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BamaD -> RE: Ah, those peace loving Arabs (3/27/2014 10:28:21 PM)
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FR
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Arab-Israeli representation in the new parliament has dipped
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AMONG the many floating voters in Israel’s election, thousands of Jews for the first time voted for four political parties led by Arabs. A teacher at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University voted for Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka, who heads a socialist party that preaches that Arabs and Jews are both victims of nationalism. Other Israeli Jews who voted for Arab-led parties include a posse of artists and Avraham Burg, a former chairman of the World Zionist Organisation who was once parliament’s speaker. “I voted for the principle of equal citizenship rather than a nationalist ethnic state,” he says.
The mainstream Israeli media generally ignored the Arab-led parties, three of which look likely to get a total of 12 seats, one going to a Jew. Most Arab politicians used the social media to promote their wares in Hebrew. Yael Lerer, a Jewish publisher of translations of Arab texts who helped Azmi Bishara, an Arab parliamentarian now in exile, to found the National Democratic Assembly, better known as Balad, toured cafés and student halls in Tel Aviv to drum up left-wing Jews to vote for it. Real Democracy, a lobby, turned to Facebook to promote its campaign for Israeli voters to ask Palestinians from the occupied territories to tell them how to vote.
As usual, boycotts and infighting reduced the Arabs’ electoral clout. Hundreds of Jews who used to vote for Hadash, which purports to be a joint Jewish-Arab (originally communist) party, switched to Meretz, a Jewish-led socialist outfit led by a woman, after Hadash failed to put a woman high enough on its list to give her a decent chance of election. A stalwart anti-colonial Hadash comrade put off still more Jews of a peacenik persuasion by declaring his support for Syria’s Bashar Assad.
Fewer than 1% of Jews vote for Arab-led parties, whereas 20% of Arabs are still reckoned to vote for Jewish parties. In any event, the overall number of Arabs in Israel’s parliament fell because Jewish parties this time pushed their few Arab candidates further down their lists. Of the 108 seats won by Jewish-led parties, only two were assigned to Arabs, who make up a fifth of Israel’s 8m people. The overall number of Arab Israelis in the 120-strong parliament may decline from 17 to 13.
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