Who are actually the Israelis?

The Israeli

In my last post, I tried to analyse what causes the increasingly anti-Israeli opinions in the Western media, in the reactions on the post, the writers repeatedly spoke about the Israeli, like it was one homogenous type of people, but that is far from truth. David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister once told a visitor that in a gathering of 3 Israelis you have at least 5 political opinions, and indeed, the Israelis are divided by different approaches to religion, or other religion, by country of origin (of their forefathers), Ashkenazim or Sephardi or mixtures of both, minorities, tribes and sects, right, left, revisionists, far left, and all these groups, and most likely I forgot to mention many, are again under divided in splinter groups, which argue with each other, and are /or not represented in the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset). In small political parties which are either in a coalition or in the opposition.

But don't make a mistake, there are issues on which we have a majority consensus, which enables the Democratic Government to reign, generally it never finishes its full term, and is dissolved after average 3years of the 4 years term, with calling for new elections, which brings in new splinter parties that eventually torpedo the government after some years, and there we go again.

Abroad, you here about extremists such as Liebermann, Israel's current foreign minister, whose party has 5 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. He was born in Moldavia, but after immigrating to Israel, became a student leader, and continued to meddle in politics after graduation, he joined the Likud party, became its political headman during Netanyahu's first government, but his political opinion was too extreme for the middle right Likud party, thus he left and next elections he headed a Russian immigrants ultra extreme party, who is now part of the coalition government (second term).

Lieberman is a settler, but wants to exchange land with the Palestinians, in order to get rid of part of the Israeli Palestinian towns and villages of the Arab triangle, north of Kfar Saba. Those Israeli Arabs, who are represented in the Knesset, do not want to be Palestinians, but are happy with being irrational opposition to the government. One of their leaders is Doctor (Med) Ahmed Tibi, an outspoken Israeli Arab, who was the political adviser of the late Yasir Arafat. You think this is complicated, you have not heard anything yet. The Arab parties who have 11 representatives in the Knesset are a peculiar entity in the picture, they demand more equality for the Arabs, call themselves Palestinians, but try to get them to cross permanently the green line to the P.A., they won't accept it, as their living conditions are much higher than the Arabs and Palestinians living in the region.
The Israeli Muslims do not serve in the army (the historical reason for that was that they would not fight their brothers, but today, they simply earn three years of their lives, a privilege they don't want to give up).

On the other hand, the Bedouins (nomadic tribes, which slowly are settling in townships and villages in the north and the south of the country.. They volunteer for the army, are engaged as scouts and path-finders, and indispensable in order to safe guard the borders. In the above mentioned 11 Arab members of the Knesset, one of them represents the Bedouins. The Bedouins do not consider themselves Palestinians, however, they are engaged in a long lasting fight with the Israeli government on grazing and farming rights and ownership of the land.

The Druze is another Arabic mountain tribe, fierce fighters, with a seperate secret religion, living in three main clusters, the Golan and Syria, In Lebanon and our own Israeli Druze living on the Camel and in the Galilee. They are patriotic in the three countries they live, they go to the Israeli army, they reach high ranks and volunteer for the most dangerous missions. Even though, they they claim to be discriminated by the Government, their loyalty to Israel is never in doubt.
Funny enough, they vote mostly for the right, as socialism is far from their thoughts.

Another peculiar group are the Muslim Circassians a group out of the Caucasus, replaced by the Turks a hundred year ago, they serve also in the Army, and lately they are investigating the possibility to return to their homeland.

Than we have the Israeli Palestinian Arabs, divided in numerous political and religious groups, Muslims and Christians, claiming to be the original Palestinians, which is true, and according the DNA tests, originating from Jewish tribes who were converted to the religion of the conqueror (some say the 10 lost Jewish tribes). They live integrated and semi integrated between the Jewish population, in Arab neighborhoods (Haifa, Jerusalem, Accra, Tel Avis-Yaffo, Lidda, Ramla, Beer Sheba) or Arab towns such as Umm El Fahum, Nazareth, Iblin and Tira. There is no forced integration, but judging what goes on in my home town, where many of the professional force are Arabs, it is a fact of life. To explain this, you need to understand, that Jews and Arabs (Semites) look the same, and if they do not wear special tribal clothing, they are difficult to be recognized as minorities. In generally they are not friendly with the Palestinians on the other side of the Green line, whom they distrust and consider problematic.

