So an Arab girl was suspended from school, what’s the big deal?
None of this is news, it’s not a story. This news item can be combined with countless stories of Palestinian citizens who have experienced firsthand the wrath of Jewish supremacy consciousness: Arab doctors have been attacked in hospitals, Arab students have been attacked in universities, Arab employees have been beaten up in restaurants and cafes, and on and on. In fact, Palestinian citizens of Israel live under mental-and-physical Jewish terror, and no, there is no more delicate way to put it. This madness is normalised within Israel in a popular and institutional manner.
By Hanin Majadli • Translated by Sol Salbe
The case of the Arab girl who studies at the Zilberman comprehensive school in Beersheba, who dared to say that “little children suffer from hunger and die in the Gaza Strip” and in response her classmates began attacking her, accusing her of supporting Hamas, abusing her and singing to her “May your village burn” — is hardly news in Israel. Not even the fact that the school suspended her, that the Education Ministry supported the suspension, that the students’ parents demanded on WhatsApp groups that she be expelled from school, and that the municipality, well, they suggested that the citizenship of all family members be revoked.
None of this is surprising, not even a little bit. Not even the fact that the girl’s father decided that his other daughter should also stay at home, for fear of being bullied, and according to him, other Arab students at the school did the same. None of this is news, it’s not a story. This news item can be combined with countless stories of Palestinian citizens who have experienced firsthand the wrath of Jewish supremacy consciousness, certainly since October 7: Arab doctors have been attacked in hospitals, Arab students have been attacked in universities, Arab employees have been beaten up in restaurants and cafes, and on and on. In fact, Palestinian citizens of Israel live under mental-and-physical Jewish terror, and no, there is no more delicate way to put it. This madness is normalised within Israel in a popular and institutional manner.
When a friend abroad told me this week that her children’s school has Heritage Day, I thought about the Heritage taught in Israel: May your village burn, a good Arab is a dead Arab, there is no such thing as the Palestinian people, and the brand-new one on the shelves: If you are an Arab girl in a Jewish school, you better hide it lest you be harassed by the children of the chosen people.
One can only imagine the reactions of Israelis if such a case would have happened to a Jewish girl in Paris, Berlin or New York. The frenzied reactions would have highlighted antisemitism, and the story would have opened news bulletins in Israel, even if it took place abroad.
But fascisation and multi-faceted racism against an Arab girl? This is not a story that opens bulletins, because fascisation in Israeli society is the bon-ton. It is so prevalent that it’s hard to notice it, it’s like oxygen. And when it is directed against Palestinian Arabs, it is greeted with derision and a tut-tut reaction. At most, there will be those who talk about “worrisome processes,” “social degradation,” or that “the discourse is becoming more extreme.”
But how much more can you beat around the bush? No my friends, this is full-fledged fascisation, and here what is urgent is starting a process of de-fascisation and not an intervention by Education Minister Yoav Kish. You have to see the magnitude of popular support from all involved — adults and children, private and institutional entities, educational, municipal and national — to understand that everyone is infected with self-generating fascisation. And yes, the killing in Gaza only accelerates it, or maybe it’s the fascisation that has accelerated the killing.
At one stage, the few righteous people here would have said that in a properly constituted democratic country, this should not happen, that the Education Ministry should intervene and that all those involved should be held accountable. But there is no point in demanding such things in a country that is no longer properly constituted, and not really democratic, and where the Ministry of Education is part of the problem, certainly not the solution.
And you have no one to blame but yourselves. You may not have noticed, but every time you insisted on it being Jewish democratic [state] and fiercely defended this oxymoron, you were actually choosing racist and fascist.
