Following one of his visits to Israel, Jewish-American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg praised last year the ease with which he underwent the security procedures at Ben-Gurion International Airport, compared with the long waits he experienced in U.S terminals. Racial profiling made all the difference: while Israeli Jews and many white Westerners – especially those with Jewish names – are rushed through the lines in Israeli terminals and gates, every person with a Muslim or Arab name or appearance – including Israeli citizens – is subject to long interrogations and searches. Solely by being Jewish, Goldberg is entitled to better treatment than Israeli citizens who actually live here.

Racial profiling at Ben-Gurion has received some attention in recent years because its discriminatory nature is so obvious: at the airport, one can actually see the Arab families being taken to a separate security check. Yet racial profiling is more than just a security technique which aims to make boarding more pleasant for non-Arab passengers. It is – especially under the Netanyahu governments – a national policy.

Recently, Israel has engaged in a dialogue with the American administration in an attempt to be made part of the visa waiver program. The effort reached a dead end because the Israelis wanted to reserve the right to refuse entry to “certain U.S. citizens” – i.e. Muslims – beyond the right to individual refusal which both countries will obviously keep. It even got to the point that AIPAC lobbied Congress to agree to discrimination against its own citizens by a foreign country, with no success.

Last week, the government and Knesset extended the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel married to non-citizen Palestinians from living with their spouses in Israel. The law was described as a security measure, but as statements made during the time that the bill was initiated revealed, its real goal was demographic – namely, reducing the number of Palestinians who are entitled to Israeli citizenship, or are even allowed to live in Israel as residents.

In both cases, the Ben-Gurion Airport procedures were imitated in totally different fields. The Citizenship Law targets Palestinian citizens as a group: from now on, if they wish to marry a non-citizen (a member of their own community!) they are forced to live in their partner’s country. Imagine the outcry that would result from a policy demanding that every American Jew who marries a Jew from another country must leave the U.S. in order to live with his spouse – due to a national policy intended to limit the number of Jewish citizens and residents in the country – and you can understand the horror of a bill which was supported by almost all Jewish parties, including most members of the Labor Party.

The Citizenship Law stands out, but it doesn’t stand alone. One of the worst laws passed by the previous Knesset was also aimed specifically against the Palestinian minority. The so-called Nakba Law allows the finance minister to withdraw government support from institutions – including Palestinian ones – that commemorate the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Another successful piece of legislation directed against the Arab minority allowed small Jewish settlements in the north and south of Israel to reject candidates based on their ethnicity.

Palestinians, it bears repeating, make up 20 percent of the Israeli population – higher than the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. The recent vote over the Citizenship Law reveals that the current Knesset will not change the national policy of racial profiling. In fact, there is already an initiative to revive a failed bill from last year, which gives a higher status to the “Jewishness” of the state over its democratic nature. The bill states, for example, that the government will make efforts to build new housing projects for Jews, but not for members of other ethnic groups or nationalities. Despite heavy criticism of the bill in the past, it was made part of the coalition agreement between the Likud and the Jewish Home Party.

Adalah – the Legal Center for the Arab Minority Rights in Israel, estimates that there are 55 laws that discriminate against Palestinians. These shouldn’t be confused with practices of discrimination, which are present in Israel but can be found in other societies as well. In fact, while there some positive developments in policies towards the Arab minority (along with deterioration in other fields), the number of discriminatory laws is on the rise.

Palestinian citizens have many rights in Israel – especially compared with Palestinians under occupation – but they are not equal citizens. Even if Israel is forced to end the occupation, only by removing all discriminatory elements from its legal system and adopting a “state of all its citizens” model can it move toward becoming a truly democratic state, rather than a democracy of racial profiling.

Well, that was fun. And now it’s over, and who really cares whether Yair Lapid becomes minister of this or minister of that; the twin elephants of tyranny over the Palestinians and the inevitability of war are still in the living room, and if anything, the country seems more determined than before to pretend they aren’t there.

For those who do see those elephants, there’s a sense of let-down, of anti-climax: all that excitement for nothing. It’s post-election depression, caused by the realization that after all the excitement over Da’am or Meretz or Hadash or whoever, an end to the tyranny and the automatic wars remains so damn far away. After all the excitement, we’re back to normal with a thud, and we remember with depressing clarity that this gradualism isn’t working, that it plays right into Israel’s hands, and that something has to change. So I think it’s time to forget the election, to treat the formation of the government as entertainment at most, and think anew about how to force the change, how to uproot the status quo.

