Jonathan Kraft

Hello from Haifa, a beautiful port city a little more than an hour north of Tel Aviv. We arrived here on Shabbat, so it was difficult at first to get a sense of how the city works (in Israel, everything shuts down on Shabbat, so it is very, very quiet outside). But the vibe here certainly is more relaxed than in Tel Aviv, which is a nice change.

Haifa is a model of tolerance for the state of Israel. Here, Arabs and Jews live together in relative peace. This would be unthinkable in all but a few places here. From a tourist’s perspective, the mix is seamless. Last night, sitting at a cafe, we were surrounded by both Jewish and Arab tables and the mix seemed as natural as the mix of races does in the United States. But, of course, it is too simple to say that there is no tension between the two groups.

Our speaker in class today was an Arab Israeli professor of law who lectured about minority rights in Israel. Arab Israelis are a kind of lost race, a group that people outside of Israel and the immediate vicinity know little about. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, it offered citizenship to many of the Arabs living within its borders. Of course, some either chose to leave or were kicked out. This is what Arabs refer to as the “nakba,” or “catastrophe,” and was the impetus behind the massive protests a few weeks ago on Israel’s borders (there were smaller protests today to mark the anniversary of the 1967 war). Though the Arabs who remain here today (about 20% of Israel’s population) enjoy a full slate of rights, including the right to vote, the right to political participation, the right to work, and the right to, if they wish, serve in the army (almost none do for obvious reasons), the status of the Israeli Arab today is similar to that of the African American in the 1950s. This is to say that there is an enormous amount of distrust between Arabs and Jews. The question of how to better integrate these people into the population is a hard one. Arabs won’t serve in the army, because they won’t take up arms against their brothers in Palestine. Arabs play on professional Israeli soccer teams, but won’t stand for the national anthem because it speaks of the Jewish homeland. But many Arabs do want to be a part of Israeli society and culture. So the question, then, is how best to break down the barriers that hold these people apart from “mainstream” Israel. It is a very, very difficult question indeed.

A small note; the protests on the Syrian border to commemorate the 1967 war today have remained isolated to that small segment of the country and have not affected anything here, even in Haifa, which is in the north. It just goes to show that in Israel, when something happens, people do not blink twice and keep on living their lives. It’s admirable, and it’s necessary in a place this complicated.