Following coalition negotiations, free of Natan Eshel and other evils, you will be sworn in as Israel’s interior minister. Having seen the hardships faced by a number of Israel’s interior ministers, let us give you three recommendations to ensure that your tenure is pleasant:

1. Don’t let lawyers shape policy for you. As we are afflicted with the severe defect of legal thought and reasoning, let us assure you that the lawyers around you will always try to take the reigns to determine policy and dictate your conduct, under the guise of legal advice (sometimes in the form of binding legal advice). Former attorney-general Elyakim Rubinstein provided an extreme example of such conduct with former interior minister Avraham Poraz. When Poraz sought use the authority legally vested in him to decide on the status of migrant workers’ children, who had resided in Israel for many years, Rubinstein interfered and determined, with no legal basis, that it was inappropriate for the interior minister to make a decision on this matter.

Rubinstein’s blatant interference on this matter is in many ways reminiscent of his practice during his tenure as attorney-general to publish public and non-legal opinions on public figures who would not be criminally prosecuted, or his recent conduct as the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, when he disqualified – in an inconsistent manner – certain billboards, as well campaign ads produced by Balad and Otzma l’Israel, simply because they were not to his liking. Granted, the current attorney-general is not likely to interfere on this matter, but previous interior ministers had to deal with senior Justice Ministry and State Prosecution officials.

Relying on lawyers while you are shaping policy is debilitating. What begins as consultations on policy quickly devolves into them dictating legally obligated policy. Therefore, if you want to have any influence in your ministry, make it clear to the attorney-general and his deputies, to the State Prosecution and the legal bureau in the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, that you do not intend to include them in consultations during the policy formulation stage. Make sure to inform the lawyers only after the policy design phase and request that they limit their opinion to one question – legal or illegal. They need not explain why one method rather than the other is preferred or why something is or is not appropriate. They need to state whether it is legal or illegal, and if it is illegal they should explain why and how they propose to implement the policy legally.

2. Drop your predecessor’s racist rhetoric. The interior minister’s dangerous verbosity was prevalent these past four years. So much was attributed to the “foreigners” in Israel: diseases, violence, crime, the destruction of the Zionist dream. Your predecessor believed that lowly rhetoric would attract voters. He was wrong. His party did not gain any additional seats in the recent elections, and may even find itself outside of the coalition. Michael Ben-Ari’s party, which fed into the hatred and racism against “foreigners” in Israel, did not gain a thing from its pathetic statements. In fact, Ben-Ari, who believed that he would find new voters in southern Tel Aviv, was surprised to discover that few in those neighborhoods voted for him. The overt racism is not electorally advantageous (and even if it was, it could not be justified), and it positions Israel as a racist country whose ministers dare say things that would be condemned in the public and political discourse anywhere else in the world.

3. Review a sample of decisions made by the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority. The devil is in the details. Even if you overcome the lawyers and are able to advance the policy that you seek, the individual decisions will be made by clerks who have undergone many years of indoctrination, according to which the “foreigner” is an enemy, and everything should be done to prevent him or her from gaining legal status in Israel. You won’t be able to understand how the Interior Ministry implements your policy if you don’t review random Population, Immigration and Borders Authority decisions. When you review them, you’ll find that woe be unto an Israeli who dares marry a foreign partner. Partners will face many obstacles until they are granted permanent status in Israel (that is if they are granted status). You’ll find that over the course of three years the Interior Ministry granted one person refugee status, as the system has become abusive, does not properly uphold the Refugee Conventions, and leads to the deportation of individuals to countries where their lives are in danger. You’ll find that your ministry randomly jails thousands of asylum seekers in conditions that are not suitable for human beings. You’ll find that the Interior Ministry strips migrant workers, who were brought to Israel to work in the hardest sectors for minimum wage (or less), of their status simply because they had the audacity to fall in love and be in a relationship. You’ll find that same-sex couples who seek to establish their status in Israel are treated as second class citizens because they can’t get married. You’ll find that your ministry tears families apart – parents, partners and children – because they are Palestinian. You’ll find that despite the Supreme Court’s rejection of the policy that binds migrant workers to their employers, in practice the Interior Ministry makes sure to create a link binding the workers to their employers in a manner that infringes on individuals’ basic rights as employees. If you randomly review the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority’s decisions you’ll find that if the political leadership does not monitor the bureaucratic echelon, nothing will change.

Good luck.

When my agent and I shopped my book about Israel’s migrant workers and African refugees around, we got a lot of those “We love it but it’s not right for us” and “This is an important book that needs to be published. But there’s no audience for this” kind of responses.

But perhaps the most common response was, “Where are the Palestinians?”

The Palestinians are there, of course. They are discussed directly and indirectly. As migrant workers were first brought to Israel during the First Intifada to replace Palestinian day laborers—a fact I take care to mention in my book—you can’t talk about the state’s treatment of foreign workers without alluding to those they replaced. And with most Palestinians locked behind the separation barrier, migrant workers and African refugees—the “new” non-Jewish “others” in Israel—have become more convenient stand-ins for the racist sentiments that have long been channeled towards Palestinian.

