Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Youth is Becoming Israeli

This morning I was at a seminar on the history of Arab Jerusalem. Much of the focus was on the 6-9th centuries, though we then raced forward to look at the Mamelukes.

A number of the participants were themselves Arab. At one point late in the day I asked the Arab sitting next to me how common it is if for Arabs to know the minutiae sort of things he and his friends were demonstrating command of, since I don't think secular Israelis would necessarily know as much about their own traditions. Well, he said to me, people from our generation (40-50) mostly probably know this stuff. The youth, however, at least in my town (in the Galilee) probably don't know. They're Israelis, and don't care about this stuff anymore.

This is an anecdote, and may not prove anything. But it's an interesting anecdote.

8 comments:

Michael J. Totten said...

That is interesting. Even if he's only describing a minority of Arab Israelis, no one would have said that in 1968.

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

You seem to be implying that Arab youths are becoming ever more integrated into the Israeli society.

But of course that is nonsense. On Monday, a demonstration in Bat Yam called for the expulsion of all Arabs who live there. And yesterday, a Druze man who had served in the IDF was forced out of a rented apartment in Tel Aviv, and his landlady was threatened with physical violence if she continued to rent out to Arabs.

This would have been unthinkable in the eighties. Anti-Arab racism among Israeli Jews is at an all-time high, however "interesting" the anecdotes you're told.

Silke said...

I-as-a-Jew Fake Ibrahim trying his luck at blog-whoring and/or pimping again

don't click and DON'T FEED THE TROLL

if you want part of the serious info on him you'll find it in Yaacov's profile.

Yaacov said...

You're pathetic, Alberto. Please note that it wasn't I saying it, it was the Arab fellow. I expect he understands his world through his life experience, not thru Haaretz. Second, there's an Arab family in my building, and there was one in the previous building I lived in, and neither of them were ever reported on in Haaretz. Might this reflect a reality in which Haaretz reports on the unusual cases, not on the norm? Most media the world over operates that way. Third, anti-Arab demonstrations in Bat Yam actually reached their peak in the 1980s, exactly opposite to what you seem to think. Finally, please note that when you comment on a post I put up three days ago, you're not likely to attract too many readers, most of whom will have read the original post and won't come back. If you wish to generate clicks on your sorry blog, you'll have to be quicker on your toes.

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

Thank you for the advice, Yaacov. I'll explain this to you once. If I wanted clicks on my blog, I would write comments on Mondoweiss. Not only would friendly readers flock to my blog, but MW has an immensely larger audience than yours. I comment here to expose dishonesty, not to bring any reader to my site.

As I said, the present situation would have been unthinkable in the eighties. You can't point to a single anti-Arab racist letter signed by 36 rabbis from that time; you can't name a single Jewish woman who was threatened with the torching of her building if she rented out to Arabs. The situation is rapidly deteriorating, with more and more mainstream Jews joining in the racism.

Might this reflect a reality in which Haaretz reports on the unusual cases, not on the norm?

It was Ynet, not Haaretz; and your argument about usual & unusual cases is ludicrous. "No one reports on the planes that land safely without crashing"... sound familiar?

A Jewish landlady was threatened because she rented an apartment to an Arab and she doesn't dare to report the incident to the police. My question to you is: do you plan to do something about it?

Silke said...

If I wanted clicks on my blog, I would write comments on Mondoweiss.

forever delusional Alberto José Miraya

at Mondoweiss you'd drown in the crowd, if they wanted to know the Fraudster's stuff they'd turn to Press TV not an I-as-a-Jew Argentinian obscurity calling himself a linguist writing ridiculous stuff about Spanish being superior to English.

Is that why they never apparently invited him to another get-together on Catalan? Once was all they could tolerate?

and yes you come here to pimp/whore hoping you outrage an honest person with something to say so much, that he/she comments on your blog thus attracting making you again the center of "serious discussions"

Yaacov said...

Noted and documented online: when addressed as Alberto, Ibrahim responds. Hee hee.

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

Yup, Yaacov, and I'll tell you how it worked out. At first I didn't like it that you addressed me by my real name. I didn't want to be associated with my comments here, for fear that it would endanger my career.

But then something curious happened -- something you ought to have foreseen. The world, as you have noted in post after post after sophomoric post, is basically made up of incorrigible antisemites. So when it became clear that I was the one behind the comments on this blog, Jew-hating employers came to me with job offers.

For instance, the CEO of Argiesoft wrote me "Congrats for kicking the kikes' ass! By the way, we're launching our Gaucho browser -- wouldn't you like to translate it into Catalan?"

I accepted, and that's what kept me busy from June to November. Now that the project's over, I'm back here commenting again.

I could have just said that I grew tired of correcting you when you called me Alberto, but I prefer to tell it as it is.