Messing around with a Jewish Housemaid

Why must an Arab Israeli household agree to an act of deceit in order to get their apartment thoroughly cleaned? This humorous column by Sayed Kashua ran in the Haaretz weekend magazine and lifts the veil on the personal details of getting spic 'n span.

This is it. It's happening. Our first housemaid will arrive on International Women's Day. Our first Jewish housemaid, our first Jewish employee. When all is said and done, I wonder how many Arabs have been in a position to pay a Jew for work.

I arranged to pick her up at 8. At 7:30 I will send the kids off to school, take my wife to a friend's house and then get Tikva. It doesn't have to be complicated, there's no sign with our name at the entrance to the building. Afterward I will leave her on her own - my friend said she's very reliable - and when she's done I will return to drive her home. At which time I will also pay her. I will actually take money out of my wallet and pay the Jewish woman. Okay, my wife really let me have it, but I still think it's a type of revolution.

Now I have to hide every telltale Arab sign in the house. First I disconnected the telephone, in case my mother should phone, heaven forbid, and frighten our Tikva. Then I started to take the family photos off the walls.

"What are you doing?" my wife shouted.

"With all due respect, and you are very beautiful," I told her as I went on taking down the photos, "but still, it's sometimes pretty obvious that you are an Arab."

I hid the family photos together with a stack of children's books and a few books of poetry in the storeroom. I made a final tour of the house to ensure that no scrap of paper, workbook or other sign of Arabic remained visible. A few paintings we had received as gifts and which I was afraid suffered from "Arab taste" were also thrown into the storeroom, which I then locked. To be on the safe side, I threw out a bag of squash and a package of pitas which announced in Arabic, "Beit Safafa Bakery." "That's that," I asserted when my labors were done, my gaze scanning the empty walls. "This is what a Jewish home looks like."

Click here for full article.


Cartoon by Amos Biderman. Hat tip to Sheera Frenkel for the Haaretz link.

Spies and Lies, 60 years later

A cold dose of Israelity came a decade after the wedding day for ten Israeli Arab women who were told about their husbands' deceit by government officials.
Mistaarvim and Mrs? Ten odd couples are revealed in a fascinating piece running in Ynet's magazine. Shin Bet orchestrated double lives for their agents, with a plausible cover story for "young vigorous men" to find spouses in Arab communities inside Israel, from Jaffa. Read about the fallout six decades later:

"Your husband is not who you think he is. He is not Arab. Your husband is a Jew who was sent into your village on a mission by the defense establishment." This was the news a few Israeli Arab women received from the head of the Mossad Intelligence Service
mission in France in 1964. This was how they discovered that the fathers of their children were serving in a top secret Israeli unit sent to spy in their villages.

Ten Jewish men assimilated into Arab communities in the early 1950s, marrying local women and starting families with them, all the while serving in the Shin Bet as "mistaarvim," (literally, masqueraders) - undercover agents posing as Palestinians.

The goal of the unit, which was established in 1952, was to have men on the inside in case a war breaks out, and the Israeli Arabs join the enemy. Shumel Moriah, a senior Shin Bet officer who came to Israel from Iraq, and had plenty of experience smuggling Jews into Israel, led the unit. He recruited 10 other Iraqi-born men for the complex mission.

The unit was disbanded over a decade after its establishment, which was when the wives were informed of the deception. Most of them converted and lived in Israel as Jews. Their children were recognized as Jews without undergoing an official conversion procedure.

The training process took one year; the men learned the Palestinian dialect, studied the Koran and espionage techniques in an Intelligence Corps base near Ramla. With a new identity and a detailed cover story, they were sent into Palestinian villages and cities. They pretended to be refugees from the 1948 war returning home. Their real families in Israel were kept in the dark about their whereabouts and activities; they were forbidden from trying to discover where their loved ones served.

Hat tip to Gideon for this link. The full story is here.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4031176,00.html

First Arab Kibbutznik approved

It's groundbreaking and startling news. After nearly 100 years of putting the Zionist ideal to the test on the land, a kibbutz has, for the first time ever, accepted an Arab as a full-fledged member. Ms Amal Carmiyeh, a single mum with two boys, took the pledge last week in central Israel. The Jerusalem Post's report cautions not to take her acceptance as any sort of symbol of Zionist tolerance or start of a trend...but I wonder. Surely, this particular Israeli Arab must be an exceptional woman to make it through the vetting process, even when kibbutz life is in sharp decline. Thai workers have replaced Palestinians as non-Jewish physical labourers at kibbutzim, and it's revolutionary to see that sense of equality now can extend to the (formerly) hired help.
What an upbringing for Carmiyeh's sons: they will learn cooperativeness and resourcefulness and live on the land beside their neighbours. Would the pioneers of Kfar Saba be turning in their graves?

Nir Eliahu, a kibbutz near Kfar Saba, accepted Amal Carmiyeh as a member , making her the first Arab Muslim to become a member of the Kibbutz Movement, according to the movement's newsletter.