But, no, publishers who haven’t set foot in Israel—much less covered it as a journalist for years on end—insist that the “conflict” is about Jews vs. Arabs, Israelis vs. Palestinians, not Israel versus all non-Jewish others. Tell that to the families of migrant workers who are being deported by the state; tell the African refugees who face prison without trial that Israel’s conflict is with the Arabs.

And tell that to the many Israeli politicians who readily admit that the issue is preserving a Jewish state.

Further, Israel has tweaked the 1952 Entry to Israel law and the 1954 Infiltration Prevention law—both of which discriminate against Palestinians—broadening them to apply to migrant workers and African refugees. Israeli politicians use similar rhetoric and separation methods (read: walls) against all of these non-Jewish groups.

As I wrote in The National:

In 2003 Mr Netanyahu, then finance minister, called Arab citizens of the state a “demographic problem” adding that the separation barrier would stop a “demographic spillover” of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Fast forward to 2010: Prime Minister Netanyahu calls African asylum seekers a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and promises another separation barrier, this one to run the length of the border between Egypt and Israel.

When considered through the lens of the government’s goal of maintaining a ‘Jewish and democratic’ country, every non-Jew – Arab or African, Christian or Muslim – becomes a ‘threat’ to or enemy of the state. It’s not about Palestinians or Arabs per se. It’s about maintaining Jewish privilege.

The experience with my book has taught me that the international conversation about Israel/Palestine is stagnant—even though it appears to be changing.

Growing media interest in the “new” unarmed resistance movements—which have actually been around in one form or another since the Ottoman occupation of Palestine—feeds into two binaries: non-violent vs. violent; Israelis vs. Palestinians (or Jews vs. Arabs). Both are problematic.

Regarding the latter, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh points out in Popular Resistance in Palestine:

In 1831, the Egyptian armies of Muhammad Ali occupied Palestine, appointing Muhammad Ali’s son Ibrahim as ruler. A Palestinian peasant uprising against Egyptian rule echoed earlier revolts in 1808 and 1826 against the Ottomans. On May 19, 1834, notables of the towns, villagers, and Bedouins told Egyptian officials in Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron that they would not supply the quota of conscripts.

Just as Israel doesn’t take issue with Palestinians, per se, but rather all non-Jews in general, neither have most Palestinians historically taken issue, per se, with Jews. Rather, many Palestinians take issue with occupation and oppression and colonialism and foreign attempts to appropriate resources, whether it is people, as was the case in the 1834 revolt against the Egyptians, or land, as is the case with Israel today.

When one operates in binaries, one invokes the specter of “Palestinian violence” simply by talking about non-violence. By making a spectacle of non-violence, journalists treat it as though it is something extraordinary; by saying, “Look, look, now they’re non-violent!” one implies that Palestinians were and are inherently violent. Research shows that “positive” stereotypes merely serve to uphold the negative ones.

While websites like Mondoweiss and Open Zion suggest that the conversation about Israel/Palestine does seem to be broadening a bit, the debate still seems to revolve around Zionism vs. anti-Zionism and two-state vs. one-state , along with other oppositional ideas.  The discussion about the “conflict” remains black and white. How can things here be framed as a conflict when the power imbalance is so unequal, when political, financial, and military support are all skewed to one direction?

The Palestinian street is increasingly moving towards a right-based approach. And human rights—whether they are for Palestinians, migrant workers, African refugees, or Jews—aren’t about taking sides. Will the media and publishers listen?

Next: What the media and publishers do listen to? Violence

Read the first post: It’s a man’s world: women in journalism and publishing

This post originally appeared in Souciant.

July saw the Israeli government grant permits to 5,000 Palestinian construction workers, including those who work in illegal West Bank settlements. The cynical move harnessed a captive labor market whose own economy has been crushed by the occupation—the very occupation it is being recruited to build.

In August, Israel’s Defense Ministry also proposed another 6,000 permits for Palestinian workers.

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post about the proposal, the spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said, “We do not want the PA to crash,” adding that Israel needs to help keep the Palestinian economy afloat. He also remarked that Israeli authorities prefer Palestinians to foreign workers because the latter stay in the country.

The Israeli Population Immigration and Borders Authority echoed the preference for Palestinians to migrants who stay and make a home in Israel. So, as Israel deports the families of foreign workers – the same workers it brought to replace the Palestinians (see below) – and expels and jails African refugees, it begins upping the number of work visas for Palestinians.

Just as foreign aid is intended to keep the unsustainable and overextended PA afloat – giving some West Bank Palestinians a sedating sense of normalcy – so are Israeli work permits. Along with checkpoints and restrictions on freedom of movement, work permits are intended to shape the behavior of the Palestinian population.

A joint paper published by Kav LaOved and Gisha earlier this year pointed out that the salaries of Palestinian day laborers who work in Israel make up some 13 percent of the Palestinian GDP. While estimates of their numbers vary, Kav LaOved and Gisha report that approximately 60,000 Palestinians work with and without permits inside of Israel.

