. Jew, which the law strengthens.
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I reread the text of the Nation State Law and I can’t find anything that discriminates against people who aren’t Jewish or people who are Mizrahi. There is: “The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.
C. This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.”
How does this discriminate against Palestinians or Mizharis? Does making Spanish “special status” in the US discriminate against anyone?
Why does this article about Mizharis protesting with Palestinians against the Nation State Law quote only Mizharis who are working with the Palestinians? How do other Mizharis in Israel feel about the Law? Over 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab & Muslim countries after 1948. Golda Meir wrote in her autobiography that the new state of Israel took them in along with the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe and treated them equally.
At the time of the founding of Israel many people wanted Yiddish to be the official language because it was the common language for many Israelis, who were Ashkenazi. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews don’t speak Yiddish. Hebrew was chosen because all Jews know Hebrew as they pray in Hebrew.
Clio Finch, “I reread the text of the Nation State Law and I can’t find anything that discriminates against people who aren’t Jewish or people who are Mizrahi”.
I suggest you read it again, starting from its opening paragraph, unless when they refer to “the Jewish people” they include the Palestinian citizens and other non Jews residing in the state.
BASIC LAW: ISRAEL – THE NATION STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
(Basic Principles 1. (a)The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.
(b)The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
(c)The exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.