The pulse of the 'other'

Michal Levertov steps outside of the mainstream to get a feel of how individuals in some sectors relate to the upcoming elections

By TOMER NEUBERG
Bedouin social activist Hanan Alsanah in her office in Beersheba. (photo credit: TOMER NEUBERG)
Bedouin social activist Hanan Alsanah in her office in Beersheba.
(photo credit: TOMER NEUBERG)
MY FATHER always cautioned me to stay away from politics,” says Hanan Alsanah, a Bedouin social activist. “He always told me to focus on education and employment.
I tried to, but to no avail, because it’s in the political field that decisions are made.”
After 10 years of teaching Bedouin women to read and write, Alsanah realized if more women were among decision makers, a properly designed strategic plan to combat illiteracy among Bedouin women could have been formulated and unfortunate decisions such as the closing of classes for elderly women in Rahat, a Bedouin town in the Negev, could have been avoided.
While her activism focuses on concrete problems, Alsanah says she would have liked to see the campaigns ahead of the March 17 general elections focus on “changing the discourse of hatred and incitement that has penetrated so many facets of Israeli public life.”
The meeting with Alsanah, 35, director of Albadiat, the Center for the Promotion and Empowerment of Arab Bedouin Women in the Negev, takes place in her small office in Beersheba, southern Israel’s major city.
It was the first in a series of talks about the elections that The Jerusalem Report conducted with individuals from three sectors in Israeli society that tend to be relegated by the mainstream as “the other”: Negev Bedouins, Ethiopian immigrants and Haredi women. These are sectors of society whose voices are usually not only marginalized in the mainstream media – and consequently in the country’s prevalent discourse – but are also often talked about in stereotyped generalizations.
In January, almost all the Israeli Arab parties – from communist Hadash via middle- of-the-road Balad and Ta’al to Islamist Raam – reached an unprecedented decision to run together, as the Joint (Arab) List under the leadership of the head of Hadash, 40-year-old lawyer Aiman Udeh. The unification was prompted by the Knesset’s vote last year to raise the electoral threshold to 3.25 percent – a move promoted by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and widely seen as having been aimed at the Arab parties.
Ironically, according to opinion polls, the Joint List could get as many as 15 seats and could be the third-largest party in the Knesset and, in certain constellations, even end up as the major opposition party.
Alsanah says the formation of the Joint List was not merely an act of survival for the parties in a political climate that is seeking to push Arabs out of Israeli politics. It was also, she explains, a response to the growing demand from the Arab electorate for a more consolidated and empowered representation.
“It was a demand by the young generation, we called for a change. We said that the current situation is unbearable – socially, economically and politically. Young Bedouin in the Negev are fed up with poor education, with home demolitions, we want an alternative to the current solutions and we forced the politicians to make a change,” she says.
Originally from Lod, a mixed Arab-Jewish city southeast of Tel Aviv, Alsanah now lives in Beersheba with her husband and their three children. We walk from her office to our next stop, Fadi Msamra’s offices a few buildings away. Msamra, who a year and a half ago took up the position of head of the political advocacy group, Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of the Negev, believes the new joint party is excellent news for Israeli society.
I ask whether the formation of the Joint List will play into the hands of those who see all Arabs as one bloc. “On the contrary,” Msamra responds, “rather than resulting in seclusion, they opened the door for Jewish participation in the party and they reach out to all disadvantaged populations. Negev Bedouins are very hopeful this attitude will bring about a positive change because we are probably the most neglected sector in Israeli society.”
Msamra, 37, is from Rahat, which was in the headlines in mid-January following violent clashes between residents and police amid accusations that police used excessive force.
When I ask if they are not bothered by the fact that there is not one Bedouin among the list’s top candidates, Msamra smiles. “This sectoral view is mistaken. The responsibility of a Member of Knesset is to be committed to human rights, not to the inhabitants of Tel Aviv or Nazareth. I think that Arab politics in Israel has finally shown amazing maturity and I believe that this move can bring about a change in the discourse within the Arab community in Israel.