During the First Intifada, Israel revoked the general exit permits that were held by almost all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories which had previously allowed them to reach jobs inside of Israel, thus collectively punishing Palestinians for rebelling against the occupation. At the same time, Israel began bringing foreign workers from South East Asia and Eastern Europe to meet the demand for inexpensive labor.

The Second Intifada and the separation barrier caused the number of Palestinian day laborers working inside of Israel continue to decrease. According to figures from the Knesset, the number of legal Palestinian workers declined by 70 percent from 2000 to 2011, falling from 100,000 to 30,000.

The message to Palestinians who are dependent on Israel for work is simple: “behave,” support the PA and we will let you in to find jobs.

But, if you resist the steady expropriation of Palestinian territory, the administrative detentions, the arbitrary arrests of children – if you resist the total subjugation of your people – we will punish you. We will continue to squeeze your labor market and shut you out of ours so that you cannot support your family. It is a system of reward and punishment taken straight from Behavioral Psychology 101; it is Israel treating the Palestinians like a starving rat in a Skinner box. Israel giveth and Israel taketh.

Of course, the new permits also serve as yet another reminder that Israel is running the show—the PA is little more than a puppet.

Since March of 2011, the state has been arresting and deporting the Israeli-born children of migrant laborers along with their parents. In the past 16 months, over 90 families have been expelled. Many arrived on state-issued work visas and lost their legal status due to a policy that forbade foreign workers from having and keeping babies in the country—a policy that was struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court in April 2011.

Without a peep from the international media.

Israel’s expulsion of migrant families bears many similarities to that of African refugees. Politicians call both groups a threat to the Jewish character of the state. And human rights groups have decried the deportations as a breach of Israel’s obligations as a signatory to various international conventions.

The deportation of some 1200 children was first announced in July of 2009, the same time that Israel began enforcing the hitherto unenforced Gedera-Hadera policy, which bound African migrants by Gedera in the south and Hadera in the north, forbidding them from living in the center of the country. A public outcry led to the cancellation of Gedera-Hadera; the expulsion of the children was postponed.

As the state lacks a cohesive policy regarding non-Jewish immigration, a special committee convened to decide which kids would be allowed to stay and which would have to go.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has advocated for their deportation, saying that these non-Jewish children are “liable to damage the state’s Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation.” He makes the same claims about African asylum seekers, calling them a challenge to the “Zionist dream.”

In August of 2010, Israel announced the criteria for naturalization of migrant workers’ children: They must have been enrolled in the state school system during the previous academic year; they must be registered for first grade or higher; they must have been in Israel for at least 5 consecutive years; they must have been born here or arrived before the age of 13; they must speak fluent Hebrew; and their parents must have arrived on a valid work visa.

This granting of permanent residency that, later, would make the children eligible for citizenship, occured in a one-time window, just like the “one-time” window opened in 2005 for the children of undocumented foreign workers. In 2010, human rights groups estimated that the new criteria would lead to the naturalization of some 700-800 kids; the remaining 400-500 would face deportation.

Critics called the criteria arbitrary and said that many children who were Israeli in every way—minus Jewish parents—would fall through the cracks. The United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF) called the decision a “gross violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which Israel is a signatory to.

According to Ministry of Interior spokeswoman Sabine Hadad, 701 families filed for naturalization under the 2010 criteria. 183 requests were rejected; 257 families got legal status.

But, today—almost two years after they filed their paperwork—261 families are still waiting for an answer. And many that seemed to meet the criteria have found themselves shut out.

Rotem Ilan, a co-founder of the grassroots organization Israeli Children, tells Open Zion: “The Ministry of Interior is coming up with every excuse to deport as many as possible… Children who have finished [high school]—rejected. Kids who have one parent with a work visa—rejected. Children who were referred by the Jerusalem municipality to Christian schools in [Israeli-occupied] East Jerusalem—rejected.”

Another example: Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old Israeli-born grandson, M., since he was a toddler. His father died; his mother, who abandoned him, has since returned to the Philippines. Robles raised him like her own son.

The two live in a small apartment in Tel Aviv, where they celebrate the Jewish holidays.  There are two flags—one Filipino, the other Israeli—in their entryway. A calendar of Israeli soldiers stands on a bookcase. Like many other children of migrants, M. dreams of serving in the army.

Robles applied for naturalization on her grandson’s behalf in 2005 and 2010. While M. met all the criteria both times, the applications were rejected on the grounds that Robles has temporary, not permanent, guardianship of her grandson. M. faces imminent expulsion to the Philippines, a country he has never visited.

Ilan adds that many children facing deportation are like M.—they are older kids who were “born, raised, and educated all of their lives in Israel. Hebrew is, of course, their mother tongue and they grew up here like every other kid in the country.”

Just over a year ago, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the mechanism that made many of the families illegal to begin with—a state policy that stripped migrants their legal status if they had a baby in Israel. After giving birth, migrant women had three months to send their infant to their home country, essentially forcing mothers to choose between their visa and their child.

Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy was a violation of Israel’s own labor laws. But just yesterday, Israeli authorities arrested a six-year-old girl whose mother lost her work visa due to this policy. The two will be deported to the Philippines.