I keep coming back to one conclusion: Israel isn’t going to do it, and the West isn’t going to force Israel’s hand, certainly not now. It’s up to the Palestinians. That’s not fair, but that’s reality.

The best that I or any other non-Palestinian can do is offer ideas and support for supportable Palestinian goals and tactics. And it seems to me that the Palestinians have to scare the shit out of this country, and the best ways I’ve heard of to do that are 1) taking Israel to The Hague, and 2) demanding Israeli citizenship for the 4 million-plus Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Regarding the first tactic, taking Israel to the International Criminal Court, the Palestinian Authority would face a backlash from the United States, and very possibly a cutoff of U.S. funds. But at some point, the Obama administration would be disgraced, while the Palestinians would gain huge international political support (and probably money). Punishing the Palestinians for taking their case to the world’s highest arbiter of justice is a losing proposition for Obama, and it seems he’s decided he no longer has to lose just to make AIPAC happy.

To those who warn that Israel could retaliate by taking the Palestinians to the ICC over terrorism, I’d like to see that happen, because then the Palestinians could retort with the pre-state record of Begin’s Irgun, Shamir’s Lehi and the mainstream Ben-Gurionist Haganah and Palmach, which between them committed scores upon scores of terror attacks against British officials and soldiers as well as Arab civilians (and in Lehi’s case, the assassination of the UN envoy to the Middle East, Count Folke Bernadotte). If such a trial gained international attention, it would be devastating to Israel’s claim of self-defense against terror. So I think the Palestinians have the winning hand over Israel and the U.S. at The Hague.

About the second tactic, a collective Palestinian demand for Israeli citizenship, this is what Ehud Olmert said about it in 2007:  ”If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

Here’s the scenario Jeffrey Goldberg envisioned two months ago were Mahmoud Abbas to say that if the Palestinians couldn’t have independence, what they wanted from Israel was democracy – citizenship in the country where they lived.

Reaction would be seismic and instantaneous. The demand for voting rights would resonate with people around the world, in particular with American Jews, who pride themselves on support for both Israel and for civil rights at home. Such a demand would also force Israel into an untenable position; if it accedes to such a demand, it would very quickly cease to be the world’s only Jewish-majority state, and instead become the world’s 23rd Arab-majority state. If it were to refuse this demand, Israel would very quickly be painted by former friends as an apartheid state.

I don’t quote Olmert and Goldberg as political or moral pathfinders, but as people who know something about Israel’s place in the world – and when they say a Palestinian demand for Israeli citizenship is a political weapon of frightful power, they should be listened to.

I wish all 300,000 or so Palestinians in East Jerusalem would take out Israeli citizenship right now; they don’t have to demand that right, it’s theirs under Israeli law. Imagine what would happen if they did so and declared their intention to use their numbers – which give them nearly 40% of the “unified capital’s” population – to gain power in City Hall. Moreover, imagine if all 4 million-plus Palestinians declared their intention to join with 1.7 million Israeli Arabs as citizens to gain power in the Knesset.

Everyone understands the Palestinians’ reluctance to give up their demand for independence and instead insist on their democratic rights within Israel, which is the sovereign power over every inch of land they live on, including the Gaza Strip. But to use the title of Goldberg’s blog, this is “the quickest path to Palestinian independence,” because it would terrify Israel into giving up the occupation and leaving the settlers to decide where they wanted to live, in Israel or Palestine.

And if it didn’t do the trick, then Israel, as Olmert said, would get the full South Africa treatment, and not just on a few dozen college campuses. The world’s reaction would be a catastrophe for this country. And in the end, that reaction would save Israel and the Palestinians, just like the South African treatment saved that country’s whites and non-whites.

None of these ideas, of course, are mine – the notion of taking Israel to The Hague, of demanding Israeli citizenship, and of East Jerusalemites implementing their right to citizenship, all were first raised by Palestinians. I just want to throw in my two cents by saying they sound real promising, they do not get anyone killed, they do not require the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority and the imposition of new hardships on the people, and, again, they do not mean the end of Palestine but rather the hastening of its arrival.

