The Huffington Post received a lot of coverage for its interview
with President Barack Obama. It covered a good deal of territory, but
what's in its headline are the President's judgments about Benyamin Netanyahu
and Israel.
Insofar as this is the
President who preached democracy and equality in Cairo, and came after a
President who went to war in Iraq at least partly for the sake of bringing
democracy to that country, we of the Middle East are entitled to ask if the
White House--and maybe all of the United States--exists on the same planet with
us.
Prominent in the
interview are Obama's comments about Bibi's campaign, and its threat to Israeli
morality and democracy.
What is described as
the President's "deepest discomfort" concerns Netanyahu's Election
Day comments about Arabs going to the polls "in droves."
" . . . that kind
of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel's traditions. That
although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need
to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in
the country being treated equally and fairly . . . And I think that that is
what's best about Israeli democracy. If that is lost, then I think that not
only does it give ammunition to folks who don't believe in a Jewish state, but
it also I think starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country."
I wouldn't have translated Bibi's text messages to include the notion of
Arabs going to the polls in "droves." That suggests something akin to
being driven, like slaves, and coming in great masses in a way to threaten
Israelis who are not Arabs. What Netanyahu or his aides did send as text
messages in Hebrew to the cell phones of Israeli voters concerned Abu Mazan, American
money, and Hamas promoting large numbers of Arabs to vote against him, and
urging people to vote for his party.
One can also poke around the official statistics to measure the quality of
democracy that Israel has been able to maintain in the presence of a minority
that continues to question the country's legitimacy, and has active pockets of
violence within it, compared to the quality of American democracy in the
presence of a minority with its own troubled history.
No doubt African Americans and Israeli Arabs differ in many ways, but
comparing them on important traits does not support the conclusion that
Israel's democracy or society are of a lower quality than those of the US.
Starting with election results (i.e., the focus of Obama's latest complaints),
we see that the Israeli Knesset has a higher percentage of Arabs (14.2) than
the US Congress has Blacks (8.6). To be fair, that may be partly due to Israel
having a higher percentage of Arabs in its population (20.7) than the US has
Blacks (12.6). If we look at the number of minority legislators in relation to
the population of minorities, we find that the ratios in the two countries are
about the same, with Israel scoring a bit better, at 68.6, than the US at
68.3.
It's on a number of social traits where any US President must admit to
shame.
On key measures of health, Israel outscores the US by far. The following
table for life expectancy indicates that Israeli Arabs live longer than
American Whites, and much longer than African Americans.
US White Male
|
US White Female
|
US Black Male
|
US Black Female
|
75.9
|
80.8
|
70.9
|
77.4
|
Isl Jewish Male
|
Isl Jewish Female
|
Isl Arab Male
|
Isl Arab Female
|
81.0
|
84.3
|
78.0
|
80.9
|
A similar picture appears in the statistics for infant mortality. White
American babies die within a year of birth at the rate of 6.8 per thousand live
births, and Black American babies at the rate of 13.2 per thousand live births.
The comparable statistic for Israeli Jews is 2.8 and Israeli Arabs 3.7.
Well know differences in personal security and criminality also suggest
that Barack Obama has more to do than Benyamin Netanyahu by way of improving
the quality of their societies.
The incidence of murder in the US is more than three times greater than in
Israel, 5.0 as opposed to 1.6 per 100,000 population.
The US comes close to leading the world in the incidence of its population
that is incarcerated. There are 707 people in American prisons per 100,000
population, compared to 249 in Israel. African Americans comprise 39 percent of
those incarcerated, compared to their 12.6 percentage of the population.
Comparing Israel and the US on the important traits of education and family
income is complicated by differences in the available measures.
Nonetheless, Israeli Arabs stay in school a bit longer, with 85.9 percent
of age peers reaching the end of high school as opposed to 84.2 percent of
African Americans. Israeli Jews do even better compared to White Americans,
with 92.1 percent staying to the end of high school as opposed to 87.6 percent.
Israeli family income statistics vary not only between Jews and Arabs, but
also within those clusters. The average calculated for various communities of
Israeli Arabs (Druze, Christians, and Muslims) show incomes that are 61 percent
of non-Haredi Jews, but 16 percent higher than Haredi Jews. In the US, Black
family income is 61 percent of White family income, i.e., the same as the
overall standing of Israeli Arabs compared to non-Haredi Jews.
Racism from the left appears to have had a greater effect on the Israeli
election than anything coming from the right. An aging artist, Yair Garbuz,
opened the pre-election rally whose theme was "anybody but Bibi."
Garbuz ranted about "amulet-kissers, idol-worshippers and people who
prostrate themselves at the graves of saints,” who he saw a danger to the
kind of country he could admire. His reference was to Jews, mostly of Middle
Eastern origin, who cleave to a more traditional form of Judaism than is
apparent in the fashionable coffee houses of Tel Aviv. Many of the
"amulet-kissers" live in poor towns where their parents and
grandparents were settled when they came to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s, and
they comprise an important component of Likud's political base. Labor activists
expressed embarrassment and sought to distance themselves from the speaker who
sought to advance their chances, while Likud focused on the condescension and
contempt apparent in the comments, and used them as much as any Arab threat to
attract their likely voters to the polls.
If Barack Obama could profit from such details about Israeli democracy and
the relative qualities of life enjoyed by the minorities in Israel and the US,
he should also think a bit more about settlements, 1967 borders, and a
Palestinian state. The combination of those words has become the essence of an
anti-Israeli mantra. However, with some 600,000 of us living over the 1967
borders, that border (representing an armistice that ended fighting in 1948,
and that lasted for less than 20 years) has passed into history.
If the American President wishes to help the Palestinians, he and his
people should pause before condemning every new construction in post-1967
neighborhoods of Jerusalem or the major settlement blocks.
Pushing the Palestinians as well as himself to deal with realities might
actually produce a Palestinian state, but there may not be many Israeli Jews
willing to bet that either Barack Obama or the Palestinian leadership is up to
the task.
It is also not clear if the leadership of Israeli Arabs is up to the task.
One Knesset Member of the 13 on the United (mostly Arab) List was speaking just
this week of Israeli occupation, rather than the prospects of cooperation for
the mutual benefit of all the people.