A minority within a minority
On Thursday evening we went to a fascinating talk at AACI given by Ishmael Khaldi, an Israeli Beduin. He went around the room asking the ca. 50 people there where each of them came from, the answers were varied, the US, Britain, S. Africa, Australia and so on, then he finished by saying that he was the only one there who was born in Israel. He spoke about his transition from a shepherd in his village in the Galilee to being a Haifa university student, then a border policeman and an IDF recruit and then he obtained a Master's degree in political science at Tel Aviv University and was then appointed Deputy Consul General of Israel in San Francisco, the first and so far only Israeli Beduin to achieve a diplomatic posting. He is now Arab affairs advisor to FM Avigdor Lieberman. He has described his unique life in his new book "A Shepherd's Story."
The question of identity is central to his book and indeed to his life. Although one million (21%) of the Israeli population is Arab, of these only ca. 170,000 (17%) are Beduin and only ca. 40,000 of these live in the north. While the rest of the Arabs have been settled in towns and cities for centuries, the Beduin are distinguished from the other Arabs by being until very recently nomadic. It was coincidental that as the Jews immigrated into Turkish Palestine so the Beduin in the north were also settling in permanent places. First a collection of tents formed a village, then as late as the 1950s they built small huts, finally in the 1970s they built permanent houses. They were also recognized as official communities by the Israeli Government and so could be connected to the national electricity and water grids.
Ishmael was the third son of eleven children in a typically close knit Beduin family. He shared the chores of a shepherd, watching the goats and sheep in the hills around his village, Khawalid in western Galillee, near Kfat Ata. From the 1930's onwards, his family and the village developed close ties with the nearby kibbutz, Kfar HaMaccabi, and it provided them with jobs, sustenance and friendships. Because he was a gifted student he was sent to the Orthodox Christian High School in Haifa, where he was treated badly by the other Arab students because he was a Bedu, whose language and manners were considered primitive by them. After graduation, because he had met Jewish visitors from America at the kibbutz, he impulsively decided that he wanted to visit New York, even though he had not yet been to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. He started collecting his money and was able to manage the air fare to New York. He arrived there with only one tel number in his pocket and that proved not to be enough. He ended up alone and with very little understanding of the way things worked there. He found a Chassid at the airport who told him there were many Israelis in Borough Park, Brooklyn, so he went there. The telephone system and the subway were completely new to him, and when he discovered he was on the wrong side of the train track, he simply crossed over the rail-lines. Incredibly dangerous, but he knew no better! Anyway, he survived, made many friends and this gave him an appetite to return to the US. He spent two years as the Israeli Dep. Consul General in San Francisco, arguing against the many liberal Jews in Berkley who despise Israel and the many Arabs who consider him a traitor.
There is one interesting aspect of his incredible journey that he glosses over. It is that his and the Beduin identification with Israel, even though it is predominantly a Jewish State, derives largely from the empowerment that the State has given him and his people. Under the Ottomans and the Arab Muslims the Beduin were persecuted and looked down on. But, in a modern liberal democratic State like Israel, they are free to act as any other citizen, their human rights are protected. I know this because I came from a poor, persecuted (Jewish) minority in England and the transition to being a member of the Israeli State freed and empowered me too. Khaldi's story is a success story of tremendous achievement and who knows how far he will go.
The question of identity is central to his book and indeed to his life. Although one million (21%) of the Israeli population is Arab, of these only ca. 170,000 (17%) are Beduin and only ca. 40,000 of these live in the north. While the rest of the Arabs have been settled in towns and cities for centuries, the Beduin are distinguished from the other Arabs by being until very recently nomadic. It was coincidental that as the Jews immigrated into Turkish Palestine so the Beduin in the north were also settling in permanent places. First a collection of tents formed a village, then as late as the 1950s they built small huts, finally in the 1970s they built permanent houses. They were also recognized as official communities by the Israeli Government and so could be connected to the national electricity and water grids.
Ishmael was the third son of eleven children in a typically close knit Beduin family. He shared the chores of a shepherd, watching the goats and sheep in the hills around his village, Khawalid in western Galillee, near Kfat Ata. From the 1930's onwards, his family and the village developed close ties with the nearby kibbutz, Kfar HaMaccabi, and it provided them with jobs, sustenance and friendships. Because he was a gifted student he was sent to the Orthodox Christian High School in Haifa, where he was treated badly by the other Arab students because he was a Bedu, whose language and manners were considered primitive by them. After graduation, because he had met Jewish visitors from America at the kibbutz, he impulsively decided that he wanted to visit New York, even though he had not yet been to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. He started collecting his money and was able to manage the air fare to New York. He arrived there with only one tel number in his pocket and that proved not to be enough. He ended up alone and with very little understanding of the way things worked there. He found a Chassid at the airport who told him there were many Israelis in Borough Park, Brooklyn, so he went there. The telephone system and the subway were completely new to him, and when he discovered he was on the wrong side of the train track, he simply crossed over the rail-lines. Incredibly dangerous, but he knew no better! Anyway, he survived, made many friends and this gave him an appetite to return to the US. He spent two years as the Israeli Dep. Consul General in San Francisco, arguing against the many liberal Jews in Berkley who despise Israel and the many Arabs who consider him a traitor.
There is one interesting aspect of his incredible journey that he glosses over. It is that his and the Beduin identification with Israel, even though it is predominantly a Jewish State, derives largely from the empowerment that the State has given him and his people. Under the Ottomans and the Arab Muslims the Beduin were persecuted and looked down on. But, in a modern liberal democratic State like Israel, they are free to act as any other citizen, their human rights are protected. I know this because I came from a poor, persecuted (Jewish) minority in England and the transition to being a member of the Israeli State freed and empowered me too. Khaldi's story is a success story of tremendous achievement and who knows how far he will go.
posted by Jack Cohen at 4:01 PM
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