Israeli Discrimination Against Non-Jews Is Carefully Codified in State of Israel's Laws

Washington Report January/February 1998, Pages 88-89

The legal system of the State of Israel can be described as a weird mixture of advanced democracy and retrogressive discrimination, combined with clumsy attempts to hide the discriminatory reality. For example, in all Israeli laws except one, the Law of Return, the word "Jew" does not appear. The term employed when the law gives discriminatory privileges to Jews is that those privileges are granted to "persons who would have benefited from the Law of Return had they been outside the borders of Israel." The Law of Return specifies that its benefits can be given only to Jews. However, Israeli propagandists calculate, correctly in my view, that a great majority of the opponents of discrimination would not dare to criticize this law.

The second trick, especially beloved by the Meretz Party and other "leftist" hypocrites, is to campaign for and then pass a high-sounding law in favor of equality or human rights. Such laws, however, always contain one little paragraph stating that their provisions will not affect any laws or regulations enacted in the past. The high-sounding preambles of the new laws then can be solemnly quoted without mentioning that since discriminatory laws and rules were passed in the 1950s and early 1960s (by Labor, of course), the new laws cannot change the existing discrimination. When one understands those two tricks, one comprehends that Israeli laws, and even more so government regulations on all possible subjects, are full of discriminatory measures which, if employed against Jews anywhere else in the world, would be regarded as anti-Semitic.

The greatest discrimination, regarded as an ideological duty, is practiced with regard to land. Before explaining the legal niceties, let me summarize the ideology involved. It still is inculcated in Jewish schools in Israel, as well as in the diaspora, although increasingly resented because of the increasing competition of Western ideologies and fashions. The key concept of this ideology, established in Zionism from its beginning and much stronger on its "left" than its right wing, is "redeeming the land."

It is supposed that landed property, whether urban or agricultural, in the Land of Israel (whatever its borders are) which does not belong to Jews, privately or collectively, is "unredeemed." When the ownership changes and it becomes owned by Jews, either privately or collectively, the land undergoes magical transformation and becomes "redeemed." (Let me add that these two terms have been taken from the Jewish religious law.)

According to Zionism the most important Jew ish duty is to accomplish this magical change. Even some Zionists have recognized that this duty, as often happens with quasi-religious concepts, is unlimited in every respect.

For example, land owned by a Jewish gangster is "redeemed" land, but land owned by a non-Jew who helps Israel to the utmost is "unredeemed." There is also no limitation. All the land which is "unredeemed" should become "redeemed."

Dr. Irving Moskowitz, the American Jew who buys Arab-owned land in East Jerusalem for occupation by Jewish settlers, is quite right when he says that he acts in the spirit and according to the intentions of the Founding Fathers of Zionism.

Naturally, when Israel was ruled by the true believers in the Zionist faith, its laws and regulations were shaped accordingly, but also with due regard to the needs of Israeli propaganda. The key law is "Israeli Land Law," which set up a government-appointed body called the "Israel Land Authority" (ILA), controlled by a board partly appointed by the government and partly by the World Zionist Organization through its subsidiary branch, the "Jewish National Fund" (JNF), to control all the land owned by the state. A key paragraph in the law states that ILA will administer its land according to the regulations of JNF. The regulations of the latter strictly prohibit all non-Jews from benefiting in any way from JNF land and by this simple trick the Israeli state lands (92 percent of the area of Israel) were removed from the use of non-Jews.

In the old days of Zionist purity, until about 1980, this apartheid system was strictly observed and enforced, but—as also happened in South Africa—it was then found that apartheid, especially if strictly enforced, interferes with money-making. As Israel became richer, especially since about 1987, and as Israeli Arabs also benefited from this enrichment to a limited extent (currently the average income of an Arab family in Israel is 70 percent of the average income of a Jewish family), it became increasingly difficult to prevent Arabs from purchasing flats in the neighborhoods formerly strictly reserved for Jews. Most Jews, at least in the towns, have come to accept the new situation.

The result was that in practice ILA ceased to discriminate in cases involving urban property in the last 10 to 12 years. However, when a concern for "Jewish purity" of an urban neighborhood "threatened by Arab penetration" (or coveted by the settlers, as in East Jerusalem) was especially felt, ILA used to transfer its property rights in that area to the JNF or its subsidiary, Heimanuta, usually by an exchange of land.

The two latter companies, being branches of the World Zionist Organization, have kept faith with Jewish apartheid and, being formally private organizations, can continue to indulge in racism and discrimination. However, since their budgets are, at least in part, paid by the state, and because of many other considerations, the chief of which is the change of public mood, especially prominent under Likud, I agree with the view that if a case involving JNF apartheid were to be brought before the courts, they would, one way or another, disqualify the case.

I expect that the present government will abolish the entire system of discrimination with regard to land in favor of extensive land privatization. Selling most of the JNF- and Heimanuta-owned land will abolish the system of apartheid as practiced and believed in since the beginning of Zionism.

Such a change is being proposed by Ariel Sharon and is furiously opposed not only by the JNF but also by Meretz and most Labor Party leaders. However, since privatization is one of the articles of the new faith of the Israeli capitalist elite, I think that Ariel Sharon will be able to carry out his plans and, incidentally, to strike a death blow to the pure Zionist ideology and faith. It is another example of what Hegel used to call the "irony of history".

Israel Shahak