Finally, these tactics haven’t been tried yet, while the ones that have been tried – mainly terror and conciliation – have not worked. By taking the peaceful and legal yet radical route outlined above, the Palestinians, it seems to me, have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu meeting with AIPAC officials in Jerusalem (photo: Amos Ben Gershom / Government Press Office)

A few weeks ago, a well-known Israeli politician visited one of the large daily newspapers. During a meeting there, this person discussed his meetings with a top-level official in the U.S. administration. “Do the Americans know that the window of opportunity to influence Israelis ends on January 22?” the politician was asked. The answer he gave was somewhat positive.

It seems that the Israeli politician got it right: in an article for Bloomberg, Jewish-American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg quoted White House sources that blamed Israel for not knowing “what its own best interests are.” Goldberg went on to say that:

“The president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise.”

As one could expect, the item made the headlines in Israel, and this morning it is the front page story in every paper: Haaretz’s editorial is titled “Listen to Obama.” Yedioth Ahronoth, which is known for going after the Prime Minister personally, has turned Goldberg’s assessment into a direct quote from the president (“Netanyahu is a coward, he is leading Israel to destruction”).

Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom is quoting senior Likud officials who are blaming the President for – the irony! – “trying to interfere with the Israeli elections,” while Maariv is quoting senior AIPAC officials who are estimating that the relations between the U.S. and Israel “will not be hurt.”

Personally I believe that the White House’s move will not have any effect on the elections, or might even backfire. It betrays a certain misunderstanding of the Israeli political behavior, which is not unusual for the current administration. Just as Netanyahu’s support for Mitt Romney was incredibly unpopular with many Americans – even Republicans – a blunt attempt to influence voters one week ahead of the Israeli elections might actually rally many of Netanyahu’s supporters back to him.

Furthermore, Israelis have become used to the “verbal diplomacy” from Washington, much in the way the usual condemnations after each new settlement project are perceived as a political ritual which carries little meaning. The right is actually using those statements today as proof that words are never followed with actions, and that the world is learning to accept the new reality (Naftali Bennett, for example, makes this point exactly in a popular clip where he urges Israel to annex 60 percent of the West Bank).

The people such messages reach are the ones who are not voting for Netanyahu anyway. The prime minister’s coalition of national religious, orthodox, Russian immigrants and lower income Jews is much more indifferent to the nuances of American public diplomacy, and tends to view foreign powers as hostile to Israel to begin with. They might feel that at times when Israel is facing “a hostile” administration, a strong prime minister like Netanyahu, who has shown his ability to manipulate American politics, will actually serve Israeli interests better.

It is worth noting that one of Netanyahu’s election TV spots is titled “When Netanyahu speaks – the world listens.” Among other things, it shows the prime minister’s speech in front of a joint session of Congress, which won him 29 standing ovations. Netanyahu’s didactic and confrontational tone towards the world is not perceived as a problem, but rather as an advantage.

Related:
+972′s Israeli Elections Page
Donald Trump endorses Netanyahu for premiership
A real alternative? Tzipi Livni is far worse than Netanyahu

We have been asking the wrong questions: A popular debate in the days following the military escalation between Israel and Hamas had to do with the prospect of negotiations with Hamas, and whether the organization “has moderated.” In this conversation, evidence is tossed around from both sides in the forms of quotes from political figures, militants, supporters and spiritual leaders, followed by heated arguments over their meaning, context, quality of translation, status of the person in question, and so on.

Examples: The Times of Israel reported on a Gaza cleric who calls a violation of truce with Israel “sinful“ and the Jerusalem Post reporting that Khaled Mashaal says he accepts a Palestinian state on ’67 borders; there is Jeffrey Goldberg in the New York Times, explaining why Hamas cannot be reasoned with, and a New York Times editorial reminding us that Hamas is “consumed with hatred for Israel.” These are just a few random links from recent days; such pieces – both reports and analysis – are everywhere, all the time.

