Sermon: Shelach: Israeli Arabs – Citizens to be Engaged

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 2 June 2013

I am fortunate to go to Israel pretty much every year, normally in connection with my work as one of the Rabbis of this congregation.  Each year, like the scouts in the part of the portion which Lilah read to us I discover something new.  Last year it was the quality and value for money of the train system which gets you from the airport to Haifa for little over a fiver in an hour, contrasting with what I always used to do which was to hire a car to get there for vastly more.  This year I properly discovered the quiet Armenian quarter of Old Jerusalem whilst on a walk learning about the Psalms and how their words related to the architecture and topography of the city.  Much cheaper and nicer souvenirs than any other part of the city!
But my main purpose in being in Jerusalem three weeks ago was to make a contribution to the World Union for Progressive Judaism meeting whose leadership has for decades included members of Alyth.   The theme of the conference was for Progressive Jews to have the courage to be the change that we pray for in the world.  The sessions which I presented will appear here in due course but today I want to share something I learned there from another speaker which will come right back here to Alyth in the last weekend in June.
Mohamed Darashwe is an Israeli Arab who grew up in a regular Arab village in the heart of Israel.  His family has lived there so long, that as he told us, more than a quarter of the families in the village shared the surname Darashwe and a high percentage of the boys are called Mohammed – so if you visited his village and asked for him by name you could be directed to any of a hundred houses!  His life and that of most Arab Israelis is culturally different from that of Jewish Israelis – but then there is a  very substantial diversity among Jewish Israelis too – Israel doesn’t melt everyone into one culture.  The Jews of Ethiopian, Russian, Turkmenistani,  British and so many other origins do keep their own culture at least for one generation of living in the Jewish state.

Mohamed Darashwe is the Co-Chief Executive with an Israeli Jewish counterpart of the Abraham Fund Initiative which has worked since 1989 to advance co-existence, equality and co-operation between Israel’s Jewish and Arab Citizens.    This is proving to be a hard task but nevertheless one where some progress can be seen.  One in five of Israel’s citizens are Arab and have Arabic as their first language.  They do live rather different lives to the average Jewish citizen of Israel.  The average rate of neo-natal death for Israeli Arab children is three times that for Israeli Jewish children.  The rate of unemployment among their communities is three times that for Jewish citizens.  Some efforts to encourage full participation in Israeli society are rather half hearted such as that only 2% of materials on Israeli government websites are in Arabic language and fewer than 8% of Israel’s civil servants are Arab.

He is convinced that a brighter more engaged future is entirely possible for Israel’s Arabs if a change in attitude could be promoted throughout the society and throughout diaspora Jews who support Israel.  The change Mohamed Darashwe seeks is for Israel’s Arab citizens to be treated as citizens to be engaged and serviced rather than as enemies to be contained.

One of his most successful campaigns has been for the opening of police stations in Arab villages throughout Israel.  In 2000 there were just 3 – which meant that for an Arab to report a crime or in any way to interact with the police meant a trip to a Jewish town and to a Hebrew speaking environment.  Now there are 105 such police stations in the Arab villages, inside community centres and other municipal locations. Israel’s police force is up from 1% Arab officers to 8% Arab officers.  There were around 250 Arab police auxiliaries in Israel in 2000 and there are now 6000 working in communities around the country.
When Jews dreamed of a Jewish state, and today too when we picture a Jewish state it is very easy, but also very dangerous to overlook that there will always be a substantial Arab minority.  Without being partners together in developing this state we are going to be locked together forever in the kind of country which the 10 spies described – where despite its fruitfulness, despite in our terms today the fact that Israel is one of the thirty most prosperous countries in the world, it will always need fortified cities to defend it from its own citizens.
Though some civil engagement of Israel’s Arab citizens is improving some is going the other way – particularly in the political sphere.  No Arab party in the Knesset has ever been included in the necessary coalitions to form governments over 65 years.  This is having a serious toll on the interest of Israel’s Arab citizens in voting in elections.  Arab turnout in the last national election was just 53% – down from 75% and higher in the early years of the State.  When surveyed to ask why, the reason is pretty united – it is because of lack of access to politicians who will actually make a difference to everyday economic and social life.  So why bother to vote for them?

Some Jewish commentators say that some sort of policy of suppressive containment is the way that Israel should treat its Arab citizens, citing higher birth rates and demographic trands which might otherwise inexorably grow the Arab population to overshadow the Jewish population.  But Mohamed Darashwe very persuasively made the opposite point – 69% of Israeli Jewish women are in the labour market but only 23% of Arab women due there being too few opportunities for higher level education in Arab towns and too few job opportunities.  When Arab women have a university education their birth rate actually becomes lower than that for Israeli Jewish women.  Essentially the demographic issue just follows poverty and lack of opportunity.  And Israel can address that.
Back to our Torah portion for a moment.  So the spies say the land of Israel is unachievable.  The people listen to the ten pessimists and not to Joshua and Caleb the two optimists.  They plead with Moses to take them back to Egypt where slavery will be preferable to uncertainty.    God now knowing that the first generation of the exile lacks the confidence to achieve the Promised land says to them that it is their next generation which will make it – after forty years of nomadic wandering and not just the two years that it has taken them to reach the border.

What comes next?  In next week’s Torah portion rebellion against Moses’ position of power but not before the final chapter of Shelach L’cha (Numbers 15) which starts with the words “when you have come into the land which your Eternal God is giving you” – what then follows is legislation around agricultural offerings, about, as midrash Sifre 111 points out the obligation on everyone, for everyone’s children will get there, to make Challah bread in the promised Land, and finally words which we sing in every morning and evening service – L’maan tizcru – that you may remember that you came out of Egypt and were freed from slavery.  Even if this generation was not going to achieve an Israel at peace, yet God in the Torah account gives them absolute confidence that their children’s or their children’s children’s generation will.

Jews do not give up.  We do not give in to self-doubt.  If we can imagine the Promised Land even at the same time as the spies say it is impossible, then we can imagine peace for today’s Israel with Arab and Jewish citizens living together all engaged in building the state.  Israel in in the middle of dangerous neighbourhood with who knows what will happen if or when the Assad regime in Syria is overthrown and if Egypt lurches towards supremacist Islamicism.  The Jewish state cannot but benefit from the full engagement of its Arab citizens.

Mohamed Darashwe made a recommendation of what Progressive Jewish communities should be doing to help this process.  He asks us to get to know Israel’s Arab citizens, to hear their story, to help pursue their development, to share our engagement with Israel as Jews with them.  And so here at Alyth on the weekend of June 28th-30th we are going to do just that – through our partners at the Leo Baeck Centre in Haifa.  Samia Diab is the Moslem Arab head of community engagement for the schools and community centre in Haifa.  This means that she ensures that underprivileged communities in the city are able to gain access to all that the Centre offers and organises for the High School students to volunteer across the city.  Over the three days that she is with us her at Alyth from June 28th to 30th  there will be many opportunities to learn from her, from the sermons that she will give in our services to an open meeting on the Sunday morning to hear about and discuss the challenges and opportunities of being an Arab citizen of Israel.  If you are with Joshua and Caleb in our Torah portion rather than with the ten spies who could only see hopelessness come and join us.   If the Children of Israel could have confidence that their children would live to see the Promised Land then we too must pursue the dream that sees Israel at peace.