I ask about the ultra-conservative candidates on the list, among them Bedouin MK Taleb Abu Arab, No. 9 on the list, who is married to two women – a practice that severe injury to his daughter, and an acute feeling of frustration and helplessness for the villagers, they say.
Outside Atya, 47, tells me about the family business – catering to tourists from abroad “who want to see what an unrecognized village is” and who stay overnight at the house or in the covered yard facing the bare platform on which the house he built a while ago stood briefly, before being demolished by the same laborer who had just built it.
“I received a demolition order and preferred to pay the builder to demolish it cleanly than have the police coming here with all the brouhaha and the mess they evoke,” he says.
Maintaining their traditional, conservative lifestyle, the women politely refused to be photographed. “It does not fit our costumes,” says Islam smiling, “but I would really love to take a selfie with you.”
Next stop is the Hashoftim neighborhood in Kiryat Gat, a city of about 50,000 residents located some 45 kilometers north of Beersheba. More than half the neighborhood’s population is Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia. During the 1980s and 90s, the decades in which most of the immigrants came to Israel, the government offered them subsidies to purchase flats but the aid was limited to a certain size of accommodation and to specific locations, mainly in the periphery. As a result, many of the immigrants were channeled to low-income, disadvantaged areas.
We met Ezra Saado, a resident of the neighborhood since 1985, at a local pizzeria.
Saado, 37, tells us that, just as in the past, good jobs are still hard to find. He works as a dishwasher at a resort village for IDF soldiers in the nearby beach town of Ashkelon. “I am dyslexic,” he adds matterof- factly, “so finding a good job is in any case, quite a challenge for me.”
Saado is the youngest of 11 children. His family came from Ethiopia in 1983, and after 18 months in an absorption center in Ofakim, another southern city, the family bought an apartment in Hashoftim. As a teenager, he studied mostly in boarding schools, and then trained as an automobile mechanic, an occupation he disliked. After his military service, he studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva. “I loved it,” he recalls. But then his father died, and he had to come back home to help the family make a living.
He pauses for a second, then says softly, “I really miss the yeshiva.”
He shies away from politics when I ask about his view on the coming elections.
“I don’t watch TV. I don’t listen to news broadcasts on the radio,” he explains. “The state of things in Israel makes me feel so bad that I am even considering, for the first time, not to vote. My friends always reprimand me for that. I hear a lot of ‘what exactly are you thinking, retreating like that from the real world.’” When we arrived in Kiryat Gat, it was already afternoon, but despite it being a sunny winter’s day, the streets remained relatively empty. Apart from Saado, most of the residents declined to be quoted, let alone photographed.
“Politicians, journalists – you all come here only when elections are nearing,” protested a woman in her 60s. “It’s only when you need something from us that you bother to come here.”
Down the road, though, alongside the somewhat run-down looking high-school compound, where some after-hours activities such as boxing and a gym are offered, 57-year-old Avraham Menashe opens up to us. He is afraid, he says, that whoever is elected this time might make concessions to the Palestinians. This, he is certain, will devastate the Jewish state.
“Rabin gave away territories, Sharon gave away territories, and it always ended up in a war, in fighting and blood,” he says. “We can’t give away land anymore.
We will remain with nothing, though this is where we belong. It is where the Jewish A school in the run-down Hashoftim neighborhood in Kiryat Gat Veteran Ethiopian immigrant Ezra Saado, Kiryat Gat: ‘Good jobs are hard to find’ THE JERUSALEM REPORT MARCH 23, 2015 19 people belong. My grandfather used to tell us that God-willing, maybe we will be lucky enough to go back to Jerusalem.
His grandfather used to tell him the same, and so on, generations back. And we, indeed, made it.
