Left I on the News

That's anti-Arab prejudice (and treatment), of course. And while Jimmy Carter may want to avoid talking about (or deny it), Arabs in Israel are speaking out:

A broadly representative elite of Israel's Arab minority has rejected the idea of Israel as a Jewish state and demanded a partnership in governing the country to ensure that Arab citizens get equal treatment and more control over their communities.

In a manifesto that is stirring anger and soul-searching among Jews, Arab leaders have declared that Israel's 1.4 million Arab citizens are an indigenous group with collective rights, not just individual rights. The document argues that Arabs are entitled to share power in a binational state and block policies that discriminate against them.

"The main message is that we do not accept our situation as second-class citizens," Khatib said in an interview at the group's headquarters here. "We want to change that situation, and we prefer to change it through dialogue."

Some examples:

In public education, for example, the state invests about twice as much per Jewish pupil as per Arab pupil.

Nearly half of Israel's Arabs live below the poverty line, and their rates of unemployment and infant mortality are twice the national average. They face obstacles securing residency permits for Arab spouses who are not Israeli. Exempt from military service, they do not qualify for thousands of higher-paying jobs reserved for veterans. They make up only 10% of Israel's university undergraduates.

Arab leaders also chafe at limits on local autonomy, such as the Education Ministry requirement that all public schools use textbooks that teach history from a Jewish perspective.

Israeli Arabs may be speaking up, but few in the United States will hear them. Only the Los Angeles Times is reporting the story.