Haaretz earlier this week published a response by Oren Yiftachel and Thabet Abu Rass to Orly Noy’s article in which she explained why she doesn’t participate in the demonstrations against the Judicial coup.
Both Yiftachel and Abu Rass asked Noy to “meet above the line of democracy.” Even though they’re aware of “Noy’s claims and of other influencers on the Palestinian issue, such as Hanin Majadli who asserts, rightly so, that many of the protesters only want to maintain Israel’s ethnocentric supremacy,” they believe “an active and leading Arab-Jewish bloc must be created that will be able to outline a new democratic horizon between Jordan and the sea.”
Despite their good intentions, Yiftachel and Abu Rass’ request ignores several issues. First, it ignores the shaky infrastructure on which relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel are built, which is a result of the endless frustration among the Arab society over the Jewish government. The outcome of this is a lack of motivation, trust and a sense of belonging and citizenship. These in turn create suspicion in everything that has to do with cooperation.
Protest is an expression of intense emotion that cannot be faked. Yiftachel and Abu Rass should ask themselves: What causes so many Jews to show up in masses for the demonstrations, in a wonderful and enviable spectacle? The answer is their sense of panic as they realize they’re no longer the landlords. Even if I try really hard, it’s a feeling I just can’t fake.
Yiftachel and Abu Rass further claim that “without the Arabs, the democratic bloc has no chance of stopping the [judicial] coup, nor of winning the next elections,” but the desire to artificially create a Jewish-Arab bloc ignores reality.
Many of us remember very well how the representatives of the so-called democratic parties, the hope of the protesters, disowned the Arabs in a series of campaigns. It’s no coincidence that the leading slogan now is “We are brothers.” The cousins will wait until next time.
Yiftachel and Abu Rass also claim that for the first time in 75 years, there’s a protest in Israel in which the demonstrators are demanding democracy, and that this alone is a valid basis for cooperation and organization of civil society against governmental tyranny.
The problem is with the concept of “democracy.” Arab society believes that the main demand of the protest is to stop the legislation. But even if this is achieved, it doesn’t mean that we return to democracy. After all, even in that democracy, Arab citizens – not to mention Palestinians in the West Bank – were discriminated against. Therefore, the fear remains that the use of the term “democracy” hides the same diagnosis that Ahmad Tibi proclaimed: even if the judicial coup is stopped, Israel will still be a democratic state for the Jews and a Jewish state for the Arabs.
“A huge protest that brings hundreds of thousands to the streets in the name of democracy cannot ignore disadvantaged minorities, and they cannot ignore the protest either,” Yiftachel and Abu Rass write, as if they don’t notice that these hundreds of thousands do indeed ignore disadvantaged minorities. For them, the deprivation of Arabs is but an accident, collateral damage, and not a deliberate policy that requires fundamental reform. If the demonstrators were really demanding democracy for all, the protests wouldn’t have taken place in on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street, but mainly in Umm al-Fahm, Lod and even at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate.
Israeli Protesters Can Demand Democracy for Arabs Too
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17.04.2023
Haaretz earlier this week published a response by Oren Yiftachel and Thabet Abu Rass to Orly Noy’s article in which she explained why she doesn’t participate in the demonstrations against the Judicial coup.
Both Yiftachel and Abu Rass asked Noy to “meet above the line of democracy.” Even though they’re aware of “Noy’s claims and of other influencers on the Palestinian issue, such as Hanin Majadli who asserts, rightly so, that many of the protesters only want to maintain Israel’s ethnocentric supremacy,” they believe “an active and leading Arab-Jewish bloc must be created that will be able to outline a new democratic horizon between Jordan and the sea.”
Despite their good intentions, Yiftachel and Abu Rass’ request ignores several issues. First, it ignores the shaky infrastructure on which relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel are built,........
© Haaretz
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