This article was first published in The Daily Beast’s Open Zion.

AM/PM 24/7 convenience stores. While the experience of shopping for a standardized list of packaged and processed goods under ghastly fluorescent lights is an assault on my senses, I am grateful for the 24-hour convenience stores that have popped up over the last decade and remain open on the holy sabbath. Before the AM/PM, Fridays were spent frantically darting around town to buy all basic needs before shops close at midday. Summers were brutal: folks had to start errands early, or risk miserable heat-abuse and crowd-claustrophobia as the whole population thronged the markets en masse. It was anything but relaxing; although many businesses were closed, people felt like Israel had a one-day weekend.

Now, Fridays have become a ritual day of touching base with friends, with slow, lazy quality time to enjoy them. After long work days dealing with the hard world around us, we are allowed a day of conversations about nothing and everything, with no end in sight. Fridays now epitomize something for me that I always found powerfully attractive and missing in the US: the investment in people as an end in itself; the appreciation of one another’s company in an unplanned way, the communities that come and go spontaneously in a single café, where groups of friends merge and morph and subdivide.

For me, these moments distinguish Israel from the hyper-individualism of the US, and turn a post-modern urban environment into an extended home. The convenience stores allow me to drink my fill of this human warmth on Fridays, and pick up supplies at my leisure. After a day of so many people and friends, I am free to retreat for a more reflective, quiet Saturday or Sabbath as it may be. Nothing is imposed, no one is excluded.

Sabbath Parking. For many Israelis, Friday nights involve a family or friend-oriented social activity, including the famous Israeli Friday night dinner. While walking to one last night, a couple in an SUV stopped me to ask if they could park in the resident-only area, and I assured them that there is no ticketing on the holy sabbath. We smiled at each other: with my bottle of wine, and their parking search, we knew we would both soon be taking part in this authentic national institution. Religious or secular, Jewish or Arab, every person who wants to can share the atmosphere of community and calm. I thought I felt it when I spent a Friday recently in the Arab city of Umm el-Fahm. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I believed it.

There are no parking tickets on Fridays because the municipality is closed. But I like to think that the state is also consciously encouraging people to visit each other and be together, through a tiny policy that involves no coercion, intrusion, invasion, or discrimination, just a day off for the traffic police. It would be even better if those who don’t own cars also had some support for visiting people.

Shalom Aleichem. Continuing my walk through the heart of what many view as secular, heathen Tel Aviv on my way to dinner, I caught a familiar melody winding through the trees on the darkened street. It was “Shalom Aleichem,” the traditional song before the Friday evening Sabbath dinner. It was being sung to the tune I have known since I was born, by a gathering of voices that recalled any number of Friday night dinners in any number of places, throughout my life. And I mused that while I have traveled far and wide since I first heard that tune, the melody floating down the street was a moment of continuity through all the tumbles and turns – I am home. It can be Brooklyn, the Upper West Side, or Israel; it might not be my family singing but it’s someone’s family.

Music binds, especially when it’s a vehicle for ancient traditions. I cannot imagine that this one family’s melody hurt anyone, nor did it (of itself) hinder another person’s ability to sing or not sing any song. At my dinner, we did not sing Shalom Aleichem but still I feel we’re part of some larger family.

Polyglot kids. Recently, several friends’ kids around 6 or 7 years old, native Hebrew speakers, showed off their Russian skills; one of them is already bilingual (Hebrew and English). A Nigerian foreign worker living legally in Israel for many years related proudly that his twins, who finished 6^th grade yesterday, got excellent grades in Hebrew.

Why write about polyglot kids for a post about the Jewish state? I think instinctively, this represents an ideal of sorts for me: a people rooted in the Hebrew language that absorbs other peoples and cultures, then adopts and transmits those cultures too. I have a vision of a people that embraces the cosmopolitanism that I love about Jewish culture, firmly anchored in the linguistic basis. With Hebrew as an unshakeable foundation, those kids are not frightened of other cultures, they delight and giggle as they embrace them – so unlike the anti-immigrant demonstrators of South Tel Aviv a few weeks back.

My reverie was marred when I spoke with another 6^th-grade graduate who said she had never had a single Arabic class in elementary school, although they did have a year of Yiddish which she said was mandatory. That’s a shame, I thought: in neglecting Arabic, the “Jewish state” part of the Israeli polity seems destined not for anchored cosmopolitanism as in my dream, but for isolation from its own political brothers and sisters, the non-Hebrew-rooted citizens of this country.

******

If there is any thread connecting these random items, it is my growing belief that the term “Jewish State” must evolve into a conceptual entity, not a political, physical or legislated entity. It can refer to the Jewish people, united by an changing and pluralistic identity, who must hammer out their notions of Judaism simply by living together in a space to be defined by political, not religious, considerations. A state with a small ‘s,’ as a state of being, if you will.

That’s because I don’t really want the goal of Israel to be about preserving Judaism, which makes me think of small animals in formaldehyde. I want to re-vitalize Judaism.

It’s not just that the state should not legislate how we choose to define the Jewish people; to re-vitalize Judaism, it need not.