I don’t claim to possess more knowledge than any of the above on the inner struggle within Hamas and the power balance between “moderates” and “hawks.” On a side note, the mere question betrays the real bias of the media: Even when criticizing Israeli policies, most journalists examine reality from the Israeli perspective, or more precisely, from the perspective of the Israeli elite. After all, nobody asks whether one should talk to Israel, or to certain parties who take part in the Israeli government, however extreme their opinions might be.

The desire to pick the “right” Palestinian leaders goes hand in hand with the obsession with things they say or think. Trying to crack the Palestinian mind is like a national sport in Israel: Is Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal ready to recognize Israel? Could his statement be translated and understood as permanent recognition, or just a temporary one? Did Mahmoud Abbas give up the Palestinian right of return? Will he recognize Israel? Will he recognize it as a Jewish state? And if he does, will he mean it?

In its most extreme moments, this discourse is driven by people who never met a Palestinian yet talk as if they have an intimate understanding of their psyche that only a Freudian shrink might claim to hold; at other times it’s the self-proclaimed advocates of peace who wonder “whether there is a partner.” There are NGOs and think tanks, journalists and publications who make it their goal in life to tell the world “what Palestinians really think,” with an emphasis on “really.”

These issues are not just discussed on the public level. I have witnessed this all too many times: The Israeli (or American) meeting a Palestinian in a “reconciliation” or “peace building” conversation which all too quickly takes the form of a political interrogation. The Palestinian might be a farmer whose problem is with the land he lost to the separation barrier, but he must have the “right” opinions regarding the final status of Jerusalem, the refugee problem and the historical legitimacy of Zionism before he can tell his story or state his claim.

In the saddest moments, the Palestinian will play along, hoping that if he does play by our rules, his claim will be recognized (it probably won’t, there are many other questions to answer). In other cases, the Palestinian refuses, and his interrogator can retreat to his comfort zone of self-righteousness. Mission accomplished.

The bottom line is that none of this matters. It’s all a huge red herring. Nothing a leader says now determines the way he will act in the future. Public statements are important only to a limited extent and agreements depend on the continued willingness of both sides to uphold them. As long as both parties feel that they benefit from a certain status quo, or that their interests are better served than by any alternative, the deal they reach could hold. If one party is coerced into signing but doesn’t have its interests and desires addressed, all the nice declarations won’t matter. Twenty years after the historic peace deal that should have ended the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but didn’t, you’d think that people would get it.

The arguments about the meaning and importance of the Hamas charter are all but identical to the decade-long debate over the PLO charter. How much effort and time was put into forcing Arafat to change it, and how little did it matter when negotiations collapsed in Camp David and violence returned. The same goes for today: Given the right pressure, a certain Palestinian leadership could be made to promise Israel anything. Yet none of it would matter if you don’t address the fundamentals of the conflict: The occupation, the refugees, the holy sites, the settlements, the access to land and to water. The leaders would change their minds and if they don’t new leaders (“more extreme”) will come. Reality will prevail over rhetoric.

The fact that the West – even many well-intentioned liberals – continues to put Palestinians through litmus tests before acknowledging their basic human rights is further evidence of how biased the political conversation is. Rights shouldn’t be conditioned – that’s why they are called “rights” – and if anything, it’s Israelis who should explain why they deny them from millions of people, not the other way around. Instead, again and again we hear demands regarding things Arabs say, or write, or think, or feel. Taken together, they all feel too much like an excuse to avoid treating the Palestinians like equal human beings.

In the next post: A better litmus test

Jeffrey Goldberg tweets*, correctly, that the fighting won’t solve anything. But his phrasing embodies everything that’s wrong with the mainstream media. It also points at the Israeli attitude towards both the Palestinians and the region:

Prediction: Assassination of Hamas terror commander will not even partially solve Israel’s Gaza problem.

Israel’s Gaza problem?

The fatalities suggest it’s the other way around. According to B’Tselem, 6500 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces from the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000 until to September 30, 2012—4660 of which were Gazans. The same ten-year-period period saw 590 Israelis killed by Palestinians.

And then there’s the issue of Gaza’s economy, which Israel has systematically de-developed for over 40 years. There’s the blockade. There’s Israel’s separation policy, which, in a further attempt to fracture the Palestinian territories, tears families into two—leaving one spouse in the West Bank, another in Gaza, ripping parents from their children.

Israel’s Gaza problem?

