Understanding Israel's Class Compilation

 This lengthy audio interview is well worth a close listening to.

https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/03/class-and-race-in-israel-palestine-with-emmanuel-farjoun/

At one time Arab workers in Israel we’re just a reserve army of labour. But now he says, in the meantime they have become as an essential, integral part of the Israeli economy without which it would collapse. That’s the main point he brings out in the interview and why he concludes that it gives them some leverage to demand full civil rights and how dependent on non-Jewish labour state of Israel is.

Most work that has no military significance is dominated by them not just construction but health, supermarkets, transport and other services (including even the prisons though these are run by Druze, a special minority, who also serve in the armed forces). And it’s not just cleaners but top managers; most doctors and hospital management are not Jews.

Farjoun’s argument is that this puts the non-Jews in a strong position not just in Israel but in the “Greater Israel” that already exists de facto as a state. He sees the way forward as the 50% non-Jewish subjects of the state of “Greater Israel” bringing pressure to get equal civil rights with its Jewish subjects, and that this will have some success because their of economic importance.

He is in effect saying that the non-Jews of Palestine (which includes Lesser Israel) should go for this rather than for an independent state; and this is what he expects will eventually happen however slowly as it’s what economic trends favour.

He also pointed out that half the Jewish population are in a sense themselves Arabs in that they came from Arab countries where they were Arabs — and Arab-speakers — whose religion happened to be Judaism just as for others it happened to be Christianity. Farjoun points out that in Israel you can’t tell the difference between a Jew and an Arab as they both look and dress the same.

The vital caveat is, however, it would amount to the Zionists having to abandon their ideology of Judaisizing Palestine. But the Boers in South Africa thought they could rule for ever but in the end were undermined by the capitalist economy. Farjoun expects the Zionists to be too.