Israeli experts shed light on inequities for Arab citizens

j. - The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California
June 8, 2007
By JOE ESKENAZI

Despite whatever boffo deal you may have scored at Costco, the bottom line is, you get what you pay for.

That was the message behind a detailed lecture given by Israeli Arab Knesset member Hanna Swaid to a crowd of 50 at the downtown San Francisco headquarters of the Jewish Community Federation. As Swaid revealed, the bottom line is, Israel spends 4,935 shekels yearly on every Jewish schoolchild — and only 862 shekels on a non-Jew.

Along with Hebrew University professor Yossi Tamir, Swaid, a former mayor of the Arab town of Eilaboun in the Galilee, has been crossing the nation speaking about the plight of Israel’s Arab minority. Along with their June 6 stop in San Francisco, they also spoke twice in New York and once in Los Angeles.

The pair are guests of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues, an organization made up of more than 70 Jewish entities ranging from the Anti-Defamation League to the New Israel Fund to the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements.

The task force’s raison d’être is to inform American Jews of the hard realities of Israeli Arab life — Rabbi Brian Lurie, the former JCF director and longtime advocate for Israel’s minorities, noted that far too many American Jewish leaders don’t realize that more than 20 percent of Israelis are not Jewish. Indeed, Swaid’s PowerPoint presentation started with that 20 percent figure. Then the numbers became distressing.

Arab students receive 15 percent fewer teaching hours per pupil than their Jewish counterparts. Their dropout rate is twice as high. Far more 3- and 4-year-old Arabs are not enrolled in non-mandatory preschools, primarily because the cost is prohibitive for Israel’s poor. That leaves the door open for other organizations to offer these services.

"Private organizations — not welcome ones, mainly Islamic religious organizations — step in," Swaid said. "And you know, there’s no free service in the world."

In other words, for far too many, the price of kindergarten is indoctrination.

For the Israeli Arabs fortunate enough to attend college, they’ll find that fewer than 8 percent of their fellow students are non-Jews, and only about 60 of Israel’s 6,000 to 7,000 university faculty are Arabs.

And for the Israeli Arab who beats heavy odds and graduates from a university — welcome to unemployment. Fewer than 70 percent of Arab men are working.

Tamir, the former head of the Israeli equivalent to Social Security, said Israel must hurry to address the woes of its Arab population, which is falling further behind even poor Jews, despite government aid programs. "Fifty percent of unemployed young adults live in the Arab sector. Those people are our future," Tamir said.

"We need to move people into the labor force and get some kind of retention and some kind of wage mobility or we won’t be able to take this population out of distress," he added.

Both men emphasized that this is a complex situation with no quick fix or single root cause. Still, it’s hard to ignore the domino effect of impoverished Arab municipalities that barely have the funds to pay their employees. It’s a situation that Swaid, as a former mayor, is all too familiar with.

The municipalities are so poor, he pointed out, that they can’t even accept money. Under the current Israeli system, the federal government will contribute 75 percent of aid money provided a municipality foots 25 percent of the total. For municipalities too poor to contribute, the federal money is withdrawn and given to wealthier communities.

"This brings about a vicious circle. You are poor, you cannot match, you don’t have budgets, hardship increases and you have poorer communities. And so on and so on," Swaid said.

As a result, the average Arab welfare case received 900 shekels, while Jews get 2,100. In the poor Arab town of Sakhnin, the average welfare recipient will walk away with 757 shekels. In Herzliya, the recipient would pocket 4,429.

Poor towns also are understaffed with social workers, who are paid through a similar matching-funds system. This situation sets the course for poverty, poor and underutilized education and a lifetime of hard work for low pay.

It’s a system, noted both speakers sternly, that will not change itself.