These are people. 1.7 million people live in Gaza. They shouldn’t be collectively referred to as Israel’s “problem.”

***

I get on the train to go to a protest in East Jerusalem. People are talking and laughing and smiling as though nothing is going on. People are dying in Gaza. I boil. I sit. Two teenage girls stand in the aisle next to me. Their chatter is mindless and light-hearted.

The girls are about the same age as the Palestinian students I teach at a university in the West Bank. One has told me about her aunts and uncles and cousins in Gaza. I wonder what she’s doing right now. I wonder if her family is okay.

I think about the Palestinian woman, Nisreen, I interviewed via the phone recently. Her kids are in Ramallah; she is stuck in Gaza with no work and no family and hasn’t seen her son and daughter in five years. When I asked Nisreen about Operation Cast Lead, she said that the hardest part was not what she experienced but her parents’ and children’s panic and fear as they watched the news in the West Bank.

The teenage girls next to me giggle. I can’t bear their laughter. I move and stand, tucking myself into a corner, as far away from the other passengers as I can get. A tall, large middle-aged man boards the train and, even though it’s not crowded, he manages to step on my foot. There’s plenty of room but he stands, oblivious to me or just not caring that I’m there, boxing me in with his wide back.

“Can you move?” I say. My voice is sharp. I push past him and walk into the next car. I want to get off this train.

***

Damascus Gate. Between 30 to 40 Palestinians have gathered to protest Israel’s “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Less than 50 meters away, an equal number of Israeli police are sitting in vans and milling about. The protesters are unarmed. Some of the Israeli forces wear riot gear; others wear bullet-proof vests, rifles slung across their chests.

A majority of the protesters are women. One of the demonstrators explains to journalist Jillian Kestler-D’Amours and me that most of the protesters are Palestinian citizens of the state who go to Hebrew University. There are very few East Jerusalemites here.

The demonstrators wave Palestinian flags and chant. They call on Palestinians to raise their voices; they call for freedom; they say, “Netanyahu, wait; Gazans will dig your grave.”

I’m struck by this last one because the timing of this operation suggests the opposite—pummeling Gaza seems to be Netanyahu’s attempt to pave the way for his re-election. What does this say about the Israeli public? What does this say about the people I live and love among?

After 50 minutes, the demonstration ends. As Jill and I leave, I remark on how few Palestinian Jerusalemites were at the protest. “It’s always like this,” she answers me, in Arabic.

Jill is an old hand at these demos and has covered both East Jerusalem and the West Bank extensively. She explains that many Palestinian Jerusalemites are afraid to come to the protests; they’re worried that the Israeli authorities will use their political activities as an excuse to strip them of residency, that they’ll lose what little rights they have.

***

Thursday, November 15: I wake up before dawn, thinking about Gaza, wondering what’s going on, when will it end, how will it end, how will I face my Palestinian students on Sunday, how can I look them in the eyes when Israel is doing something terrible in my name, when Israel is bombing their aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmothers?

My heart slams into my ribs. It goes on like this for I don’t know how long and then I feel my heart seize, stop. Start. The beat is erratic; I feel a ripple make its way through my heart. It feels like a worm is crawling through my chest. Pain shoots into my shoulder.

My heart finds its rhythm again. But I don’t feel better. I get up and check the news. Three Israelis in Kiryat Malachi have been killed by a Hamas rocket. The siren has sounded in the Kiryat Gat area; I lived, briefly, on a kibbutz down there. I remember digging up sweet potatoes from the earth. I imagine the land I sunk my fingers into: scarred and battered.

I want to get off this train.

*Another note on Goldberg’s tweet, in which he calls Ahmed Jabari a “terror commander.” The accepted, journalistic term is “militants,” not “terrorists.”

If Gunter Grass had ever said or done anything that showed hatred of Jews or of Israel, then I, too, might take a very uncharitable view of his warning in the poem “What must be said” that this country, or even this government, is liable to nuke Iran and ”annihilate the Iranian people.” Like I wrote before, that’s a misleading suggestion; for all the past reports about “bunker-busting” bombs and future scenarios about a regional WMD war, Israel is not planning to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

But Gunter Grass not only has never said an anti-Semitic or Israel-hating thing in his life that anyone’s aware of, he’s spent his career confronting Germany over its Nazi past, he’s visited Israel at least a few times, he’s a classic European liberal whose criticism of this country is that of a pained, disappointed friend, and he even speaks in the poem of “the State of Israel, to which I am bound and wish to stay bound,” concluding it with a wish for peace that includes Israelis.