Separating state from Jewish peoplehood, while giving the Jewish people a home here, means that state’s priority is legislation and policy on behalf of all its citizens. Arab and Palestinian political rights, indeed land rights, become no threat to Jewish existence, because it is the people, each according to his/her beliefs who are responsible for keeping Judaism vital.

The result for Judaism might be a strange kaleidoscope of practices, beliefs, rituals, food, melodies and customs. But the composite picture will be as pretty as Shalom Aleichem sung by a few off-key family members on a Friday night in Tel Aviv – together, the musical messiness blended and the melody emerged pure. Nobody can legislate that.

Maybe then, the state can consider minimalist, non-intrusive, non-invasive, non-coercive policies to encourage minimal shared community values, emerging from any of the three major faiths here.

If the term “Jewish state” evolves into a non-tangible, people-entrusted concept that exists inside the physical political entity, then eventually the word “state” can be separate from “Jewish” altogether. I want to believe in the Jewish people inside Israel, and I want to believe in a State of Israel that nurtures every one of its citizens.

Simon was partially right.  Yes, for many – namely, the wealthy portion of the one-quarter of population that is actually Qataris – life is content thanks to an absurd amount of amenities and luxuries courtesy of global oil prices. But those who do not fall into that category do exist, and for the most part their stories are untold.

Salim (not his real name) is a Lebanese man I met through friends over dinner at the souk one night in 2009. He is gay and has been with his partner – a married Qatari man – for a number of years. (Such extramarital affairs are said to be quite common.)  Salim has lived in Qatar for more than a decade.  And when we met, he revealed that a few years prior to the dinner, he was arrested upon arrival at the airport in Doha just as he was returning from a large party in Western Europe. Salim claims he was held and beaten for three days and repeatedly called names considered derogatory terms for homosexual men. Perhaps by coincidence, though likely not, he said that just days earlier, a male member of the extended Qatari royal family made advances towards him at the party. Salim rejected him, which he claims angered the Qatari man.

Michel (not his real name) is also Lebanese. When I met him in 2008, he was working for Qatar Airways, the national carrier, based in Doha but flying around the world.  He and other airline crew live in dormitories, which include a curfew and constant monitoring of their comings and goings. He told me that his first dorm-mate was evicted from the country when authorities discovered he was HIV-positive. According to Michel, the individual was taken from the government office – where he was told of his deportation – directly to the airport, not even permitted to go “home” and collect his things, which Michel says he ended up shipping to him.

Their stories go unheard.  As will Lucy’s (not her real name), a young Filipina woman working (then, not sure about now) in the canteen of the Al Jazeera English compound. Lucy, at the time, was employed via a subcontractor.  She worked at the Al Jazeera facility six days a week. On the seventh day, she told me, the subcontractor employed her elsewhere.  When I mentioned to the person standing in the canteen queue behind me – one of the highest ranking directors of the channel – that Lucy works non-stop seven days a week, he seemed unbothered. He heard me, but was unresponsive. (Disclaimer: I worked at Al Jazeera English for five years and found the majority of people there to be actively dedicated to the rights of global laborers.)

The less-glitzy streets of Doha, June 2008 (photo: open cage/flickrcc)

Lucy is not alone.  Foreign laborers working in Qatar, more than three-quarters of the people physically residing there, have few-to-no rights. Most (unlike Lucy) have Fridays off, when they are seen congregating in public places. A sign posted at the front entrance of the glitzy shopping center, which  Simon refers to as a sort of “Rodeo Drive,” indicates they are not welcome inside.  Technically, the sign notes that Friday is for “Families-only,” a clear reference excluding the South Asian workers who are in Qatar earning money – remittances – to send back home to their spouses and children.  I, a single caucasian male, was not prevented from entering the center, nor was I harassed while inside.  The foreign laborers are not wealthy, of course, nor are they considered in assessments of national wealth. Hence, the figures referred to by many, including CBS, in which Qataris are the world’s richest people, bear a hint of deception, as the majority of the people in Qatar are not actually counted. It would be like saying that Californians are the richest in America based solely on the incomes of people in Bel Air.

An alley in Souq Waqif, where many Filipino, South Indian and Bangladeshi workers (photo: kate.gardiner/flckr/cc) live, Doha, Qatar, May 2011 (photo:

Then there are those who are not counted by any measures. Hassan (not his real name) and his family (a mother and nine siblings, the father died in a car crash) are “Bidun.” Translating from the Arabic word “without,” Bidun are technically stateless “leftovers” in the Gulf. In neighboring Kuwait, they number more than 100,000. In Qatar, their numbers are much smaller, but their problems and daily struggles in coping with statelessness are just as real. According to Human Rights Watch, “Bidun cannot register for education or health benefits, or legally hold employment.  The government does not register the birth of Bidun children.” For Hassan, this means constantly operating beneath the radar, using roads that do not have checkpoints, ensuring he is home during specific hours of the evening, and avoiding all risks that might result in his arrest or, worse, expulsion. According to Hassan, a Qatari man claiming that he would help the family obtain citizenship documents for a North African country took their money and disappeared, wiping the family of most of their savings and leaving them with no official channels for recourse.

