The Or Commission After Ariel Sharon as Likud Party leader performed his infamous sacrilege by marching onto the holy site of the Al Aqsa Mosque with several thousand armed police, soldiers and other security forces, setting off a Palestinian uprising that ultimately resulted in the deaths of almost five thousand Arabs and a thousand Jews, the Israeli Government did what it often does after a major occurrence, it appointed a commission to study the matter. The commission was called the Or Commission after its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Theodore Or. Among its findings or recommendations issued in 2003 was the following:
“24. The Arab sector: The committee determined that this is the most sensitive and important domestic issue facing Israel today…The committee determined that the issue has been neglected for many years, and demanded that immediate, medium-term, and long-term action be taken. The committee determined that action must be focused on giving true equality to the country’s Arab citizens… "The state must work to wipe out the stain of discrimination against its Arab citizens, in its various forms and expressions. In this context, the state must imitate, develop, and operate programs emphasizing budgets that will close gaps in education, housing, industrial development, employment, and services…” A sensible-sounding recommendation which made headlines and was duly distributed to all the world organizations that were demanding answers for what had happened. Then, like so many other carefully-crafted and high-sounding reports — nothing happened. Ultimately, it was more Israelspeak. Yet surprisingly, even seasoned observers seemed to have hoped that something real would be done this time. At least that is what I surmise from the tone of disappointment in the report by the Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) eight years after the events at the Al Aqsa Mosque and five years after the Or Report: “In October 2000, 13 people — all except one Arab citizens of Israel —were shot dead by Israeli security forces during demonstrations in the country’s North. As a result of a public campaign led by human rights organizations…, the government decided to appoint an inquiry commission…”The Commission, headed by Justice Theodore Or, published the most voluminous, comprehensive, and momentous report to date on the plight of Arab citizens of Israel. It stated that “achieving equality for the Arab citizens of Israel should be a prime objective of the government…”
"Since the publication of the Or Commission report, little has been done to improve the standing of the Arab community in Israel. Consecutive governments have adhered to policies of discrimination and neglect and have absolved themselves of their obligations toward Arab citizens. In the absence of fair and enforced state policies, inequality continues to grow between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. "Below, we list a few areas in which discrimination and neglect have increased in the past 8 years.” [The list consisted of the usual suspects — you see the full report at http://www.acri.org.il/eng/Story.aspx?id=556.] The ACRI conclusion of course is from a group sympathetic to the plight of the Arab citizens of Israel. But that certainly could not be said of the American Jewish Committee. Yet a study of Israeli-Arab matters funded by it and written in 2008 by Professor Elie Rekhess, a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Tel Aviv, made almost the same point: “The definition of Israel as a Jewish state, with its pronounced privileges for the Jewish majority, created inherent discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens. Socioeconomic gaps between Jews and Arabs widened over the years. Although a series of Israeli governments in the early 1990’s declared their commitment to improving Jewish-Arab equality, their declarations remained no more than political slogans and were not backed by significant action.”
"DEMOCRACY" -- Without Equality Core Values: Equality (U.S.) and Inequality (Israel)… At the core of the Israeli state is the value of inequality — and just as cherished: one group, the Jews, is by law, custom and practice privileged. Almost every Jewish citizen in Israel — right, left or center politically — accepts that, as do the Jews in the Diaspora. Only Jews were allowed as members of the People’s Council which issued the Israeli Declaration of Statehood/Independence on May 14, 1948 in which they “. . . hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish State… The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews…” Israel has abided by that declaration, and gone even further. Not only is it open to Jews, but it is closed to everyone else. It is not a question of what is right and what is wrong for this is not what I am examining. The question is whether the nature and character of the State of Israel bears any resemblance to that of America (and Europe. svh), that is, whether the AIPAC mantra of “shared core values” has any validity… equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex… “We appeal… to the Arab inhabitants to… participate in the up-building of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.” It cannot be said that the Arab inhabitants ostensibly appealed to by Ben-Gurion either accepted or rejected this “appeal,” as they were for the most part at the very moment being chased out of their homes and onto the roads into exile. Even if they had a choice, would anyone expect them to choose to turn over the land of their ancestors to these immigrants? Who would surrender his house to strangers for the promise that he would have a nice room in it, with equal access to the bathroom? The Government of Israel nevertheless took no chances and made sure that those Arabs who by chance did remain had no rights at all, placing most areas where Arabs lived under martial law for the next 20 years. The website for Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, explains what this meant: "Military rule placed tight controls on all aspects of life for the Palestinian minority. These measures of control included severe restrictions on movement, prohibitions on political organization, limitations on job opportunities, and censorship of publications. For example, in 1956, the Israeli army killed 49 Palestinian farmers in Kufr Kasem for ‘violating’ the curfew imposed on their village. Unaware that a curfew had been ordered, the farmers were returning home from working their agricultural lands when they were killed… Up to 1965, attempts by the Palestinian community in Israel to form political parties to run for the Knesset, such as the El Ard (The Land) Movement, were forcibly stopped and their associations outlawed. It would seem from a daily reading of the online English editions of the Haaretz Daily and The Jerusalem Post that in many respects things have not got much better for the Arab citizens of Israel since the lifting of military rule. The promise of equality has not been kept. As seen above, the promise of participation in the government and representation in all governing bodies has not been kept — Israeli Arabs take no meaningful part in their governance,”
aldus de Amerikaanse voormalige rechter Arthur J. Paone in zijn uitgebreid gedocumenteerde boek Israel, Our Frankenstein, verschenen in 2010, waarin hij waarschuwde voor het Joods-Zionistisch extremisme.
Let wel, deze geïnstitutionaliseerde discriminatie geldt voor Palestijnse Israeli’s, de situatie in de bezette gebieden is nog veel erger, zoals Gaza, en de voortgaande etnische zuivering van de Westbank aantonen.
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