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Adalah vs. the State of Israel
By Miri Shalem July 17, 2016 January 12th, 2019 Fighting Anti-Israel Activity
Written by Lilach Danzig. Edited by Adi Arbel
Since its inception in July 2005, the BDS movement has sought to promote boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel with the objective of delegitimizing its existence as a Jewish state. A significant part of the BDS movement's strategy is the transformation of Israel into an international pariah nation by means of its portrayal as an apartheid state deliberately and institutionally discriminating against its Arab citizens.
Perversely, one of the bodies contributing to this propaganda is actually an Israeli organization, 'Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel'. Adalah is persistent in claiming that the State of Israel promotes a discriminatory policy against its Arab citizens.
This report surveys in detail the list of laws published on the Adalah website as discriminatory, and examines the validity of the organization's claims regarding the existence of discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens. The report's findings reveal that Adalah elects to adopt a strategy of distorting reality with deliberately biased presentations in order to defame Israel as guilty of enforcing dozens of discriminatory laws.
The findings of this report, presented in detail in the summary chapter, clearly demonstrate that for a variety of reasons, the claims promoted by Adalah are, in essence, fundamentally groundless:
1. The overwhelming majority of the laws featured in the list (53 out of 57) do not even relate to the citizens' ethnic origins and those that do, are designed to prevent and avoid discrimination. For example, the Law and Administration Ordinance (1948) that defines the country's official rest days, and the Law for Using the Hebrew Date, both explicitly exclude institutions and authorities that serve non-Jewish populations for whom the law provides for definitions and procedures appropriate for their specific needs.
2. In 21 cases, Adalah's claims of discrimination stem from the organization's extremist stance that rejects the nature of Israel as a nation state in general and as the nation state of of the Jewish people in particular. For example, the Yad BenZvi Law is defined as a discriminatory law because of the institution's objective of promoting Zionist ideals.
3. 18 of the laws reflect customs in other Western democracies whose democratic character no one would disparage. For example, according to Adalah, the flag constitutes a discriminatory law. Needless to say, this unfounded reasoning would mean that any country, the flag of which bears a cross or crescent discriminates against its non-Christian or non-Muslim minorities. A more in-depth comparison between the laws frequently found that Israeli legislation is actually characterized by a higher degree of tolerance for its national minorities.
4. In at least 13 cases, a large disparity exists between the explicit content of the laws and the biased (and sometimes warped) interpretation accorded to them by Adalah. In some instances the claimed discrimination is difficult to identify. For example, the Golan Heights Law is considered discriminatory due to its objective of "according a legal basis for the implementation of Israeli law on the territory of the Golan Heights conquered by Israel". It would seem that only Adalah is capable of explaining a law intended to grant equal rights to all residents of the Golan Heights as being discriminatory.
5. 8 laws are intended to protect the security of all Israeli citizens regardless of religion, race or gender. Included in these laws are a number of legislative amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law and the Prisons Ordinance aimed at assisting the security forces in preventing terror attacks. These laws adversely affect only those clearly suspected of engaging in terror activity without distinguishing between Jews and Arabs. In effect, this very claim is woefully discriminatory because it presumes that Arab citizens of Israel are generally hostile and prone to terror activities.
6. 7 of the laws do not even relate to Israel's Arab citizens but rather to those noncitizen individuals towards whom the State is not obligated to act with equality. The absurdity in Adalah's approach can be demonstrated by the example of the Trading with the Enemy Act (a law evolving from British Mandatory law) being included in the list of discriminatory laws because "the countries declared as such (Iran, Syria and Lebanon) are Arab and/or Muslim states". Presumably the law could be remedied by adding other, non-Muslim and non-Arab enemy states.
7. In the case of some of the laws mentioned in the list, the supposed discrimination in question actually affected the Jewish majority and not the Arab minority. For example, Clause 7a of the Basic Law: the Knesset, the objective of which is to prevent the candidacy of political parties acting against the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, has been implemented only against Jewish parties on grounds of anti-democratic objectives. Similarly, amendments to the Absorption of Discharged Soldiers Law are indicted by Adalah for discriminating in favor of Jewish citizens, but these citizens are the ones specifically obligated to serve three years of military service for sub-minimum compensation and living conditions, thus postponing their university education and professional advancement. It is the Arab citizen who enjoys the option of exemption from military service altogether or alternatively, of volunteering for national civil service which does not place them in harms way but which nevertheless affords them the same benefits awarded to discharged soldiers.
8. In a number of cases, Adalah misuses objective crime statistics to claim discrimination. According to this logic, if members of the Arab sector of the population are the main criminal violators of a certain law, then that particular law perforce is deemed racist. This could apply to laws against theft of property, against sex crimes or against driving through red lights. The constructive and proper solution, to disproportionate violations is not annulment of necessary laws, of course, but rather, educating and encouraging observance of the law among all sectors of the population-without distinction or favoritism.
Fundamentally, an in-depth examination of the so-called "discriminatory" laws listed by Adalah demonstrates that the laws promoting Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people do not discriminate against its Arab citizens or diminish their civil rights. Rather, they assist in promoting Israel as a more Jewish and a more democratic state striving for the welfare of all its citizens. Any reasonable and fair comparison of Israel's laws with those of the overwhelming number of other democratic states constituting nation states of majority ethnic groups would conclude that Israel is a model for promoting the democratic rights of all of its citizens.
Absract and Summary
To the full report
May 2019 Newsletter: Violence in the Israeli Arab Community: Survey and Analysis
April 2020 newsletter: The Rise of the Radical Right and Anti-Semitism: Three European Case Studies
March 2020 Newsletter: Meet our Students – Adapting our work to COVID-19
February 2020 Newsletter: Emigration from Israel – Problem or Opportunity?
January 2020 Newsletter: The Radicalization of the Democratic Party
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