Apartheid

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Zinaty, while the restaurant chain’s headquarters in the USA denied that there was any change
of policy. 569
In another Tel Aviv restaurant, Arab employees were reportedly instructed to only
speak Hebrew near customers and even to use Hebrew names when addressing each other. In
this case, however, as opposed to most other cases of discrimination, there was at least the
possibility of redress. The employees took the chain of restaurants to court in a civil law
suit. 570
A report by the Israeli YNET internet news service in 2005 stated that as many as 800
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship had changed their original Arabic names to Hebrew
names in order to get jobs in their home country. This is a direct parallel to the first name of
the first democratically elected president of South Africa. His family named him ‘Rolihlahla’,
not ‘Nelson’; a teacher did, once Rolihlahla Mandela had started attending school.
Tensions between the Israeli Arab pragmatists or assimilationists and those
Palestinians who wish to strengthen their Arab identities in the Jewish state are on the
increase, according to the YNET report. The 20 per cent Palestinian minority in Israel is
therefore easier to control, it is both seriously divided and ruled. 571
To view the very same phenomenon as assimilation, on the one hand, and cultural
genocide, on the other, obviously creates a profound schism in this fragmented part of the
already fragmented Palestinian nation: the refugees outside Historic Palestine who make up
most of the Palestinians, and who are literally scattered around the world; the ones under
Israeli military occupation, who are, among many other things, split up into discontiguous
cantons by means of settlements, military installations, the Apartheid Wall, and ‘Jews Only’roads;
and then, finally, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who are split up culturally and
socially, and even linguistically, under intense pressure from the Israeli presence. 572
However, on the whole, despite active linguistic oppression by Israeli society and the
state of Israel, the initial language situation in the country, before Zionism, has been
detrimental to apartheid in all areas under their control. Palestine and all its geographical
neighbors used Arabic as a first language. In South Africa, on the other hand, black resistance
was split due to the existence of tens of different indigenous languages and no obvious
contender for being the leading language (Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, English, and even Afrikaans
were used at different times and places as the main black languages for multiethnic
resistance). Palestinian resistance, in contrast, is galvanized by the fact that practically all
Palestinians understand and speak Arabic. The same was the case with the Egyptian resistance
to apartheid, although Egyptian gradually gave way to Coptic, mainly due to the oppressive
elite promotion of the Greek language. Egypt’s neighbors, moreover, did not speak Egyptian,
in any case not as a first language (some of them did however use the Egyptian script). All of
Israel’s direct neighbors, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, on the other hand, are Arabicspeaking
countries. Under these conditions, Israel is obviously not very lucky with its
apartheid, especially not with linguistic genocide, and as we saw in Chapter II.1.3 Israel’s
genocidal tendencies are indeed more physical than cultural.
Like Egyptian, independently of Greek, Arabic also has its own system of
phonographic writing, independently of Hebrew, which may help to crucially unify cultural
and social identity in resistance and even be a tool useful for practical resistance whenever the
oppressor does not understand it. This relatively advantageous situation should not, however,
569
Abunimah & Parry: McBusted: Mounting Evidence Supports Claim McDonald’s Israel Fired Worker for
Speaking Arabic, 2004; Abunimah & Parry: McConfusion: McDonald’s Israel Reportedly Backs Down, While
McDonald’s HQ Stonewalls, 2004
570
Bana: Restaurant Chain Orders Arab Workers to Stop Speaking Arabic Near Customers, 2001. I have not
been able to find out how the court case turned out.
571
Palter: Ibrahim Becomes Avraham: Hundreds of Israeli Arabs Adopt Hebrew Names in Bid to Find Work,
2005
572
Barghouti, O.: Israeli Apartheid: Time for the South African Treatment, 2006