No, Grass is not an anti-Semite or hater of Israel – he’s a liberal friend of the Jews and of Israel who wants this country to turn away from all the things liberals naturally dread - extreme nationalism, militarism, ethnocentrism, paranoia - the very things, unfortunately, that Israel has come to stand for.

So if I don’t think Grass is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, how do I explain his writing such a thing as that Israel is liable to nuke Iran? Given his record on Jews and Israel, and given the context of the poem, I think he just got carried away - not by his hatred of Israel, which doesn’t exist, but by his hatred of war. Hatred of war is the theme of Grass’s career as a political activist and, by the way, of the poem “What must be said.”

But most people weighing in on Grass don’t agree – Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Republic, a host of German writers and, of course, the Israeli and American Jewish establishment, are accusing him basically of neo-Nazism.  And what’s their evidence (besides the poem’s critical tone, exagerrated claim and so-called “moral equivalence,” all sure indicators of Israel-hatred)? Grass’ time in the Waffen SS.

He was 17. He was drafted. He was in for a few months at the end of the war, and he says he never fired a gun. I agree that it was wrong and cowardly of him to hide that history for so long - but I also think he atoned for it when he admitted it publicly at age 78. That was an act of bravery. From  his 2007 New Yorker essay, “How I spent the war – A recruit in the Waffen S.S.”:

What I accepted with the stupid pride of youth I wanted to conceal after the war out of a recurrent sense of shame. But the burden remained, and no one could alleviate it.

Over the past few years, there have been several cases of prominent Israeli citizens with Arab names who were subjected at Ben Gurion Airport to humiliating procedures so egregious that they were widely publicized in the media.

Sayed Kashua, a well-known Haaretz columnist, creator of the critical and popular hit television series Arab Labour  and author of three critically acclaimed novels (in Hebrew), has written several times about the onerous security checks to which he has been subjected, including having a member of the security staff escort him not just to the gate, but all the way to his seat on the airplane. In one recent column he writes: “I know I have written about this a million times, and I will probably write about it another million times. Because it’s simply humiliating.” The column is about his journey to Switzerland, where he was to read at a literary event. He was also a dinner guest of the Israeli ambassador and his wife. And yet a 20-year-old woman took it upon herself to take apart his suitcase and humiliate him with intrusive questions at Ben Gurion Airport.

Rania Jubran, the daughter of Israeli Supreme Court justice Salim Jubran, was a 26-year-old Israeli diplomat when she was subjected to humiliating security checks at Ben Gurion Airport, even though she presented her foreign ministry identity card. Ms. Jubran was the first Arab to be accepted to the foreign ministry’s cadet course. When Ms. Jubran resigned three years later for reasons she would only describe as “personal,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon described her as “extremely talented,” while another unnamed source in the ministry said that her departure was evidence of their “inability to retain quality personnel” (Hebrew link).

Ibtisam Mara’ana, a prominent, award-winning documentary film maker who lives in Tel Aviv, has represented Israel at many international film festivals. And yet she told me once that she turned down an invitation to one festival because she didn’t have the energy to face the humiliation at the airport.

Yara Mashour, a prominent Nazareth-based magazine editor, switched flights to another carrier after she was profoundly insulted by El Al staff at Milan’s airport. She is now considering suing the airline. In response to this incident, Haaretz decried racial profiling of Arab citizens in its editorial page.

In another case, two Arab brothers did successfully sue El Al after they were separated and humiliated at an airport in New York. The brothers had flown to New York on an organized group trip with their co-workers at an Israeli insurance company.

Few take the trouble to sue, because it is an exhausting and intimidating process. But the humiliation should not be taken lightly – as it is described here by +972 contributor Aziz Abu Sarah. In this post by +972 contributor Dahlia Scheindlin, she quotes her friend Adeeb Awad, a man who describes himself as a “proud Tel Avivian” and a “proud Palestinian,” an Israeli citizen who finds himself separated and described as a “kilo” by Ben Gurion Airport security personnel. And there are many, many similar stories – of Arab professors at Israeli universities traveling to academic conferences forced to fly without their laptops and mobile phones; of Arab actors who have appeared in well-known films taken aside and questioned for hours, forced to miss their flights, and so on.