Coming back to the Jewish Israeli, which can not as easily put in groups as the minorities, we will start with the small extremist section called the Nature Karta, an orthodox group living mainly in Jerusalem and Bnei Barak, anti Zionists (they believe that only God with the help of the Messiah is permitted to order return to the holy land). They are these peculiar Jews who appear at the court of Ahmadinejad, demonstrate against Israel in Brooklyn and riot in Jerusalem about parking lots on Sabbath and arrest of an pregnant mother who starved her son. Of course they do not serve in the army, and are financed by their brothers in the US. They dress and look like people from a Polish ghetto 200 years ago, and their language is Yiddish, as Hebrew is forbidden, as it is the language of the holy bible. They oppose Israel's democratic rule and thus don't vote for Parliament.

Looking more or less the same, but less extreme are the Ashkenazim Hasidim, which do participate in the democratic life of Israel, even participate in the coalition government. They represent around 5 seats in Knesset, are divided between themselves (followers of different Rabbis and schools, which originate out of Russia, Latvia, Hungary and Poland). Some try to evade compulsory army services out of religious beliefs, but also serve in hyper religious army units
Their political outlook depends mainly on who is offering more, and even though, bound to the status quo agreement, which was reached in the early days of the nation, they fight to increase more religious supervision on kashrut, sabbath and family laws.

Then we have the National religious parties, also nicknamed “the knitted cipas” to which most but not all the settlers belong. They are extreme right, Zionist nationalists, who belief in greater Israel, led by religious leaders, they make the life of the Palestinians hell. One of their disciples, Yigal Amir murdered Israel's prime minister Yitschak Rabin. They are still a minority, but with the current government they gain power. I suppose that when the reactions on my post referred to the Israelis, they generally referred to this group of Jews.

Another religious orientated political group is the Shas party, lead by Rabbi Ovadia Yoseef. They are a Sephardi (mainly Moroccan) group, which have their own education chain and have 11 representatives in the Knesset. Rav Yoseef is well known for his religious rulings, some rather peculiar in our eyes, but admired by his followers. Shas is part of the current coalition and supports the settlers aims, even though, not many settlers belong to Shas.

The Likud (the party of Netanyahu) is originally a revisionist party following the writings of Zeev Jabotinsky, they are nationalists, and call themselves Central right orientated. They have 27 seats in the Knesset, were severely damaged when former PM Ariel Sharon split the party and created the Kadima party (Ehud Olmert and Zippi Livni) who got 28 seats, but could not form a coalition.
There is nearly no distinction between the Likud and Kadima, the Likud a little more to the right and Kadima a little to the left, but both are central parties and both suffer from scandals and court cases.
After the summer recess, some parliament member are expected to jump from Kadima to the Likud, not out of ideals but for seats in the Government.

Then we have the Israeli Labor party, with Ehud Barak, the Minister of Defense, a central left party, original Government party of David Ben Gurion, today watered down to only 13 seats.
The Labor party is in actual fact splitting in two separate parties, one in the coalition and one in the opposition. The opposition has 6 members and the coalition also 6, one lady is in between, and has not yet decided which side to choose.

The Meretz party (a far left orientated party) in the opposition, backs subjects such as New left, Rights for Homosexuals, Global warming, Peace now, against the Settlers, for Human rights, etc. They were reduced down to 5 seats in the last elections, as their ideals do not appeal to the young Israelis.

Now for the proper order I need to add immigrant organizations, which are not political associated, even though, most people from the former Soviet Republics are right leaning, or anti left.
Another group which I forgot to mention are the Russian Christians which immigrated several years back from the Communists to Israel claiming to be Jewish (right of return), and here openly admitted to be practicing Christians.

And the black Ethiopians,claiming to be Jewish from the King Solomon period, the Indians claiming to be from the ten lost tribes, the Black group from the USA, living in Dimona, an Indian tribe from Peru, and I could go on like this for some time, but I believe you got the picture.

All these people somehow belong to the Israeli nationality, and when you write the Israelis do this or that, you are talking to enormous mixture of different people, different colors and different origin, but most of all, proud to be Israeli. While after 50 odd years in Israel, I am still a newcomer, my children and grandchildren are Tsabres (Israelis to the bone).