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Back when Jimmy Carter was being torn apart for suggesting that Israel's occupation of Palestine had echoes of apartheid, I remember a lot being made of Israel's superb treatment of Israeli Arabs and the political freedom it offered them. As of yesterday, that point of distinction dissolved:
The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month's parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country's Supreme Court.Depressing stuff. But not all that surprising. The Israeli press spends a lot of time fretting over the threat posed by high Israeli-Arab birthrates to the character of the Jewish state. Bibi Netanyahu has argued that "If Israel's Arabs become well integrated and reach 35-40 percent of the population, there will no longer be a Jewish state but a bi-national one," and if Israeli Arabs reach 20 percent, but are ill-disposed to the Jewish state, that could have the same effect.The numbers don't back up that sort of demographic swell among Israeli Arabs. But if they did, Israel would figure out some policy to ensure that the Jewish state wasn't voted out of existence. And that would mean disenfranchising Israeli Arabs. Put slightly differently, Israeli Arabs have the franchise so long as they don't have the numbers to use it effectively. As a supporter of the Jewish state, I find this sort of thought experiment pretty uncomfortable. I can't think of another country that I would support if it regularly discussed how best to disenfranchise a fast-growing minority in order to preserve a particular ethnic or religious identity. And Israel is doing itself some real damage by laying bare the second class nature of its Arab citizens in a moment of fear and racism. This action implies a sort of cold honesty they can't afford right now.