Equality? It's complicated
Op-ed: Discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, religious lifestyle has become a norm in Israel
A Knesset member of Ethiopian descent cannot donate blood.
Homosexuals' children are not entitled to tax reductions for their parents' salary because their parents are gay. In special education schools and mental hospitals, the percentage of patients who immigrated from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union is much higher than their percentage in the general population.
This alarming collection of facts places no warning sign in the faces of most Israeli citizens. At most, they took a few moments to read the headline that MK Pnina Tamanu-Shata asked to donate blood and was told: Not in Israel, you're Ethiopian after all.
There is not a single Arab member on the Israel Electric Corporation's board of directors. The old age pension and disability pension don't allow people to live in dignity. Only three women serve as mayors in Israel and ultra-Orthodox women find it very difficult to get a job.
Discriminatory Practice
Leaders of Ethiopian community slam Health Ministry, demand dismissal of MDA volunteer who told Yesh Atid MK 'you have special blood type.' One activist urges community member to stop donating blood. Lapid: We won't stay silent
I can already imagine many people saying, well, Ethiopians carry diseases. And the Russians? They're prostitutes. And the Arabs? Traitors. And the gays? Disgusting. And the haredim? Parasites. They will say that and wash their hands in justification, in a society where discrimination based on ethnicity and gender and sector and language and economic status and religious lifestyle has become a norm.
Yes, a norm. Not abnormal cases that will be repaired, not main headlines – unless we are talking about the politics of the blood. And the blood, please pardon my lame metaphor, although it is dramatic and stimulates urges – the blood is just the tip of the iceberg.
Equality? Who has the energy?
The common denominator for the aforementioned examples, which only allegedly have nothing to do with each other, is serious violation, without any justification, of the principle of equality. And if you're still not outraged, it means that like most citizens in Israel, you have no idea what equality is and what gives it its importance and why.
To tell you the truth, it's not your fault. You haven't been asked to memorize since first grade that all citizens in Israel should have equal rights, for the simple reason that they don't. You weren’t taught, on the seventh drowsy hour in junior high school, during civic classes when everyone is sleeping and dying to be saved by the bell, that equality is not an identical division of the cake into identical slices, but something completely different. And as part of your commitment to social involvement and covering the Education Ministry's buttocks in high school, you were not taught to fight for equality. And when you went out to the world and became adults, you no longer had the time and energy to inquire about it.
Equality of rights is not mathematical equality or the identicalness of twins. It's an abstract principle which is at the foundation of every real democracy, that method of government which believes that that all humans are born with equal rights, and a democratic state is the only social arrangement that can guarantee they will receive those rights.
No, the marathon runner who will receive the State's support as an outstanding athlete is not similar to the child who will seat in a wheelchair his entire life, but they both need the State's help to fulfill their human potential, to live a life of dignity, so as not to be excluded and inferior to others, who are citizens just like them.
From making adjustments for children with learning disabilities as part of the educational system to supporting new immigrants, from funding universities to day care centers for elderly people suffering from dementia – the State, which is in charge for the citizens' welfare on behalf of the citizens, was founded not just to protect them from the Iranian threat. The State was meant to protect us all from the real, daily threat of living in a jungle where might is right, he who has the money has the say and man is a wolf to man.
A civilized country? We?
And what about the duties, you'll grumble. There are sectors which don't share the burden. Haredim, Arabs, why do they deserve it? Well, the principle of inequality which prevails in every corner in Israel is applied here too, only the other way around. All kinds of shady political arrangements, which were completely legal when they were conducted, kept the military police away from the homes of yeshiva students. A decades-long embroilment and intentional governmental foot dragging is preventing imposing civil service duty on Israel's Arab citizens.
Those demanding that they both share the burden must initiate an egalitarian law – of fundamental, not mathematical, equality – which will indeed impose civil duties on them. Until then, they cannot be deprived of civil rights. And yet, the official Israel succeeds in discriminating against its Arab citizens in education, in equal job opportunities in governmental ministries, in health services, banking services, budgeting and construction planning.
Every corner of official Israel you reach, you'll find both outrageous inequality and alarming unawareness of the principle of equality among bureaucrats. This week at the Knesset, on Human Rights Day, discussions were dedicated to the rights of people with disabilities. They are discriminated against in each of the areas of life the State is in charge of. They don’t get an equal opportunity and fight both their disability and the invisible windmills of Israeli bureaucracy.
This war, in a civilized country, is completely unnecessary. We can just live. Considering the fact that tomorrow morning each one of us could become the victim of a serious illness or a road accident ending with a disability – this inequality should evoke fear and anger and readiness to act among all of us, but that's not happening.
Why, you'll ask. Well, equality is a complicated matter. So complicated, that in the OECD countries, which we like to resemble, and in the European Parliament and in the UN, there is a variety of bodies, committees, commissioners and officials responsible for assimilating the principle of equality into many different areas of life like gender, work, studies, disabilities, and anything you like. We don't even have a single government worker who does that for a living.
I'll obviously conclude by calling on the Education Ministry to turn "The Other is Me" into a guiding principle throughout the entire school year, but that's not going to happen. The civilian rage is clearly rising in me in light of the daily injustice suffered by immigrants of Ethiopian descent, even before they donate blood. But in order for us not to forget this headline, and for it to become a thing of the past, Israel needs a commission on civil equality issues. One which will gather all the discriminations and injustices, the abuses and humiliations, and begin repairing them for the sake of all of us. If they want, they can start with the blood – and then move on to human beings as human beings.