Perhaps most upsetting was the site of a particular roundabout (of which there are many) in Doha where, I was told, Pashtun men are sexually solicited by local Qatari men. An adjacent lot on the corner which overnight serves as a parking facility for large transport trucks reportedly provides the cloak of nighttime darkness and discretion for such activities. I myself did not witness any active solicitation or engagement, but I did see dozens of young, Pashtun men loitering at this particular roundabout, and one told us he had often gone with Arab men who offered him money.

Stories like these are just the tip of the iceberg.  A deeper investigation into life in Qatar, particularly in a report that claims to examine from the inside the country and its growing role, should have explored these and similar narratives. In addition, CBS should have been more educated in its questions – as in, aware of the sectarian, religious, ethnic, tribal tensions and rivalries that exist among the Arab world, of which Qatar is a player with specific interests.  It should have also been more honest about some facts – like Qatar’s preference for promoting advanced education in the physical sciences and not in the liberal arts (presumably because chemists don’t lead revolutions).  And it should now be more apologetic about some obvious omissions – like any reference to the ongoing unrest in Qatar’s neighbor, Bahrain.  After all, Qatar is part of the Saudi-led GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) that sent its troops to quell the Shia Bahraini demonstrators. However, mentioning these things would have likely angered all of the people Simon interviews: the King, the Prime Minister and an adviser to the army (who drives him around).

Which brings me to the my last question.  Where was the voice of criticism?

Even though the Supreme Court ordered Tel Aviv and three other municipalities to add Arabic to their street signs in 2002, this sign appears only in English and Hebrew. Ironically, it marks the road to historically Arab Yafo (Jaffa) (photo: Mya Guarnieri)

The recent escalation between Israel and Gaza began after Israeli forces assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a militant group composed of members of various Palestinian parties. Haaretz noted that the PRC was “the organisation that captured Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier who was freed in October 2011. The army says that al-Qaissi was behind the August 2011 attack that took place on the Israeli-Egyptian border – even though the PRC denied involvement and it was later revealed that the militants came from Sinai, not Gaza.

While army sources took care to point out al-Qaissi’s alleged involvement in the August 2011 incident, his assassination wasn’t just an act of punishment. No, Israel killed him on the basis of secret evidence – evidence that is not subject to legal or judicial review – that supposedly proves that al-Qaissi was planning a terror attack. Never mind that the Israeli supreme court’s December 2006 ruling placed numerous restrictions on such assassinations.

Fatmeh el-Ajou, an attorney with Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, explains that while the judgment did not place a blanket prohibition on targeted killings, it stated that the decision to carry out an assassination must be made on a case-by-case basis, “depending on the evidence that [security forces] have.” But, without seeing the security forces’ secret evidence, it’s impossible to know if al-Qaissi was indeed planning an attack, and if the army was in line with the 2006 ruling. There’s no transparency in this so-called democracy and, without transparency, there is no accountability to the state’s highest court. “From the perspective of human rights law,” el-Ajou adds, “assassinations are not legitimate … They should only be carried out if there is a ‘ticking bomb.’ [Suspects] should be brought to trial.”

To some extent, the 2006 ruling dovetails with this, stating that, whenever possible, the person in question must be arrested and tried – which is exactly what didn’t happen in 2007, when the army violated the Supreme Court’s restrictions on targeted killings and assassinated two men they had the power to detain instead. And then there’s the laundry list of less dramatic examples, instances when state bodies quietly ignore the court, revealing Israel to be the weak democracy it is. Such cases have spurred former Deputy Attorney General Yehudit Karp to send not one but two letters of complaint to the current Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. Here’s a partial sampling of rulings that Israel can’t be bothered to fully implement:

• In 2002, the Supreme Court ordered the municipalities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Nazareth Illit to “add Arabic to all municipal signs”, Adalah writes. Last April, the Supreme Court chastised the municipality of Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth, a predominately Jewish area) for its lack of compliance with the nine-year-old ruling.

• In 2006, the Supreme Court struck down the binding arrangement, a policy that binds migrant workers to one employer, essentially making his or her visa contingent on his employer’s whim. Last year, the Knesset circumvented this ruling, passing legislation so severe that human rights groups referred to it as the “slavery law”.

• In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the separation barrier in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bilin served no security purpose in its location and ordered the state to move the fence. While Israel did move it in 2011, more than four years after the court’s decision, villagers are still separated from some of their land.

• During the December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli military operation known as Cast Lead, Israel barred media from the Gaza Strip. Even though the Supreme Court ruled against the ban, the press was not admitted to Gaza.

• In April 2011, the Supreme Court overturned the policy that stripped migrant workers who had children in Israel of their legal status, calling it a violation of the state’s own labour laws. Almost a year later, Israel is still deporting some of these women and their children, despite the fact that the very mechanism that made them “illegal” has been nullified.

In his 2006 ruling on targeted killings, former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak quoted an earlier judgment in which he’d stated: “At times democracy fights with one hand behind her back.” But in its war on Palestinians – and anyone that Israel deems an “other” – not only does the state use both hands, it fights with the proverbial gloves off.

