The National Free Press - World Edition: Free Speech, Free Press and Human Rights

The past year has witnessed two cases of discrimination in the religious schools: ultraorthodox Jews of West European descent (Ashkenazis) discriminating against ultraorthodox Jews of darker hues. In August 2009, private religious schools in Petach Tikva refused to admit Ethiopian Jews. In response, the Education Ministry threatened to withdraw financial support for these schools and even to shut them down. In this way it compelled them to admit a hundred pupils.

The second, more recent instance occurred at the ultraorthodox West Bank settlement of Immanuel, where a Hasidic group known as the Slonim is dominant. In September 2008 the Slonim separated their daughters from the Mizrahi girls in the settlement's school. (Mizrahis, also known as Sephardim, derive from North Africa and Arab lands.) The Slonim built a plaster wall the length of the school and put a fence through its yard, covering it with canvas so that their daughters wouldn't see the Mizrahis. They changed the hours of the breaks and forbade association between the groups.

At a private meeting with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu on March 25, US President Barack Obama asked for written responses to a series of American demands concerning construction in the West Bank settlements, including East Jerusalem. Since then, Israeli cabinet discussions have yielded no such document, and relations with America are on the rocks. Seeking to sidestep further embarrassment, Netanyahu canceled his attendance at the global nuclear conference convened by Obama in mid-April, sending a deputy instead.

Recently the Washington Post published two articles, in the space of a week, claiming that the White House is thinking about proposing its own unilateral peace plan and seeing which side rejects it. On April 7, David Ignatius wrote that one day before the ill-fated meeting between Obama and Netanyahu, the National Security Advisor, General James Jones, gathered six of his predecessors, people who had served under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton, to discuss an arrangement for the Middle East. Obama entered the meeting and sought their views on the subject. Brent Scowcroft, who had advised Ford and Bush Sr., urged Obama to announce a peace plan of his own. From the article it appears that Obama means to create an extremely broad consensus, including Democrats and Republicans, to promote a plan to solve the conflict.

The Monitoring Committee of the Arabs in Israel declared a general strike for October 1, 2009, in memory of those killed in the demonstrations of October 2000.

The strike was explained as a response to a series of anti-Arab bills presented to the Knesset, above all the proposed Naqba Law; this would forbid ceremonies commemorating the catastrophe of the Palestinian people in 1948, which culminated in its expulsion from the land. If this bill passes, the State will punish all recipients of government funding that organize Naqba ceremonies.

General strikes proclaimed by the Arab Monitoring Committee don't usually make ripples in Israel as a whole, because they have little effect on the day-to-day economy. Moreover, the influence of the Arab parties in the Knesset, or in public campaigns, has lessened considerably since the events of October 2000. Nonetheless, the very fact of the strike's proclamation amounts to an act of defiance, a reminder that the gap between the State and its Arab citizens is growing, together with anger and mutual mistrust.

The results of the elections to Israel's 18th Knesset clearly bolstered the far Right, which won 65 of the parliament's 120 seats. This outcome is partly due to the paralysis that beset Ehud Olmert's government. Almost three years ago he received a mandate to advance the peace process, but he squandered it on two wars.

The lack of progress toward peace has had the effect of strengthening Hamas. It has also encouraged chauvinistic trends in Israel, as expressed in wall-to-wall support for the Gaza War. Israelis turned their backs on the notion that the conflict with the Palestinians must be solved by diplomacy.

Avigdor Lieberman, who heads a party called "Israel Our Home," became the elections' main attraction, advancing from 11 to 15 seats and shoving the venerable Labor Party back into fourth position. His campaign slogan went: "No loyalty, no citizenship!" If he weren't Jewish, Lieberman would be an anti-Semite. Hatred for Arabs was his strongest card, pulling in thousands of the like-minded.

Accompanying its verbal escalations over the Iranian nuclear project, Israel ventured on an extraordinary air force exercise in early June. According to the New York Times, this included more than 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, which flew west 900 miles and returned—the same distance that would be required for an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz.

Israelis like to claim that they will be the main victim of Iranian nuclear development. They hark back to the scuds of Saddam Hussein, which fell on Tel Aviv in the first Gulf War when they had no direct part in the conflict. So too, this time—Israelis say—they will be in the crosshairs, and this justifies pre-emptive action.

Yet three major obstacles impede an Israeli attack.

1. The biggest is America. We are no longer in the heady days of George W. Bush's first term as president, when Veep Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove all pushed the theory of "preventive war." Today's White House licks the wounds it continues to suffer in Afghanistan and Iraq. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's replacement, together with Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs, and many others in the Pentagon, vehemently oppose an attack on Iran. In their view America must pull forces out, not sink ever deeper in Middle Eastern mud.

"What's happening today is Marx's revenge. Marx taught us that ideologies often serve as a superstructure camouflaging the real issues. Today there is no more camouflage. Mammon stands before us nakedly proclaiming: 'I am thy God, O Israel!'"

This is not a citation from a leftist visionary, but rather from Israeli attorney Yaakov Weinroth, interviewed by Gidi Weitz in Haaretz on May 9, 2008. Weinroth, an orthodox Jew and self-proclaimed Zionist, is famous for defending powerful figures accused of corruption. Is Zionism too, we wonder, an ideology camouflaging other interests? The evidence is now in the affirmative.