These are the experiences of prominent Arab citizens of Israel who live fully integrated lives in the midst of the Jewish majority. So imagine what it must be like for those who speak Hebrew with an Arabic accent, who wear keffiyehs and hijabs rather than jeans and t-shirts.

With very rare exception, nearly every Arab citizen of Israel who has flown through Ben Gurion Airport has a story  of humiliation to tell.

One year ago, the Supreme Court demanded that the Shin Bet explain why it discriminates against Arab citizens at the airport, calling the onerous security procedures “unacceptable.” The court’s decision was handed down in response to a petition submitted by ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. As Dahlia Scheindlin writes, the petition reads like a chronicle of the dark side. The bottom line: No matter what their reason for flying, no matter who they represent or how prominent they are and no matter how early they arrive at the airport, Palestinian-Israelis cannot know if they will make their flights.

But the Shin Bet, despite assurances that it would examine and change its policies, has done nothing. In Israel, the security establishment is above the law: It can and does ignore with impunity years of official complaints, outraged newspaper editorials, litigation – and yes, even Supreme Court decisions.

And then imagine how an Arab-Palestinian citizen of Israel who was born and raised in the country, who speaks unaccented, fluent Hebrew, must feel upon reading that an American man glides through airport security simply because he is a Jew.

And I seriously doubt that a 20-year-old airport security staffer, who took this first post-army job in order to pay for a trip to India or his university tuition, is able to spot a terrorist based on how he answers a question about where he celebrated his bar mitzvah. The people who spot the terrorists are the armed ex-combat officers who stand above the terminal, behind one-way windows, surrounded by security cameras that monitor every movement below.

For 20 percent of the native-born population of Israel, Jeffrey Goldberg’s sense of privileged belonging is unattainable at Ben Gurion Airport, whether they are just ordinary citizens going on holiday, or prominent citizens traveling to represent the state at an academic conference or arts festival. This, as outgoing Supreme Court head Dorit Beinisch said, is unacceptable.

Goldberg got some responses to his post pointing out to this issue, so he posted another piece, which actually made things worse. He would allow racial profiling in Israel (but not in the States), because “Israel is in open conflict with several Muslim terror groups,” Goldberg writes. To an Arab reader he reminds us that today is the 20th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina, “so it isn’t the best day to complain about this ‘imaginary threat.’”

If it’s history class we have entered, it is worth remembering that the two most serious terror attacks concerning air travel to Israel – the kidnapping of an Air France flight in 1976 to Entebbe and the attack in Ben Gurion in 1972, which claimed the life of 24 people – were committed by German and Japanese terrorists, respectively. But the important point is that Goldberg avoids the true meaning of the criticism against the use of racial profiling at the Israeli airport. Nobody seriously claims that the security check should be canceled – only that all passengers should go through the same procedure, uncomfortable as it may be.

Just like Goldberg, as an Israeli Jew, I find the check at Ben Gurion much more polite and pleasant than the ones I go through on U.S. domestic flights. However, if you look around at the departure hall, it is hard not to notice the Arab families waiting in a parallel line before being taken to a side room, where they are examined for hours and at times, strip-searched. I would rather we all go through the same system: Be that harsh questioning or naked-scanning. The discomfort and the time loss for the Jewish travelers is a small price to pay for better relations between ethnic groups in this country.

The fact that Goldberg argues against racial profiling in his own country is even more troubling; to his credit I would admit that it’s not the first time I hear American Jews explaining why their U.S.-style liberalism can’t or shouldn’t be implemented in my country.

And there is another point which Goldberg avoids. He writes:

Of course, Israeli airport security doesn’t merely scrutinize Muslim travelers. In fact, based on the profiles in operation at Ben-Gurion, single European and American women traveling alone are most often singled out for special treatment.