Carmiyeh, originally from Kalansuwa in the Triangle, sent her two sons to the Nir Eliahu kindergarten. She was later hired as a nurse and then, several years ago, started living on the kibbutz. Carmiyeh and her sons were among five families accepted as members before the holiday.

"It means that the kibbutzim have a liberal view on life, an accepting and open view," said Aviv Leshem, a spokesman for the Kibbutz Movement. "Kibbutz members have a positive view of [Carmiyeh]. It's a legitimate decision."

But Netta Be'eri, the head of absorption for Nir Eliahu, does not see Carmiyeh's becoming a member as a political act or as the beginning of a trend.

"We love her as a person and are happy that she'll live with us," Be'eri said. "We don't mean for it to be a symbol. She has openness and an ability to live with us. Unfortunately there won't be many examples like this."

Daniel Gavron, author of Kibbutz: Awakening from Utopia, agreed that Carmiyeh's acceptance would remain more the exception than the rule.

"It's very good, but it surprises me. It's an unusual precedent," he said. "The kibbutzim were always very Zionist Jewish communes. The left-wing ones tried to encourage Arabs to build kibbutzim for themselves - but they never admitted Arabs. The purpose was to create a Jewish working class. The Arabs were irrelevant to that."

Although times have changed, Gavron said that that mind-set persists to the present day.

"It's one person in one kibbutz," he said. "I can't imagine it will make a huge impact. It'll certainly give [Arabs] a feeling that all things are possible... but I don't think it's a general revolution."

Some, such as former Nir Eliahu secretary Kuni Senner, do see symbolism in Carmiyeh's acceptance, particularly because she became a member at Shavuot, a holiday that traditionally represents the Jews' acceptance as a people.

"It's symbolic because we [became a] nation on Shavuot," said Senner. "I would hope that what we did expresses [the feelings of] society."

While she may be of a different ethnicity and religion than the rest of Nir Eliahu, Senner says that Carmiyeh has no problem living on the kibbutz.

"She's not a stranger, not for us and not for the country," he said. "She's one of us."

Carmiyeh and her sons join several other residents of Nir Eliahu who are not Jewish.

"Today we're more open," said Be'eri. "If they can live with us, if there will be special families, it will happen. I hope people can live together and educate their children together. We all live in the same land."

Aside from whatever Carmiyeh's acceptance says about society, Senner said that in the end, she was accepted based on who she was.

"We did not vote for an idea or an ideal," he said. "We voted on a friend of ours whom we know. It was a personal vote on one person."

Muddle East pleas of king, lawyers, and pols

King Abdullah II of Jordan, an eloquent moderate Arab who flattered US lawmakers without lapsing into unctuousness, wowed most Americans when he addressed a joint session of Congress this week. His message about the need for the US to back peace in the Middle East was not particularly new, but the king's words were passionate, urgent, and from the heart. He demands a peaceful solution by the end of this year.
A neighbor in West Jerusalem who watched the speech live on CNN swore it brought tears to his eyes. But there was very little comment from the Israeli press, mostly yawns and shrugs for the region's arguably weakest monarch. Indeed, the lead story about Jordan in the English-language papers headlined the trial of a pair of thugs who allegedly had plotted to assassinate George Bush on his last visit.

But there is a reaction of sorts to this royal plea in Jerusalem. A right-wing NGO of combative lawyers, called Shrat HaDin (the Israel Law Center), has resolved to redouble efforts for their "Ultimate Mission" and is actively promoting an 8-day tour for American movers and shakers. The aim is to offer foreigners with deep pockets a chance to "experience firsthand Israel's struggle for survival and security."

The itinerary obviously aims to present a Fox News-style fair and balanced view of the Jewish State. These paying guests will meet with intelligence agents, assassins, generals, politicians, settlers, judges, collaborators, and heroes, and of course bond with one another.
It's quite a Grand Zionist circuit, with night cruises and luxurious private plane flights to distinguish it from those free Taglit Birthright tours that tempt younger American Jews to visit Israel en masse. A similar Christian Zionist mission tour is underway right now.
The chosen people on this Ultimate Mission can take up-close snapshots of the security barrier and even go inside one rather atypical Arab-Israeli village to meet "Israel's Minority Community." This place, Ilabun, is where the government stores tactical nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines and other weapons. I guess the security won't need beefing up. When not acting as tour guides, the Israel Law Center also runs a defense fund for Arab collaborators. Izzy is tempted to come along, but is rather put off by the price tag. It is not just the hefty US $1896 for tour costs, which works out to $237 a day plus tips, but the hidden extras. Every participant must make a tax-deductible donation of between $500- $5000 to Shurat HaDin. Sure, we all become charter members of Shurat HaDin’s Global Advisory Network. The money goes towards funding terror victims' litigation against the PA, various Palestinian leaders and their financial patrons. Suing Hamas for property damage in Sderot, for instance,say, in a New York courtroom. One wonders if a "sue the bastards" approach is the best way to engage global sympathy for Israel's terror victims. Legal advisories issued by the World Court at the Hague haven't had much sway over the construction of Israel's separation barrier.