To give up on Jewish-Arab partnership is to give up hope
Arab and Jewish Israeli activists from Standing Together carrying out a civil disobedience action protesting racial profiling on buses at the entrance to Barzilai Medical Center
Nisreen Shehada and Alon-Lee Green write in +972:
It’s so easy for those in positions of privilege to criticize any action taken by people doing work on the ground as “not radical enough” and to look at the world through a cynical and despondent lens. From that comfortable perch, it’s no wonder that in their recent article, “Let’s stop talking about a false ‘Jewish-Arab partnership,’” Rami Younis and Orly Noy chose not to see real opportunities — and to not believe in change.
We, on the other hand, know that there is hope. We haven’t given up on this place and we haven’t despaired of the people living here. Optimism is a political position.
There are two aspects of Younis and Noy’s article that should be praised. Firstly, even talking about Jewish-Arab partnership, one of the most important political matters to take into consideration these days, is praiseworthy. Secondly, by insisting on separating Arabs and Jews, they unwittingly demonstrate exactly how the right in Israel has maintained its power with its divide-and-conquer strategy and by driving a wedge between Arab and Jewish social struggles.
Their point of departure sidesteps the question of how to achieve change in this land — and who has an interest in achieving it — and is what leads them to the mistaken conclusion that Jewish-Arab partnership is unnecessary.
In the footer of the original Hebrew article, Rami Younis describes himself as a “not nice Arab who believes that Jews need to support Palestinian struggles” and Orly Noy describes herself as “a self-hating Jew who believes that Palestinians must lead their struggles themselves.” Beyond the attempt at humor, the crank bios reveal the pair’s underlying assumptions: the Arab-Palestinians living here have legitimate struggles but Jewish Israelis don’t (and if they do, they aren’t important enough or radical enough). But you can’t push aside the legitimate struggles of underserved neighborhoods and cities, of women, of Mizrahi Jews, of the disabled, public housing, the Ethiopian community, asylum seekers, and others. You can’t write off entire communities and simply declare that they are a part of a “destructive and violent majority.”