The extinguishing of Hanukkah candles in a Tel Aviv shopping center last week was quickly framed as a scandal, and just as quickly transformed into a symbol. A young Arab-Israeli woman filmed herself putting out the candles of a public menorah, uploaded the video to social media, and within hours the act was absorbed into Israel’s ongoing cultural and political battles.

Yet the incident itself matters less than the debate it exposed. The question is not whether the act was offensive or provocative. It is what kind of protest it represents – and what happens when symbolic disruption replaces engagement with power in a shared civic space.

On the right, the act was framed as evidence of Arab hostility toward Jewish tradition, another sign of an ethnic or religious struggle. On the left, the framing was almost the opposite: a moral gesture, even a courageous one. A prominent commentator likened the young woman to Rosa Parks and described the extinguishing of the candles as a nonviolent interruption of Jewish celebration amid suffering in Gaza.

Both framings miss the point, turning the incident into a clash of identities.

To understand why this event hardens so quickly into identity politics, it is necessary to step back and consider the civic position of Arab citizens of Israel. Arab citizens did not enter the state as immigrants, nor as a voluntary minority, but as a population that remained after the 1948 war – a war that simultaneously........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)