They're Palestinians, not 'Israeli Arabs'

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83163263/

Can you imagine reading an editorial in a respected newspaper today discussing the rights of "Negroes" or "Chinamen"? Probably not. And yet, like other newspapers in this country, The Times continues to use the generic term "Arabs" or "Israeli Arabs" to refer to the Palestinians who live inside Israel, falsely distinguishing them from the Palestinians who live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 or those who were driven into exile during the destruction of Palestine in 1948.

The term is, at best, an archaism from the mid-20th century that Palestinians themselves resist using. Using it is akin to using "Negroes" or "Coloreds" instead of "African Americans" or calling Asians "Orientals." In general, the term that an ethnic or national group uses to designate itself is surely preferable to the terms that its antagonists have historically used to designate it.

But what's at stake here is not merely rhetoric but a form of historical distortion that makes it all but impossible for readers to fully grasp the nature of the conflict.

Palestinian artists and intellectuals as well as the most important institutions of Palestinian civil society inside Israel, including the human rights organization Adalah and the Mada al-Carmel research center, use the term "Palestinians" to identify and affiliate themselves and to assert their indissoluble connection to the rest of the Palestinian people.

[Thinkingabout]

1. It sounds worse if the "Arab" gets thrown, know what you are sayng though.

[Little Tich]

2. I have no objection to the term “Israeli Arabs”

From what I understand, the Arab minority of Israel identify themselves as both Arabs and Palestinians.

The idea that being an Arab is a bad thing, is a concept introduced by the colonizer to stigmatize the colonized. Being considered an “Arabush” in Israel is like being a “N*****r” in the US.

Israel has for a long time tried to cut the ties of its arab minority to the rest of the Arab world, but especially to the other Palestinians. There are some books in Arabic that are illegal to possess in Israel, some of them quite innocuous, like “Harry Potter”. (See the Haaretz article from 2009: “Want to read Harry Potter in Arabic? Not in Israel” at http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/want-to-read-harry-potter-in-arabic-not-in-israel-1.280500). The same books are not banned in Hebrew. To be fair, Israel uses the ban on trade with enemy countries as a fig leaf.

Israel is very actively suppressing any expressing any form of positive self identification of Israeli Arabs, whether it's an identity as Israelis or Palestinians. The idea, as expressed in the core tenets of Zionism, is that there are no Palestinians native to Israel, and that their presence isn't permanent. Therefore, they don't need to be mentioned by name in any or constitutional law, nor do they deserve a national character.

[oberliner]

3. Absolute BS

Insulting and patronizing to the many Israeli Arabs who wish to identify themselves as such.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

5. Spoken at a time in the old southern USA.

"Absolute BS. Unsulting and patronizing to the many America Negros who wish to identify themselves as such.

The more things change the more racism stays the same.

[Mosby]

9. The writer is a Christian American

who decided that Israeli Arabs are Palestinians.

You don't see a problem with that?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. Did you read the article??

Palestinian artists and intellectuals as well as the most important institutions of Palestinian civil society inside Israel, including the human rights organization Adalah and the Mada al-Carmel research center, use the term "Palestinians" to identify and affiliate themselves and to assert their indissoluble connection to the rest of the Palestinian people.

[Mosby]

11. I read through it again

what do you make of this:

Finally, and most importantly, Palestinians themselves — those inside Israel and those in the occupied territories and around the world — have asserted their identity as a people. It's unacceptable to deny or at best ignore these assertions, to look the other way, or pretend not to hear, when a people insists that they are a people and that they have a right to freedom and a will to be free.

Does this also apply to Jews? Are they not a people who also are living in their ancestral homeland?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

12. It's called Israel, mosby. For the life of me I can't fathom why some want to rationalize

land theft, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.


...But it usually comes around to the "poor me" argument for everything. Aren't we allowed to live in our colonies without being victimized?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

13. So you read the article, and now want to go off on a tanget?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. No, most Israeli Jews are not living in their ancestral homeland.

Most Israeli Jews are recent immigrants or descendants of people who were a few generations back, and are unable to trace their ancestry back to anyone who lived in Israel before that.

Most Israeli Jews are living in a land that has a special place in their people's culture, but that's not the same thing as it being their "ancestral homeland", and it doesn't give them any right to it, any more than I have any right to live in any of the other countries I had ancestors in 2000 years ago.

[Mosby]

21. Jews have lived in Israel, Judea, Samaria and the Levant

CONTINUOUSLY for thousands of years.

Israel is the Jews homeland.

[Dick Dastardly]

17. So what, that is proof of nothing.

It is just the author making a vague unsupported claim that some unnamed people and a couple organizations that she says are important, use the term Palestinian.
Its just a fallacious argument tactic using an appeal to authority to pass off an unsupported claim by her as proof or support for her other baseless claims.
Even if true it doesn't even support what she said about using the term Arab Israeli or just about anything else she claimed.

BTW I took a quick look at the Carmel site and saw nothing like she tried to claim. I saw both the terms Arab and Palestinian citizens of Israel and variations of them all over the place.

[Igel]

18. We play this game in English.

It is a game, even if the players confuse it with reality.

It's to use a plural without the article in two different ways.

"Palestinian artists and intellectuals" do something. We think it has to mean "the vast majority" or "all". But there's another reading under which it merely means "some"--as long as it's plural, it's okay to use it.

We play this game in US politics, too. "Economists claim ..." but then it turns out that one school of economists, government economists, some private economists, etc., do the claiming--not all, not even most. Or scientists. Or researchers. Or scholars. Or doctors. Or whatever is convenient to bolster our case. We know that it's going to be interpreted one way; but we can always defend the words, if not the intended interpretation, by recourse to the second meaning. These are usually not just a partial representation, but also embedded in an appeal to authority. It wins over those who are won over and makes them feel much more superior than they did. Doesn't change much else, though.

In other words, good for rhetoric; not much use for understanding.

Self-identification is also messy on the ground, and malleable. Easy to prime people to get the answer you want. Ask an apparently unrelated question and you set them up to give a certain kind of answer later in the survey.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

19. See post #5.

[geek tragedy]

4. If they're Israeli citizens then they're Israelis.

They have a different legal status than those in the occupied territories.

[Dick Dastardly]

6. Complete BS.

Its no different than African American or American Indian.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

7. If you say so.

[Little Tich]

14. So then it would be correct sometimes to call them Palestinian Israelis?

Sometimes it’s necessary to differentiate between those Arabs who have their historic homeland in Palestine, and those in Jordan and other places, don’t you think? After all, they are not the same people just because they’re Arabs.

[Dick Dastardly]

15. Correct, Nothing wromg with Palestinian Israeli if someone wants to be called that.

I am just saying the portrayal of Arab Israeli in this article is complete bs.
Its invented faux outrage.

Btw there are also Arabs with historic roots there who are not Palestinian and don't consider themselves Palestinian.

[Little Tich]

16. OK. n/t

[sabbat hunter]

8. Then they should be called

Palestinian Israelis. Like Italian American.

Not to mention the fact that Arab is not a racist term, like "chinaman" or 'colored' or 'negro' are.

And on top of that not all people that are Arab in Israel are necessarily of Palestinian descent.