Category Archives: Israel

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Sixteenth in an ongoing series

RISHON LEZION, Israel — “Why hire a non-Jew when you can hire a Jew?”

That was the response of a local bar owner when I asked him, out of curiosity, whether he would hire an Israeli Arab as a bartender or waitress if the person were attractive, friendly, and experienced. Earlier that day, I had asked the owner of a local kiosk — something like a convenience store — whom I know whether there were any local companies that provide cleaning services. For the equivalent of $12 for two hours of work, I could have my small apartment cleaned as often as I like.

The kiosk owner, to my surprise, called out to another shopper in the store and asked him in Hebrew whether he wanted a cleaning job. Evidently, they were friends. I spoke to the other person — a guy who was my age — and he agreed to come over the next evening after we haggled over the price. As I left the kiosk, the owner told me in English: “By the way, he is a very nice guy. A hard worker. But he is Arab.”

—
Arabs, Christians, and Jews

Thirty percent of Israelis are not Jews. Most of the minority are Arabs who are either Muslim or Christian. The remaining people are immigrants from the former Soviet Union — Christians and atheists — who fled the country in the early 1990s and were able to emigrate to Israel because they had at least one grandparent who was a Jew even though they themselves were not Jews. The latter group has become very successful in Israel because they were highly educated in fields like engineering and the high-tech industry. But the Arab community has always had higher levels of poverty, crime, and poor education. Nearly all of them work in blue-collar or service jobs — if they are
employed at all.

When the owner told me that they guy — a 30-year-old by the name of Faiez who works at a falafel stand during the day — was an Arab, I admit that I hesitated for a split second. The American and Israeli sides of my brain were battling each other. The American said not to be racist since the United States has usually been an idealistic, multi-ethnic society — at least in theory, if not always in practice. The realist Israeli in me said to forget about it. After all, I did not really know Faiez — although the kiosk owner said that he was a good guy, this might be a risky endeavor for all the obvious reasons.

Finally, the American in me won. I told the kiosk owner in Hebrew: “What do I care? A good guy is a good guy.”

—
The Israeli Reaction

I was still a little unsure after I had hired Faiez, so I went to ask some Israeli friends at a bar that night for their thoughts. The owner of the place told me that he always prefers to hire Jews. After all, when you want to build a Jewish country out of nothing but sand, it is important to make sure that all Jews are employed and able to survive. (Although, the owner’s statement was not entirely accurate. Some of the waitresses he had hired were non-Jews from the former Soviet Union, so perhaps he had truly meant that he would not hire any Arabs.) Others offered thoughts that were meant as jokes but offered insights into the Israeli mentality as well. “Don’t leave an Arab guy alone in your apartment; he might try to steal something.” “If anything happens to you, we’ll know what.”

Imagine this conversation occurring in the United States, and replace the word “Arab” with “black” or “Hispanic.” For all of the good things about Israeli society, the sad truth is that this country is incredibly racist as well. A recent wave of immigration brought black Jews from Ethiopia to Israel, but other Israeli Jews frequently refer to them with the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word. For people who were born and raised, for example, in the United States or Britain, these attitudes are always shocking because people in our native countries are less racist, and any racism is at least not spoken bluntly and outright in public.

Now, I am not excusing the racism; I merely intend to explain it. As most people know, Israel has been attacked by the surrounding Arab countries since its inception. Waves of Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings swept through the country in the late 1980s and 1990s. In this small country — roughly the size of New Jersey — nearly everyone knows someone who died in a war or terrorist attack. For obvious reasons, this affects people mentally. Israelis my age were preteens and teenagers during the worst of the intifadas. The effects are two-fold: 1.) Many Israeli men have some level of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of military service; and 2.) Israelis have a myopic view that the surrounding peoples — Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and Syrians — are not individual peoples but simply “Arabs” who want to push the Jews into the sea. The racism in Israeli society recently extended to the city of Petah Tikva, which wants to monitor and “help” Jewish, teenage girls who date older, Arab men. (Although, as I noted, there is also crime, poverty, and education involved in addition to racism.)

In just one example: One friend of mine was fired upon while fighting in Lebanon; a few of his friends died. A few years later, he saw a few other friends die when a Palestinian terrorist took control of a bus and plowed them down in the street. You can imagine what he thought when I told him that I had hired an Israeli Arab to clean my apartment.

—
Me and Faiez

So, Faiez came over. He was very friendly, and he did a wonderful job cleaning. I gave him the wage plus a good tip. While he cleaned, we would watch soccer and basketball on television, talk about girls, and he would ask me about my American DVD collection. (For example, how do you explain “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in basic Hebrew? I said, “A girl in high school kills…” and then held up two fingers to my mouth to imitate fangs. He understood and laughed.)

I do not speak Arabic, and he does not know English, so we compromised on Hebrew. But we started to teach each other a few phrases in our native languages. Faiez would see my neighbors — cute, Israeli girls in their twenties — walk by and then make the usual comments to me in typical guy-fashion. He asked one if she needed someone to clean her apartment; she declined curtly and walked away. That same night, he asked if my girlfriend — an Israeli Jew who was born and raised in Jerusalem — was Muslim. I responded, perhaps sheepishly because I did not want to risk offending him, that she was not.

Later, Faiez told me this past week that it is hard for him to meet girls. I was not surprised. Most Israeli Arabs live in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and in a few towns in the northern and southern parts of the country — not here in the central region. I said that there are some dating websites for Muslims — probably even for Arabs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip — and that I would find one for him. But then Faiez said something that made me pause mentally for a moment: “I do not have a lot of friends either. Can I come just to hang out sometimes? You seem like a good guy.”

—
A New Friendship?

My mind did not know what to think. But out of my American politeness (as opposed to Israeli bluntness), I said: “Of course! You are a good guy too.”

After Faiez left, I went to talk to my friends again. First, I called my girlfriend. “Jews and Arabs just don’t become friends here; it just doesn’t happen,” she said. “You should screen his calls, and hire someone else.” Another friend who owns a bar in the city: “You know what I think. If you become friends, do NOT bring him here.” (“Not a problem,” I replied. “He is a Muslim and does not drink alcohol.”) But three other people responded: “A person is a person. Who cares what his religion is? If someone said these things about Jews, we would be angry!” The responses to my situation perfectly reflected the polarization in Israeli society and politics — there is hardly anything between the far left and the hard right.

Since I had originally hired Faiez to clean my apartment and he seemed like a nice guy, I no longer had any concerns about the fact that he was a Muslim Arab. I was more concerned about my personal motivations. Did I hire him and possibly want to become friends with him because he was a poor Arab who needed the money? That would be condescending. Was I considering becoming friends with him out of a desire, to help promote peace in some small way, to build a peaceful, Jewish-Arab connection between two people? That would reduce him to being simply “an Arab” and not a person in his own right. If I would become friends with Faiez, it would only have to be for the fact that he was a nice guy whom I liked.

So, after reflecting on this situation and writing this essay, that is what I decided to do. Now I’m just thinking about what I will tell my girlfriend.

Prior Letter: The Bright Side of Life