This article first appeared in The Guardian Comment is Free on Wednesday March 14, 2012.

Last week, Tel Aviv City Councilman Binyamin Babayoff (Shas) sent a letter to Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, Minister of Transportation Israel Katz, and Dr. Moshe Tiomkin, a Tel Aviv councilman and the head of the city’s Transportation, Traffic and Parking Authority. In an excerpt published by Mynet (local online Hebrew news affiliated with Ynet), Babayoff wrote that “illegal foreign workers fill the buses…” leaving no room for Jewish Israeli residents of South Tel Aviv. He added that “foreign workers… give off a bad smell and they might, God forbid, cause all kinds of diseases.”

Reminding of Jim Crow laws, Babayoff proposes that the state introduce separate buses for migrant workers and refugees or limit their access to buses during peak hours of heavy traffic, thus giving preference to Jewish Israeli residents.

Speaking to Mynet, Babayoff claimed that his proposal was not racist. He said that Jewish Israelis in South Tel Aviv “live a life of hell” because of the foreigners in the neighborhood. He added that his letter was a response to the appeals of “scared” residents.

In a comment to Mynet, the Tel Aviv Municipality condemned Babayoff’s proposal and called it “racist,” adding that it is committed to “caring for immigrant workers and their basic health needs, education, and welfare…”

(Though they’re not migrant workers, homeless African refugees might beg to differ with the city’s statement).

After Babayoff embarked on a campaign against migrant workers and refugees in the summer of 2010—calling on South Tel Aviv landlords not to rent to these “infiltrators” and claiming that doing so violates Jewish religious law—25 area rabbis signed an “Edict Forbidding the Rental of Apartments to Infiltrators.” Shortly thereafter, 10 South Tel Aviv real estate agents signed a petition stating they would not rent to illegal residents.

Later that year, hundreds of Israeli rabbis across the country signed a religious edict forbidding the rental or sale of property to Palestinian citizens of the state.

In 2010, Babayoff also participated in a campaign against opening a new kindergarten in the South Tel Aviv neighborhood of Kiryat Shalom. While the school was planned to accommodate migrant workers’ and refugees’ children, it would also provide education to Jewish Israeli students.

In addition to his issues with non-Jews, Babayoff has also publicly voiced homophobic sentiments, referring to Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Parade as a “shame parade.”

The Israeli Defense Ministry has revealed that this summer, it will fund some one million shekels (nearly $300,000) of a sushi chef training course for post-service soldiers.  According to officials behind the program, the scheme is a win-win idea.  One ministry official told Ha’aretz newspaper:

There is a lack of Israeli workers in this area, and that is why we are building a program that allows them to learn, get a job, and has lots of ‘treats’ for those taking the course.

So in theory, not only does this program provide job-training for young men (and perhaps a few women), but in the long-term it will release Israel of its dependence on Asian laborers.  There’s a name for these woes: RWGP, or “Rich White Girl Problems.”  It falls along the lines of: “Uch, I’m going to be late to my sunset pilates class because my Maserati needs a check-up and the only luxury body shop is all the way on the other side of Beverly Hills.”  Ironic, too, that while the US, theoretically, is trying to discover new ways to wean itself off of Middle East oil dependence, Israel is trying to concoct new schemes to deal with its wasabi addiction.

Moon sushi exterior, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2010 (Flickr/cc: MaMaVe)

It is true that Israelis serve in the military, as is required by law.  And most do so selflessly with little to show for it afterwards.  It is also true that the government (and any government, for that matter) should provide programs – and creative ones at that – to push people, to give them opportunities, to give them that extra bit of drive.  However the latter exists on its own, regardless of the former.  Meaning, a government doesn’t have to serve its people only because its people serve the government.  That seems pretty logical.

But this isn’t exactly about altruistic governance.  In Israel, it is easy to sell an idea when one ties it to soldiers.  They are, after all, “our sons and our brothers.”  And who would deny them of something they deserve, “after everything they’ve done for us?”  But politicians in Israel are exploiting that sentiment to promote an anti-foreigner agenda.  Imagine if the thousands of American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were directed into filling positions held by Latino migrants?  Such a suggestion would be seen as disrespectful and met with outrage.  Unemployed former soldiers and dependence on foreign labor – two different issues.  Why even mix them?

Still, amid Israel’s nationalist fervor, mixing them is quite simple.  All across the world – not just in the West – laborers are easy targets.  Why?  Because they rarely have a voice in the national dialogue, they are easy to spot because they look different, and they are a problem that’s simple to solve, one that can be exported.  But the truth is that foreign laborers do many of the jobs that local nationals can’t do, like making authentic sushi, or won’t do, like genuinely caring for our elderly.

