Posts
Why Didn’t You Tell Me You’re An Arab?
By leila segal / April 3, 2009
January 02, 2009 Amir is not his real name, although that’s what’s written on his business card:Taxi Amir. I never find out what his real name is. Amir’s a Muslim from Palestine but his mum was born in Jerusalem and eight years ago he got Israeli ID. We’re driving back from Bethlehem. Amir’s ID allows him to cross the Palestine-Israel divide in the hills by Beit Jala and Walada. Amir moved recently to Jerusalem where he worked on the buses, cleaning, picked up Hebrew, and started driving a taxi round the city and beyond. ‘I saw I had to learn Hebrew very good and very fast,’ he says. ‘So I listened and asked questions and then I learned to read. I took anything with Hebrew on it and at first I couldn’t understand – I just looked at the words – but I learned bit by bit. Now I read a Hebrew paper every day.’ It’s not that easy for Amir, getting fares. The other day a woman of about 50 jumped into his cab and they were driving along and a couple of lights in he puts the radio on – just softly. It’s Arabic, though, the music that’s coming out. ‘Oh my God!’ says his passenger, throwing open the door. ‘You’re an Arab! Why didn’t you tell me you’re an Arab?’ And she’s gone without even paying the fare. A lot of people assume Amir’s Jewish. His Hebrew’s perfect, but it’s more than just the words you use – it’s the confident way you say them that makes the difference. We stop at a checkpoint on the road from Walada to Jerusalem. Amir winds down the window and addresses the soldier: ‘Ma hamatzav achi–what’s up brother?’ It’s pouring with rain and the soldier glances briefly at me in the back. ‘Tayeret’ says Amir – she’s a tourist. The soldier waves us through. ‘You have to speak to them first,’ Amir says. ‘Then they relax. If I’m just sitting here silent the soldiers get scared and take the whole car apart. I’ve been through here with four people in my car and they let us pass. Another time, I was alone and they opened everything – it was 20 minutes before they let me go.’ Then there was the couple in their 30s. Amir was cabbing one day in Jerusalem, downtown. His Arab cabbie mate was up ahead – there was a queue and Amir told the couple his mate was first. ‘We don’t want him, he’s an Arab,’ they said. ‘We’ll take you – we want a Jew.’ It’s not easy to tell what Amir is. There are no special identifying signs. His taxi has yellow Israeli plates, and its only adornment is an air-freshener, swinging the colours of the US flag. Amir himself is dark, semitic, but not too dark. He’s 26. His mother wants him married soon – his younger brother’s a father already, at only 23. It’s just not easy finding her – the right one. But girls like Amir, they really do. There was this woman, only 22, who took the the cab especially for him. There was a line of cabs all calling her – Taxi! Taxi! Monit! She’s strolling along and they’re all calling to her and she ignores them, every one, until Amir. This fine-looking woman spots him, stops and saunters back, bending into the window as he winds it down. ‘How much to L–’ she says. He tells her 50 shekels. Much too much. Wants to make sure she’s getting in for him. ‘That’s cool.’ She jumps into the front seat. And they’re just sitting there talking and she’s all, how old are you, what do you like doing, where do you go? Are you married? Do you have any kids? After a while, she says, ‘So where are your family from? Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq?’ And he says, ‘No, I’m an Arab, they’re from Palestine.’ She just sits there, frozen, arms clamped rigid to her sides: ‘Oh my God! I would have started something with you right now. I thought you were a Jew.’ 
POST A COMMENT
I believe Alcove-One was being sarcastic.
Actually, they did have input. Only they rejected it in 1948, rejecting the UN’s plan and opting instead to wage war on Israel. The Palestinians had a choice. They chose to be murderers. So they spurned every other option in the process.
As for Law of Return, Palestinians and Indians being natives of their native countries, unlike Jews, I’ll disagree. I find it utterly irrelevant whether or not a Jew was born in Israel; for 2000 years, we’ve been praying three times a day for a return to Zion, whereas Islam hasn’t even existed that long. As Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook used to ask, after how many years does a thief gain legal possession of that which he steals?
And witness the following quote from Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner (an early 20th century Hungarian Orthodox zionist), quoted from http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/Dor4/zionism.html:
It is clear, then, that anyone who does not believe in the future of the Jewish people in its historical homeland twists the Torah from its plain meaning. That is why when a Gentile comes to convert to Judaism he must first pledge solidarity with the Jewish people, as in the words of Ruth the Moabite: "Your people shall be my people, and your G-d my G-d" (Ruth 1:16). My opinion, then, is that the proclamation that it is possible to belong to the Jewish faith while also belonging to the Hungarian, German, or Slavic nationalities is absolute heresy and that the prohibition against such heresy is of such severity that one is obligated to be killed rather than to transgress (yei’hareig v’al ya’avor). I therefore cannot understand how our rabbis, the leaders of the Hungarian Orthodox Jewish community could have officially announced that the Orthodox Jews uphold Judaism as a religious community, but that they have nothing to do with the Judaism as a nationality, that they see themselves as Hungarians of the first rank and perceive no distinction between themselves and the ethnic Hungarians except their religion. In the annals of the Jewish people this proclamation will remain as a disgraceful, indelible stain on Hungarian Orthodoxy.
