In Apartheid Israel, Not All Holidays Are Created Equal
It is not nice to see a nursery school that is closed, and even less so to see a pharmacy closed. Buses are running late, renovations are delayed, streets are not being swept and the garage that fixes your car is open only half the time.
Muslims are celebrating the Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), and Jewish Israelis are in an uproar. "How did we get to this point?" a passenger on a crowded bus driven by a Jew asked indignantly on Wednesday.
How did we get to a point where not all Israelis are Jews, and that there are Israelis celebrating a holiday that is not Shavuot? A scandal. That non-Jewish holiday will be canceled immediately.
We have, so it seems, a holiday every other day, while they have only two a year.
This week, Muslims are marking the Feast of Sacrifice, and those who are being sacrificed are the white masters. Behind the _expression_ of astonishment and insult, that suddenly there is a holiday here that is not Jewish, lies the longing for an all-Jewish, racially pure state.
Israeli Jews learned of the holiday only as it began on Wednesday because its existence, of course, gets no mention anywhere, and therefore, they felt betrayed and deceived. Something had gone wrong in the state of all Jews.
The bus passenger's rage is clear: Suddenly, we are dependent on them. The Arab citizens are our auxiliary force, and now they have suddenly disappeared for a few days. How dare they?
There are several layers involved. The first, the idea that Arabs have holidays, is by itself an amazing fact, at least for some Jews. What is this about Arabs and holidays? And, if they have holidays, why do they need to celebrate them? They should come to work and not make us crazy.
The idea that the Feast of the Sacrifice is for them like our Yom Kippur is incomprehensible and unacceptable. To do so would mean thinking of Arabs as human beings and raising them to the level of Jews.
Likewise, the idea that there are whole sectors of the economy where Jews are dependent on Arabs is maddening. Maybe for cleaning and renovations, but the health care system depends on Arab labor? How did we get to this point? Will there be a general strike on the next Eid al-Fitr?
Once there was a sunny apartheid state. Within its borders lived two peoples, miraculously almost equal in size.
Between the Jordan and the sea, there is no minority and no majority. There is no minority and no majority among the citizenry – everyone is ruled by it to the same extent, in Jenin and Afula, Hadera and Sakhnin, everyone subject to the same government, the same army and the same police, even if there is still a "minorities unit" in the police.
Jewish Israelis deny this demographic equality, which is relatively easy to do. It is harder to deny the obligation to grant equal rights. No one even thinks about it. It is regarded as a hallucination, a temporary loss of sanity. But on the Feast of Sacrifice, Jewish Israelis are forced to look directly at the shocking truth: There is another people here (who remembered?), and they have holidays.
The Jewish supremacists will never honor the holidays of the inferiors. They will not agree to suspend business activity as they do on Jewish holidays. Why? Why does the Shavuot holiday of about 7.5 million Jews shut down the country, and the Feast of the Sacrifice of 7.5 million Arabs does not? A stupid question. Why?
The Feast of the Sacrifice is an appropriate time to reveal the naked truth that we are an apartheid state.
When holidays are not equal, some holidays are marked while those of others are ignored, even elicit anger that they exist at all, it reveals the stench of apartheid.
How many Israelis were at all aware that there was a holiday this week at all – that is, until the nursery school assistant told them she would not come to work this week? And how many of them accept the holiday as a human and understandable phenomenon? "What are we coming to?" asked the bus passenger, implying that the very existence of a non-Jewish holiday on which people do not come to work is a subversive act against the state and against the regime.
The holiday will end on the weekend, and then Israel will return to its normal routine – until the next festive holiday on the calendar, Rosh Hashana.
You wanted a Jewish state? You got an apartheid state.