Rights before service
By Danny Rabinowitz
Haaretz, December 22, 2004
National service performed by the Arab citizens - or more precisely, the absence thereof - appears regularly as one of the arguments of the right in response to claims of prejudice and ethnic discrimination: "When everyone serves, then they will receive full equality."
Following the death in Rafah of five soldiers from the Desert Patrol Battalion, which comprises mostly Bedouin, some of the families adopted a similar line: We are citizens of the state, they told the media. We have obligations, and when we meet them we shall enjoy all the benefits.
Many of the articles written this week about the casualties of the unit also adopted this line and even expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the state is not fulfilling its part of the deal: Here are Arabs who joined the IDF, and in spite the famous "blood bond," they continue to suffer discrimination in and out of the army. Only in 2004 was a Bedouin appointed commander of the battalion, Druze commanders find themselves "stuck" in the rank scale, and Arab soldiers that serve in the army return to their communities to find them unchanged. Where, then, is the justice?
The demand for justice is of course a welcome thing, but this specific demand, dealing with the part of Arab soldiers, deserves a critical assessment. First, because it deals with a peripheral phenomenon. Second, because it may divert attention from the broader picture of inequality and even contribute to its aggravation.
The number of non-Druze Arabs joining the IDF is rising, but it is still only a few thousand. From a social point of view, their standing is peripheral. They explain their decision to join the army in terms of masculine responsibility to provide for their families with their salaries and the social and housing benefits they receive, but the vast majority is viewed with derision in the Arab community, of the kind reserved for collaborators. Many of these soldiers will not dare appear among their communities in uniform, and the mourning tents void of visitors in which sat some of the families of the men killed in Rafah highlight their isolation. The claim that they are breaking new ground in civil participation that will be followed by others is ridiculous and void of reality.
But the attempt to set the conscription of Arabs into the IDF as a criterion for normalizing citizenship in Israel is problematic, not only because it is a negligible phenomenon. It encompasses a dangerous aberration of the concept of right. Right, from the minute that it was created in a legitimate way and on the basis of acceptable standards, belongs to its holder. When I have a positive balance in my bank account it is hard to take from it without my permission. When I wrote this article, my right to it came to this world, and henceforth no one is allowed to take it from me without my explicit authorization, etc.
In a modern liberal democracy, most of the rights of the individual, as a person and a citizen - including the right to equality - are not granted but are created, most at birth, some at an agreed age. Enlightened legal systems do not allow the taking away of basic rights except in extreme circumstances. Even prisoners convicted of a serious crime do not lose their basic rights as a human and a citizen. More so when a whole group is involved.
Therefore, whoever conditions the enjoyment of rights by the Arab citizens with the fulfillment of any sort of duty is a scoundrel: he is appropriating rights, including the right to equality, which the state itself claims is given to every Arab citizen at birth. In fact, if rights are taken seriously, we see that it is the stance of the Arab public on this issue that is the more reasonable: when we get to benefit from the rights that the state claims we have, then we shall consider national service and other obligations.
In addition, the Israeli double standard sets the fulfillment of obligations as a condition for "granting" rights only when it comes to Arabs. A glorious Israeli soldier or a senior officer will not declare that he is serving so that his rights as a person and a citizen will be respected. He knows full well that the order of things is reversed: As a person whose rights are respected, he is willing to serve a lot, with nearly no connection to the return.
It is time that the state exercises this principle with everybody, not just the Jews.