It is wrong to see the Torah as a simple religious law for the following reason: all obligatory religions stand on the foundation that they alone entitle a person to reward and they therefore aspire to gather to themselves the hearts of all mankind, whereas the Torah of Israel, the law of a national state, excludes members of other nationalities from the group that must fulfill its religious laws while also admitting that not only the Jewish religion grants reward but that everyone who believes in the Master of the Universe and fulfills the Seven Noahide Laws can be rewarded.
It seems to me that I have said enough about the question whether we are a nation or a religious community. The discussion can be summarized in a short sentence: We are a people with national aspirations, to a land of our own and a language of our own, and if we ceased to be so, or if we relinquished our nationality, we should cease to be a religious community.
The highest criterion of an authentic religion is a supreme religious authority, which in Judaism is found only in the land of Israel and by virtue of the semiha (ordination). Whatever has been established in this area in the Diaspora is only a temporary expedient.
Not only is greater than 50% of Israel’s Jewish population descended from refugees of other countries in the Middle East, but since Yasir Arafat considered a State of Palestine to be the patrimony of the great Arab watan, or "homeland", I think it’s fair to say that those Jewish Middle Eastern refugees (and their descendants, to use the UNRWA/Palestinian definition) qualify as "natives" too.
The problem with cats is they’ve got no facts.
20 bucks says kitty didn’t even know that Jews lived in the Middle East during the period between the Roman expulsion and the First Aliyah. I’m willing to bet that’s a typical presumption among most believers in the Original Sin theory of Jewish responsibility for British guilt over colonialism. Which is, like, the whole country.
Are you referring to the more than 50% of the Israeli Jews who immigrated (ie were kicked out) from Arab countries? It actually sounds a lot like the India Pakistan situation to me.
Hei Leila
I fully agree withAlcove-One that Jews / Israelis made Amir……Very sad…Its not only a short story but a big lesson for the whole world.
You forgot to tell her that the Jews are mostly immigrants and the Palestinians all natives.
Unlike Pakistanis and Indians, all natives.
And that unlike Indians and Pakistanis, the Palestinians had no input in the decision.
And that India has no Law of Return based on being Hindu/Muslim nor does it prevent anyone from coming home.
The next time you meet an Indian, be sure to ask them what they would think of the Jews who had lived in India for 2000 years, leaving for their spiritual home. And how Indians would have received millions of foreign Jews who wanted to form a Jewish state in India in 1948.
The trouble with cats is that they’ve got no tact. - P. G. Wodehouse
I just visited my old high school the other day, and I chatted with my old computer science teacher and the technology coordinator (hereafter: TC). Usually, I end up discussing Israeli politics with them, and this time was no different.
My teacher asked me how Israel’s been, and I proceded to lay out the politics. I reiterated my standard policy, that I have nothing against Arabs qua Arabs, and that in fact, any Arabs who pledge loyalty to the state and renounce terrorism, may avail themselves of equitable ger toshav status (sojourning gentile; see Leviticus 25:35). However, I said, given that the majority of PA Arabs support terrorism (see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130737), and given that every failed chance we give them for peace means only more dead innocent Israeli cafe-goers, I said that I have no more patience for more attempts at peace. I say, pay the Palestinians for their property, and ship them off elsewhere. Following 1948, almost one million Jews were expelled from Arab countries without any compensation whatsoever (the property they lost is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and four times the size the size of Israel). So we’ll do the same to the Arabs, but this time, we’ll compensate them equitably. Population swaps are sometimes the only thing that works.
My TC told me the story of her husband, however, who knows a Palestinian family in Haifa that he almost grew up with, where he’s eaten since childhood. I said that I regret having to do this, but as I said, the majority of Palestinians support murder, and it’s too difficult to separate the wheat from the chafe. She couldn’t really argue with me.
Then, this past Sunday, I was on a bus from NYC sitting next to a MD woman whose family is from India. We had much the same discussion, except that I added a historical parallel: I said that just as India and Pakistan had a population swap (tragically, a bloody one), Israel should have one too; the Arabs gave us our Jews, so let us give them their Arabs. She completely sympathized with me, given the state of affairs in India today. She’s not as soft on terrorism as many today are. I told her that surely, G-d would prefer that the Jews and Arabs live
side-by-side in peace, but that since the Arabs have rejected this, we
have no other option but to draw a solid line between us; we must
destroy solidarity and neighborliness, but at least no more deaths will
occur; let the Palestinians desire our deaths even as they live far far
away. She couldn’t argue against me.
Wanna post your own comments? Gotta log in first!