08 August 2010

The False Issue of "Race" in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

I don't think there's any question of the fact that there is far far more racism in Europe or in the Arabic-speaking world than in Israel--and that's an understatement.
This is not to say that there are no cases of bigotry in Israel, but first read this important article by Barry Rubin. For many a foreign reader it could be an eye-opener.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you have access to the daily show:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-5-2010/race-card-is-maxed-out?xrs=share_copy

Dick Stanley said...

I like Rubin, and appreciate his work, but I'm suspicious of the claim that there's little racism in Israel. Weren't those Ethiopians denounced at one time as being "mere" converts?

I queried Google on "racism in Israel" and got 3,140,000 hits. The very first one was a Ynet piece from 2007 headlined: "Racism in Israel on the rise."

I do agree that there's probably more elsewhere, and that the US is at least as fixated on the subject as it has been for the past few centuries. At least y'all aren't classifying people by racial content, such as quadroons, octaroons, etc. Course enlightened us no longer do that, either.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Thanks, but how it is related?

SnoopyTheGoon said...

There are several points in Rubin's article. The main is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not racial to start with, and the people that use or try to use the race card in relation to it are rabble rousers.

The other point, the one you have a problem with, is the internal relationships between the different kinds of Jews, where, as I mentioned, there is some bigotry displayed. However, the claim that it is racism and that it's on the rise should be taken with a grain of salt. Because the main index, that of intermarriage, shows the real picture.

Dick Stanley said...

Intermarriage is interesting. It's happening here, too, far as I can tell, to a greater degree than ever before. All the pink people are going to be brown.

Anonymous said...

Even in States, one of the countries the article called "obsessed with race" it's wearing itself out.