I don’t know what made him come to this conclusion (evidence suggests otherwise), but the main point is this: “European and American women traveling alone” are not Israeli citizens. Most Palestinians detained for hours at TLV are. It’s their own country that views them all as potential terrorists. As his initial post revealed, Jeffrey Goldberg, an American, is treated better at the airport because he is a Jew, while citizens of this very country are held for hours and at times, humiliated. The underlying message is that Israel is more his country than it is their country. Unlike Goldbreg, I don’t find this to be something worth celebrating.

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He appreciates that he doesn’t have to worry about packing his nail clippers and understands that non-Jews face problems at the airport –  he notes that he knows of some Arab-Israelis and Arab-Americans who have been stuck in the screening proces for a whopping two hours.

But despite his appreciation for the well-honed army profiling skills of the screeners, after being asked what “community” he belongs to at the airport, he has come to the conclusion that the screening line at Ben-Gurion could run smoother and faster, and he has just the solution:

I noticed that the line to be screened was quite long this morning, and it struck me that if these screeners simply cut to the chase on this one crucial question [Are you Jewish?], they’d be able to process passengers more quickly. I think the process at Ben-Gurion is sufficiently invasive that direct questions aren’t going to be judged terribly offensive.

Goldberg has no problem with being asked personal and invasive questions, since its better than having to take his shoes off. He thinks that if Israeli security wants to know whether someone is Jewish, they should just directly ask so as to expedite the process, instead of beating around the bush about it.

For whatever reason, Israeli security screeners won’t ask departing passengers whether or not they are Jewish. But they are nevertheless desperate to know.

He reasons that its fine to just ask someone straight out because there is no room for “political correctness” at the airport anyway. Apparently Goldberg hasn’t read my colleague Aziz’s post on the regular harassment he has experienced at the airport as a regular traveler for work – or this one either. Goldberg’s boasting of just how much less humiliating the Israeli airport security experience is compared to America’s – because there are “no TSA-naked-scanning machines to be found”  - completely ignores the routine humiliation that Palestinians must go through. Furthermore, is Goldberg implying that all security needs to know is whether a traveler is a Jew because a Jew could never pose a threat to airport security?

What annoyed me most about this post is that Goldberg, with a name like his, feels he is in a position to not only judge the merits of Israeli airport security – but to offer a way to make it faster, since he cannot be bothered to wait in line that long.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard and self-appointed gatekeeper of all things Jewish and Zionist, is not happy with the incoming New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren. He has two problems with her.

The first, and most important, is that Rudoren had the temerity to read Peter Beinart’s new critical book about Israel and, lo and behold, support it. Goldberg whines that she is showing “bias” against Likud.

Which, I think, is perfectly fine. After all, the Likud prime minister recently said that his main enemies are the NYTimes and Haaretz. He has refused to write an oped for the NYTimes, snarkily saying he didn’t want to “Bibiwash” it. Once a public official takes a public stand as a self-declared enemy of a newspaper, I don’t think the paper should continue to treat him differently than  any other public official. Journalists are not, and should not be, angels. To blame the NYTimes bureau chief of “bias” against Likud after this is utter chutzpah (nerve) and evidence that the writer is a propagandist.

Goldberg also calumnies Ali Abunimah, claiming that he is an “advocate of Israel’s destruction” and comparing him to a “settler rabbi,” and deplores Rudoren’s “chummy” relations with him. You don’t have to like Abunimah – I’m not a fan, myself – to bristle at this. Unlike settlers, rabbis or not, Abunimah is not committing war crimes by his very existence and he does not rely on the subjugation of another people for it. Furthermore, Abunimah does not “advocate Israel’s destruction:” he merely demands Israel stop being Zionist. Given that in this world, practical Zionism is racist and cannot be otherwise, this is a worthy demand which has nothing to do with the “destruction of Israel,” merely its transformation. (Yes, I can imagine an ideal world in which Zionism is not necessarily racist; if you do visit that world, please give my regards to the pink unicorn.)

And finally, Goldberg graciously grants Rudoren his permission to not be a Zionist. One would think that, as the NYTimes Jerusalem bureau also covers Palestine and Palestinians, that this should be an actual requirement (otherwise, the bureau chief should prima facie be considerd biased), but I guess that since the previous New York Times bureau chief’s son served in the IDF, we should be grateful for small mercies.