Enemies of the State

JERUSALEM, Israel — In the United States, the issue of “loyalty to the state” smacks of extreme right-wing xenophobia, the sort that characterized, say, the McCarthy Communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

But the issue of loyalty isn’t such a joke in Israel.

Established in just 1948, this small nation has engaged in at least four wars since then, each of which defended and expanded its territories in the midst of hostile neighbors, creating an ongoing, bloody fight for survival. And the random acts of terrorism that were for so long a fixture of daily life in Jerusalem bring that struggle to the forefront even in times of “peace.”

Because it occupies such a precarious position and must constantly thwart existential threats, Israel has no choice but to raise the question of loyalty to the state, especially when at least a percentage of its Arab population wishes for Israel’s dissolution. This is not to say that the issue of loyalty in this small nation doesn’t sometimes exude the same right-wing xenophobia that it does in the U.S.—just ask Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who wouldn’t seem to mind if all of Israel’s Arabs simply disappeared from the population.

Last week, however, Education Minister Gideon Saar made the controversial decision to remove the term “al-naqba” from textbooks in Israel’s Arab schools. “Al-naqba,” or, in English, “the catastrophe,” describes how some Arabs view the State of Israel’s 1948 establishment. While some outspoken leaders of Israel’s Arab community are outraged over the decision on grounds of “repression” of Arab cultural heritage, Israel simply cannot afford to subsidize an education that would encourage children to demonize the state.

Although in recent years Israel might have become a “safer” place to live, it still faces the same existential threat it did over 60 years ago. It doesn't need an internal struggle as well; the external one more than compensates. It makes perfect sense, then, that the government would prevent young Arabs from learning (in schools, at least) to consider the state’s creation a “catastrophe.” And who would fault Israel for doing what it can to prevent a sense of disloyalty from unraveling the very fabric of its existence from the inside out?

But, while we’re on the subject, there’s another story that needs to be told.

During roughly the same week that Saar decided to remove “al-naqba” from textbooks in Arab schools, a real “catastrophe” exploded in the usually quiet, solemn streets of West Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood. There, Jews of the ultra-orthodox Toldot Aharon sect protested en masse the arrest of a mother of five, taken into custody for starving her three-year-old son until he weighed no fewer than seven kilograms. Toldot Aharon is among the most conservative Hasidic sects that constitute Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox Eda Haredim community, and, as an anti-Zionist organization, the sect considers any outside intervention (such as the arrest of one of its members by the “Zionist” Israeli authorities) cause for revolt. Hence the violent demonstrators hurling stones into crowds of nearby police officers and civilians, several of whom were seriously injured.

While it’s a dangerous game to generalize any sect’s religious beliefs, at least a portion of the Toldot Aharon community—just like the Arab contingent that insists on the continued presence of “al-naqba” in school textbooks—considers the State of Israel an abomination, a presumptuous violation of God’s promise to recreate the Jewish kingdom with the coming of the messiah.

In much the same way that it funded—until now, that is—Arab schools that continued indoctrinating their students with subtle hatred for the state, the Israeli government, with generous subsidies, essentially pays for the rioting Toldot Aharon members of the Eda Haredim community as they perpetuate their own forms of hatred and, ultimately, disloyalty to the state. In just this month alone, they have protested, with the same stone-throwing intensity, the installation of a municipal parking lot near Jerusalem’s tourist-heavy Old City that would remain open on the Sabbath; in late June they protested (albeit much more peacefully than they have in years past) the city’s annual gay-pride parade.

In the sense that they have repeatedly opposed Israel’s right to administer its laws in its own land with a startling amount of violence, the Toldot Aharon rioters are hardly different from those Arabs who would characterize the state’s creation as a “catastrophe.” When it comes down to the question of “loyalty,” or, rather, lack thereof, one might think that the Israeli government would show each group the same iron fist.

But that’s hardly been the case.

The government was quick and wise to remove “al-naqba” from the textbooks, but it did nothing other than temporarily suspend Jerusalem buses from running through the rioter’s own neighborhood.

If the Israeli government doesn’t begin to show an even-hand to all those who harbor the same destructive disloyalty to the State of Israel—Arab and Jew alike—the traditional Arab perception of a double standard in Israeli domestic affairs may no longer be unfounded. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

In that sense, if the Israeli authorities continue to allow the Toldot Aharon sect and other anti-Zionist groups the freedom to disrespect the state at will, it might make more sense to just put “al-naqba” back in the books.


James K. McAuley ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Currier House.