My grandfather, of blessed memory, lived to be nearly 102 years old.  He aged at home and aged in dignity, thanks in large part to a Pilipina (Filipinna) caretaker who toiled humbly at his side.  His mind was always engaged (she learned Hebrew proficiently to speak with him).  And he was always high-spirited, even after my grandmother, of blessed memory, passed away.  His skin was always soft, thanks to the frequent lotion she applied.  And she was as sincere as she was gentle.  She was in Israel for a number of years earning an income that she sent back home.  Her payment was modest enough that we could afford her, but significant enough that it provided for a private education for her two daughters being raised by her husband.   It was a sacrifice that few others I know could and would make.   And I frequently thanked her. 

Rather than targeting people like her, we should be showing our gratitude.  I wonder if the Defense Ministry can train demobilized soldiers to do her job?  With the same dignity?  With the same grace?  With the same humility?  Until it can, Israel should stop targeting the people who serve it so humbly, especially by using those who serve it so selflessly.

By Elizabeth Tsurkov

In a landmark ruling, the Israeli High Court of Justice declared last week that the Israeli government’s “pregnant worker regulation” is “unconstitutional”, “disproportional and therefore unreasonable” and “must be abolished”. The regulation entails deporting female migrant workers once they have given birth and allowing their re-entry only if they leave their child behind.

The policy was appealed by several human rights organizations in 2005, but the ruling was pending until last Wednesday. The ruling, the last one to handed out by Justice Procaccia before her retirement, was extremely critical of the government policy. This harsh criticism was supported by fellow judges Justice Elyakim Rubinstein and Justice Salim Jubran, who went as far as stating that the regulation “isn’t becoming of a democratic state.”

The regulation in question, set in place by the Israeli government, is intended to decrease the likelihood of women migrant workers staying in Israel after the expiration of their work visa. The state of Israel prevents migrant workers from entering Israel if they have relatives from their immediate family in Israel, stating that this would increase the chances of the workers overstaying illegally (meaning, the worker would have no reason to go back if they have a family in Israel or start one).

Under the regulation, the pregnant worker would be deported either after the sixth month of her pregnancy if she is not currently employed, or once she gives birth if she is employed. Once the worker is out of Israel, she has two choices: She can either apply for a work permit for two more years on employment and return to Israel without her child in 90 days, or remain in her home country.

Sigal Rosen of Hotline for Migrant Workers (HMW) explains that in practice, the only way pregnant migrant workers could return to Israel is if their employer was willing to wait for her for three months, since recruitment agencies prefer to hire new workers (who would pay the exorbitant recruitment fee) instead of finding a new employer for a worker with a valid work visa.

There have been several cases of women leaving Israel to give birth, expecting their employer to want them to return. However, during the three months, the employer got used to the substitute caregiver and the worker was not able to return, even if she was willing to leave her child behind. In other cases, the Ministry of Interior prevented the new mother from returning and the employer didn’t fight to force the Ministry to let her come back.

The human rights organizations appealing this policy said that it violates the right to have a family as well as the worker’s right to earn a living, by forcing her to choose between raising their child and making a living in Israel. The Court accepted this view, stating that forcing women to make this choice “involves serious infringement upon the workers’ constitutional rights under Israeli law.”

The High Court verdict explained the decision to strike down the regulation, stating: “The [pregnant] migrant worker regulation includes considerable harm to the constitutional rights of the migrant worker. It infringes upon her right to become a parent and have a family, and her economic expectations; it does not conform with the protection the Israeli law offers to workers who have given birth or are pregnant, and with the prohibition on discriminating workers based on pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood as part of the right to equality in employment; it contradicts the protection offered to migrant workers in the international conventions.”

In reaction to the verdict, the Hotline for Migrant Workers (HMW), one of the human rights organizations appealing the regulation stated:

“We praise the High Court of Justice ruling that recognizes the right of caregivers to parenthood. We hope this ruling will lead to an increase of migrant workers’ rights in Israel, a reduction in the number of workers staying illegally in Israel and a decrease in the number of workers deported from the country before they are able to repay the enormous sums of money they’ve loaned in order to get to Israel.”

Currently, hundreds of undocumented female migrant workers and their children who were born in Israel are set to be deported from the country. Most of these workers lost their legal status as a result of the “pregnant migrant worker regulation” that was struck down by this Court ruling. The verdict could be used by women who have been in Israel for less than four years and have lost their legal status as a result of having a child to regain their legal status. Migrants’ rights organizations fear that the Immigration Authority would delay giving those women back their legal status until four years have passed since the worker came to Israel, at which point she will not be covered by the ruling.

The ruling stated that Israel must allow workers to complete their employment period (up to 63 months) with their child by their side, if their employer is willing to continue employing them or if they find a new employer of caregivers. It remains to be seen whether the Immigration Authority in the Ministry of Interior will follow the High Court verdict.

Despite the fact that High Court rulings must be obeyed by the State, an examination in 2010 showed that nine High Court rulings are not being implemented by the State, the most famous of them is the 2007 decision to relocate the Separation Barrier near the Bil’in village. Sigal Rosen of HMW expressed hope that “the Immigration Authority will make an exception to its habit of ignoring High Court rulings and honor this verdict.”

Elizabeth Tsurkov studies media and international relations at the Hebrew University and is a volunteer at Kav LaOved and Advocates for Asylum.

More on this issue:

No point listening to UN on Palestinians, says High Court Judge