ISRAELI ARABS

          We boarded the bus to head up to an area known as the little triangle to visit the Israeli Arab town of Tira.  We met up with Avivit Hai who is the director of the Interagency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.  This is a coalition of 100 American Jewish Organizations that is non-partisan and educates on mainstream issues.  It neither funds projects nor advocates.  Both the URJ and the CCAR are supporting members.  A few years ago I travelled with Avivit to the Negev to learn some of the issues facing the Israeli Bedouin population. This day she was bringing us to meet with different people who are concerned with Israeli Arab issues.

Our first stop was at the Appleseeds Center in the Tira Employment Center.  A panel presented on different aspects of the achievements, opportunities and challenges in regards to employment in the Arab sector of Israel.  To begin we were presented with the accepted reality that there is existing inequality that is not incidental which is bad for Israel both morally and economically.  At the  same time there are both governmental agencies as well as NGO’s that are working to combat these problems.  Our first speaker was Mariam Kabha, an Arab attorney who is the Commissioner of the Northern District of Israel’s Equal Opportunity in Employment Commission.    She told us that the good news is that Arab employment is on the public agenda in both the private and public sectors.  She described much of the present inequalities and some of the steps being taken to improve the situation.  There have been numerous successful suits against discrimination but also other tactics still exist to continue such discrimination.  For example: an employment requirement that employees have had military service, which Arabs do not have, was successfully changed.

          The goal she describes for the country is to have the diversity in the civil sector to reflect the diversity of the population.  She also hopes that the EEOC will become an independent body with authority in the entire labor market. The reason for this is because now they are precluded from suits against government agencies. 

          Our second speaker on the panel was Yael Kahan Sharon the Director of NGO Kav Mashve (the Equator).  “Kav Mashve’s vision is to promote a business environment that is open and provides equal opportunity to Arab university graduates.”  Another goal is to establish a bridge between the Israeli Arabs and the business sector.  They work with the young guiding high school and university students on a course to choosing careers.  Some of this is to be done by more training in the field of technology.  There is also a need to break down geographical barriers.  Training needs to be done among Arabs to learn English which is an essential tool in today’s world of business.  Contacts need to be made and both the interviewers and those seeking employment need to  understand cultural differences that may hinder job acquisition, such as body language and an Arab man not looking directly into women’s eyes.  “Kav Mashve believes that increasing Arab presence in places of employment is a win-win situation for Jews and Arabs alike.”

          The third panelist was Avi Fleischman (??) from the JDC Israel (Joint Distribution Committee.)  They are trying to work to get more Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox into the work force.  They are doing this by creating employment centers in the Arab community.  They now have 7 but hope to increase that number to 20.

          The final speaker of the morning session was Ranin Khateeb Fadila, the director of the Appleseeds Center.    

 Ranin loved studying Hebrew in High School.  She went to Bar Ilan University to study and her special interest was in S.Y. Agnon, Israel’s Noble laureate.  Her abilities allowed her to keep progressing in her employment.  During that time she exhibited a strong aptitude for technology.  She began to teach Arab women about computer skills at the Appleseed Center, which is an NGO helping to overcome some of the technology gaps in Israeli society.  She continues to train many women, especially high school girls.  She had to convince their parents they weren’t coming to the center to Facebook and computer games.  She started another project of training kids to fix computers and go out into the local community and do this for reasonable inexpensive costs.  She told us her motto is “Technology is the door to life.”  They are now working on a project with Intel and the Ministry of Education to bring more computers and tablets into the schools.  Raneen was a very positive individual.  Her siblings also achieved higher education but left Tira.  They were not happy that Raneen returned but she did so to enrich the lives of others.

          Our panel did not sugarcoat the situation in regards to employment in the Arab communities in Israel.  They spoke of the tremendous gap between the Arabs and the Jewish Israelis as well as the discrimination.  What all of them are doing is working to correct these problems in their own ways.  While they may be having some success there is no Pollyanna attitude.

          We split up for lunch in the center of the town enjoying the schwarma, hummus and other common street food.  Some of us had some kanafeh (a sweet melted cheese pastry soaked in sweet syrup) for dessert.

          After lunch we proceeded on a walk led by a teenager to our next destination.  We were unable to visit Al Qassemi College because we were in Tira on the birthday celebration of Muhammed. Many places, especially schools were closed.   Instead we met Dr. Dalia Fadila at her other job as director and founder of “Q Schools.”  Dr Fadila is the Vice President at the college which in the past was known as the Sharia (Islamic law) College.  She has held several positions at the college, beginning with being the first woman on the faculty and the head of the English department but since she has been informed that she will not be appointed president, as they are not ready to have a woman in that position, she will be devoting her time mainly to her Q Schools.

          She received all of her degrees at bar Ilan University and concentrated on minority literature in the United States focusing in the end on Arab writers. Her aim in the schools is to give Arabs positive feelings towards their identity and to recreate the culture.  For her, education is hope and one must put aside their marginalization to create a vision of how things could be.  Education needs to go beyond the simple memorization that is a common pratice.  Her description of the fragmentation of the identity of Israeli (Palestinian) Arabs comes from three issues.  First is the crisis of how they see who they are.  Second is how they relate to Israel.  And third is seeing themselves as a minority, which only began in 1948 when their majority became a minority.  Many act as if they are the majority as if the Abbas Empire is in their backyard, which is an illusion.  On the other side the Israelis Jews, who are the majority live like they are a minority.

          The Q stands for quality and the word schools is plural because Dr. f

Fadilia from the start dreamt and built at other locations.  Beyond identityquetions of the students at Q Schools and surrounded by the teaching of English she is also dealing with culture, human rights, leadership, quality of life, education, women’s issues, institutions structures and resources.  She has created some wonderful texts which deal with many of these while the student is learning English.  In her texts Arab parents provide other models, such as the father in the kitchen preparing lunch and the mother being in a professional career.

          Dr. Fadila said her own perspectives were changed at Br Ilan where she began as an 18 year old student who felt inferior.  With wonderful mentors she learned how to turn weakness into strength and threat into opportunity.  Since 2008 over 2000 kids have gone through her schools.

          She stated that she believes most parents want change and development.  Yet there remains a strong pull towards traditional values.  Very carefully she seemed to be saying that opposite values to those taught in her school are being taught by traditional preachers in the mosque.  While she answered a question by stating that she is not optimistic about seeing Israel treat all its citizens with equality she still believes that she and others must continue to make small changes.

          Unfortunately I need to conclude this posting on a more negative note.  Even with these good and talented people doing what they do, many in Israel still hold deep prejudices such as not wanting an Arab neighbor.  The problem even if there is an eventual two state reality if not rectified will remain as a black mark on Israeli society.