Special Report, Pages 14-15

Justifying Racism Requires Moral Delusions, Denial of Humanity

By Awatef Sheikh

Aswan, aka “Suha,” the mother of two and Ph.D. candidate who was rejected as a babysitter by Karmi Eldad when she learned Aswan was not a Jewish Israeli. (Photo A. Sheikh)

“I’M LOOKING for a babysitter. No, this isn’t a want ad—it’s a real dilemma.” That’s how Karmi Eldad, an Israeli mother living in East Jerusalem, opened her article, “Looking for a Babysitter,” published on the Web site of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October. Eldad shared with readers the “dilemma” she faced when seeking to hire a babysitter. In a country that routinely accuses the international community of anti-Semitism, racist notions and expressions by Israeli politicians and religious figures against Palestinians and Arabs are common. Eldad’s article was different, however—she went a step further by deliberating her racism and expecting readers to sympathize with her, as if this exercise alone should exonerate her views.

The Jewish Israeli mother posted her ad at a café on Mount Scopus adjacent to her neighborhood, the French Hill. Both are located in East Jerusalem, occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed by Israel in violation of international law. Eldad was fortunate: a woman called to express interest in the job. She described the caller as an intelligent and amazing person, a mother with two children, thus giving her credentials as an experienced babysitter.

But there was a problem: the caller’s name was Suha and she lived in Isaweyeh, a Palestinian slum-like neighborhood in East Jerusalem, just a few hundred yards away from Eldad’s pleasant, well-maintained neighborhood. Eldad rejected Suha and told her and Haaretz readers why: Grappling with her conscience, Eldad confessed she was “afraid to employ an Arab woman.”

“I tried to imagine an Arab caregiver for my son,” Eldad wrote. “No problem. She sounded delightful…..But what if…” she went on to reflect. “What if she duplicates the key and gives it to her cousin who will steal the car/computer/wallet/gun? Or what if she really is an honest and nice person and innocently tells a relative in Taibeh (or for the sake of argument, in Ramallah) that she’s looking after a cute baby? Will that person kidnap him? Or extort money from us? Or worse? And what if none of this, but I always have the feeling that maybe, maybe yes?”

The author explained what she described as her “moral dilemma”: she succumbed to her fears and wondered whether this means she is racist. She questioned what has changed; her parents had had an Arab cleaner when she was young. With a flourish of what could almost pass as dramatic irony, Eldad is blindly oblivious to the catalogue of prejudices and racism as she charts her “moral” reasoning.

I was in Jerusalem recently and ran into the pseudonymous Suha, an old acquaintance from university. Her actual name is Aswan; she is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, originally from Nazareth, a single mother of two children. She is doing her Ph.D. in philosophy at the Hebrew University, has a master’s degree in educational anthropology, a diploma in management of not-for-profit community centers, and is a former manager of one. She is a qualified group facilitator with experience in facilitating conflict resolution discussion groups of Jewish and Palestinian participants, and is qualified in mediation and trust-building practices. Aswan lives with her two children at the Hebrew University’s Student Village in the French Hill—not in Isaweyeh, as Eldad stated in her article.

Why, then, did Eldad specify Isaweyeh? Because in order to justify her “moral dilemma,” Eldad required the typical image of a Palestinian—the sneaky, untrustworthy one—not the ones from Taybeh or any other town in the Galilee in Israel (home to the “less sneaky” ones). Isaweyeh is a West Bank neighborhood in East Jerusalem—in other words, it constitutes another “Ramallah” for Eldad’s Jewish Israeli readers.

Sitting in the same café in which Eldad had posted the ad, Aswan recalled the developments of that day. “I told her about all my qualifications, work experience and studies,” she said. Eldad “asked me several questions as a mother and was very impressed and excited, and then she asked if we could meet immediately to finalize things. I speak very good Hebrew, so she couldn’t tell that I wasn’t a Jew. It wasn’t until the end, when we agreed to meet in about an hour, that she asked for my name. I said, ‘Aswan,’ then I could feel that she was taken aback.”

Aswan explained to me that she tried to convince Eldad to meet, but failed. “Do you want to meet, and then you can see there is nothing to be afraid of?” she suggested. Eldad declined. Aswan then suggested meeting to discuss Eldad’s fears, regardless of the job. Attempting to end the conversation, Eldad said: “I couldn’t hire you even if I wanted to. My dad is a member of the Knesset and, according to the law, his children can’t hire an Arab babysitter for security reasons.”

While there are more than 20 laws in Israel which discriminate against Palestinian citizens, none forbid Jewish MKs from hiring Palestinian citizens as babysitters—at least, not yet.

Aswan is not alone in this experience (nor, sadly, is Eldad in her views). According to research conducted by Ono Academic College in 2009, Israel’s Palestinian citizens are most discriminated against in employment, and academic qualifications don’t help much when they are applying for jobs. The research found that 83 percent of Jewish business owners would “be deterred” from hiring a Palestinian citizen with high academic qualifications. And for those lucky ones hired, chances of promotion are very slim, since 78 percent of the bosses would “be deterred” from promoting a Palestinian fellow citizen.

A 2006 survey by the Center for Combating Racism found that 68 percent of Jewish Israeli citizens refuse to live in a building with a Palestinian. In a similar survey conducted the following year by the Association for Citizens Rights in Israel (ACRI), this figure rose to 75 percent. The ACRI survey also showed that 75 percent of Jewish high school students believe that Arabs are not educated, cultured or clean. It also revealed that 55 percent of Jewish citizens believed leisure and recreation venues should be segregated; the same percentage thought that Palestinian citizens should be encouraged to leave the country.

It’s painfully ironic that Palestinians must prove their humanity as a pre-condition for any communication and interaction with Israelis, while an Israeli’s humanity is a given, never questioned. In her article Eldad stressed that this Palestinian woman was actually—or, rather, surprisingly—“intelligent” and an “amazing” person. She could even “be friends” with her, Eldad said.

In the end, however, she had to collectively dehumanize Aswan and her fellow Palestinians from Taybeh, Ramallah and Isaweyeh. Otherwise, the grim reality of Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza wouldn’t make sense to the ordinary, oblivious Israeli. It is a question of image and consciousness, where the perpetrators and the oppressors view themselves as victims. For the Israeli colonial project to achieve its goal—maximum land with minimum Palestinians living on it—they must perpetuate that image of themselves as victims, and of the other as subhuman and make sure the world views both as such.

When I asked Aswan how her experience with Eldad affected her as a citizen, she replied: “We face racism and Israeli supremacy on a daily basis, in the smallest details of our daily lives. But this was hard to deal with: I was rejected as a human—but I refuse to see myself as a victim. On the contrary, Eldad is the victim.”

Not a victim of oppression and occupation, however: “a victim of her own self.”

It’s a vicious circle indeed: 18 years or so down the line, Eldad’s baby will be manning some military checkpoint, a pawn of Israel’s brutal occupation, justifying injustice and protecting those same “moral values” his mother had just upheld.

Awatef Sheikh, a former parliamentary aide to an Arab MK, is a free-lance consultant and journalist.