Gerlitz and Natour believe their battles are better fought elsewhere. Unlike Canada’s apparent comfort with having two versions of “O Canada”-one in English and one in French-Israelis tend to be very tied to their national symbols in a way that doesn’t allow for the same flexibility. What about the big national symbols, things like Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah”? While some Diaspora Jews-such as at least one columnist in the liberal-leaning Jewish Daily Forward-have contemplated adapting the lyrics from a “Jewish soul” to an “Israeli soul,” it’s a change that’s unlikely to happen. “Arab kids feel like strangers in their own land,” he adds. There is not adequate Arabic language service even in buses that run within Arab communities there is inadequate signage in universities, hospitals, and children’s museums. The zoo in Rishon L’Tzion, they tell me, includes descriptive signs for each display in Hebrew and Arabic-but the latter translations simply say “animal.” And there’s the matter of the Knesset’s cafeteria sign, which has the word in English and Hebrew, alongside four gibberish Arabic letters. And then there are the little hilarious, but subtly demeaning, examples of linguistic embarrassments. In trying to promote the idea of a “shared society,” Sikkuy’s directors want to push back against the perception that “Arabic is the language of the enemy.” While Arabic enjoys official language status alongside Hebrew, Gerlitz and Natour point to the fact that the announcements on Israel’s coastal train are in Hebrew and English only. Statements like the one issued two years ago by Upper Nazareth’s mayor, Shimon Gapso-he declared that his city would remain “Jewish,” and that he would seek to block the building of Arab schools-continue to make the climate hostile. But like all Canadian provinces do, Israel runs separate school systems (state, state-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab), which means that there’s the practical issue of where residents can educate their children. Israeli citizens, of course, can live wherever they choose-in principle. And while 700 new Jewish towns or cities have been established since Israel’s founding, no Arab locales (save several Bedouin communities in the Negev region, which have their own controversies) have been built. To close the gap, Sikkuy would like to see the national government allocate more funds to local councils. Jewish towns and cities tend to have a larger tax base owing to the presence of government buildings, military bases, and more commercial centres, they argue. Across a variety of indicators-funding for education, housing, municipal infrastructure, and economic disparity, Israel suffers from policy discrimination toward its Palestinian citizens. The name of their organization (which means “prospect” in Hebrew) is optimistic, and so are they. Ron Gerlitz and Rawnak Natour are co-directors of Sikkuy, an Israeli non-governmental organization that has been working for twenty-five years to improve inequalities between Palestinian and Jewish citizens in Israel. In Toronto, a group of supporters of New Israel Fund Canada, a social-justice umbrella devoted to civil rights in Israel, was recently treated to a discussion of the state of Palestinian citizens’ rights in Israel by two visiting activists. Canada’s delicate dance between francophones and anglophones has been a qualified success, and bilingualism is an important component of this country’s multicultural identity. It’s perhaps a bit ironic, then, that Yousef Jabareen, an Israeli Member of Knesset from the Arab Joint List party, invokes the Canadian experience when he advocates for minority rights for Arab Israelis-even if the drawing of such a parallel between our two countries may at first seem odd. While Canada declares itself supportive of both Israel and the Palestinians, Canadian policy is silent on the issue of minority relations within Israel. Until their own concerns are addressed, the issue of how “Arab Israelis” (as they are sometimes called) negotiate their identity in a Jewish-majority state will remain fraught. Roughly one-fifth of Israeli citizens are Arabic speaking. But in any discussion of Israeli-Palestinian relations, it’s easy to forget that one of the most pressing-and underreported-policy issues is the treatment of the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
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