Ian (loic) wrote,
2009-03-24 09:39:00

Nomenclature

Today's coverage of the protests, counter-protests and police response in Umm al-Fahm reminded me of a question that's been popping up in my head for the past couple of years. All of the articles I've seen refer to one set of protesters as "Israeli Jews" and the other set of protesters as "Israeli Arabs". On one side we have a religious grouping on the other side a language grouping.

When we were in Israel we met an Israeli who is Jewish but also Arabic - his family is from Iraq, he speaks fluent Arabic and it's the language of his ancestors. Like Israelis of all religions he also speaks Hebrew fluently. But he's not one of the "Israeli Arabs" who were being protested in Umm al-Fahm this week. He's one of the 3.5 million Sephardim and Mizrahim who are linguistically and often culturally Arabic.

The real divide here is not language or culture or ethnicity it's religion. Why aren't we calling a spade a spade? Why don't the news stories talk about Israeli Christians and Israeli Muslims?
Tags: israel, language, media, politics

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