The Marker, the financial sister-paper of Haaretz, has been closely following the story of the growing attempts to integrate Israel's Arabs in the upper reaches of the economy rather than the lower ones. Some of the reportage is about interesting efforts being launched by government and establishment agencies; some is carping on how great the need and how little being done. The whole thing is beginning to look like what could be a significant change for the better, which would benefit everyone involved.
(Mostly in Hebrew, of course. Such stories don't often get published in English). Here, and follow the previous links.
Also, relating to my previous post, note that Meretz and our radical Left have very little to do with the whole matter. The correctives are coming from a center-Right government, and free-market financial players. Just like you'd expect if you recognized our far Left for what they are.
Yaacov - are you suggested that left-oriented groups (Sikkuy/Abraham Fund etc etc) don't do important work to try and integrate Israeli-Arabs?
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Avraham Fund is particularly Left, but they definitely do fine things. Sikkuy I have a lower opinion of, but I also know less about them.
ReplyDeleteMy point was that real change on this large topic, if it's to happen, will need to come from the big players, not the nice NGOs, and certainly not from irrelevant loudmouths.
That's good to hear Yaacov. Something that gets little coverage is how well Jews & Arabs in Israel have gotten along. Under the circumstances it really has been quite remarkable, in most any other country you'd have been at each others throats long ago. People tend to look at the problems & hurl criticism, but you've been living in an atmosphere of mistrust & suspicion for years and yet you still co-exist, talk with each other and generally manage to avoid serious confrontations.
ReplyDeleteI think the Arabs deserve a fair share of the credit for the relative calm within Israel proper, so it's good to see them getting some kind of recognition for it. (if that's what it is)
Gavin
Who are the irrelevant loudmouths?
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ReplyDelete"My point was that real change on this large topic, if it's to happen, will need to come from the big players, not the nice NGOs, and certainly not from irrelevant loudmouths."
ReplyDeleteThis is staggeringly banal: in other words change will only come when those who have the power to implement change decide to do so. If that's what you call insight, fair play to you.
in my lifetime change usually came when it profited or looked like it would profit those who are in power or in money i.e. they could see it as an advantage to themselves.
ReplyDeleteAs somebody convincingly told me in a talk recently no revolution has ever succeeded when those in power stood firm and UNITED.
if that is right, then NGOs should be most successful in helping the disadvantaged when they manage to seduce the rich and the mighty into believing that there is something in it for them.
Silke
It would be extremely helpful if the NGOs that spend their time worrying and stirring up strife among the WB Arabs allocated their resources to finding more ways to work to integrate Israel's Arab population more filly into Israel's social structure.
ReplyDeleteIt is in Israel's interests to have its Arab minority feel as fully accepted into Israeli society as possible.
The constant picking over issue in Gaza and the WB by these groups only exacerbates a difficult situation, and they would do better to pay more attention to their own back yard and their own interactions with their fellow citizens.
Israel should not permit any of these NGOs to operate in the WB, where they simply create friction under the guise of providing assistance, as if a million WB Arabs cannot somehow build their own house or dig a well without a group of pimply unemployed Western youths telling which end of the shovel to hold.
Akus
ReplyDeletewould you please please give that sermon to the McKinsey & Co. advisors (not pimpled but freshly doctored) who picked up how to fastest copy and paste from one clerk turned around and revealed it as their own superior knowledge to the next while doing nothing about their inability remembering the order of letters in the alphabet.
Silke
Your point about the "center right" government is well taken. For all the complaints against Netanyahu for killing the peace process during his first stint as PM, no one seems to recall this.
ReplyDeleteSocialism is not going to bring about brotherhood and peace in the Middle East. Jewish and Arab workers are not uniting to storm the establishment barricades. That's a development that no seems to have remarked on yet. The biggest historical watershed is the failure of the Marxist "Internationale" to break down class, social, religious and national divisions among mankind.
ReplyDelete