“But should we lose Israel, where will we go? Jews who came here from Europe have a place to go back to. But, we – there is nowhere to go to. Ethiopia was never a place we belonged to, and they will not let us back.”
His Hebrew is fragile, broken. He came to Israel with his wife 20 years ago and right away started to work, mainly, he says, as a security guard in factories and other institutions. “Now the elections are coming,” he asserts, “and I really don’t know which candidate is competent enough to protect this country.”
Like Menashe, Meital Zauda, 28, is concerned about the social and economic state of the country and, in particular, the plight of citizens of Ethiopian origin.
“We were totally let down, again and again,” she says, apologizing that she cannot elaborate – she’s in a hurry to take her two sons to a weekly workshop out of town.
“The fact there were more MKs of Ethiopian origin in recent Knessets than before,” she points out, “did not make any difference.
They made no real, effective representation.”
Nevertheless, she declares, she will vote on March 17. “Because, as my father says, every vote counts. And mine will probably go to Bibi – he, too, disappointed me, but at least he’s the devil you know.”
The next day I take the bus from Tel Aviv to Haredi Bnei Brak to meet Ofra Danielchik and her sister Nava Geshaid at Danielchik’s apartment. It’s a short ride.
The city, with a population of more than 184,000 is the country’s 10th largest and borders Ramat Gan, which in turn borders Tel Aviv – all part of the congested Dan metropolitan region.
A loudspeaker mounted on a passing car, announcing the time of a coming funeral, pierces our discussion. Geshaid stops the conversation for a minute to remark, “You don’t have that in Tel Aviv, do you?” Danielchik adds, on a more serious note, “We both intend to promote a municipal bylaw that will forbid such things here.”
As we sip tea in Danielchik’s spacious living room, I ask for their opinion on the newly established Haredi women’s party, Bezchutan (Hebrew for “in their merit” after a Midrash saying that thanks to righteous women the Jewish People will reach salvation), which also includes men as candidates, and calls for the inclusion of Jewish Orthodox women in the political sphere.
“Their notion is justified, and perhaps a women’s party is not a bad idea,” Danielchik replies, “but I would have preferred it to happen within the framework of the existing Haredi parties; it’s about time that they would be so kind as to integrate women into their lists.”
The reason she does not approve of the women’s party, she explains, “is that its founders come across as antagonists, as women who have something against men and who would never be content.” Danielchik admits that the absence of Haredi women’s representation bothers her. “The determining factor in Haredi society are the rabbis. And they are comfortable with the current situation in which women are pushed aside.”
Nevertheless, Danielchik hopes that Haredi parties will increase their power in the coming elections and that they will join the coalition. Not only because they represent her worldview, she explains, but because exclusion from the establishment harms the Haredi public.
Geshaid, on the other hand, wonders if voting this time “is even worth the effort.”
The current political discourse in Israel, she says, is not serious. “And the apparent consolidation of two general blocs – one around the Likud and the other around the Zionist Union – leaves us at an even greater disadvantage,” she says.
Danielchik, 41, is a mother of six, and a grandmother of one. “Even in our sector, I’m considered a young grandmother,” she smiles. Her husband owns a dry-cleaning business and she has just finished studying to be an optician. She and her younger sister, Geshaid, 28, a mother of one, are both followers of the Gur Hasidic group.
Both declined for religious reasons to be photographed.
Geshaid, 28, and her husband, an IDF logistics officer, also reside in Bnei Brak.
She is studying for an MA in speech therapy.
“The Haredi public,” she relates, “is probably the most multicolored version of black and white. The diversity within this population is extremely vast – spreading from people who won’t listen to the radio to those who have an iPhone.”
Her case, she says, is closer to the latter.
“I don’t watch television, but I do go online.
Which means,” she explains, “that I am exposed to the country’s mainstream media and I’m therefore much more critical in regard to its conduct.” For quite a while, she says, she did the crossword puzzles in Yisrael Hayom, the mass circulation free daily newspaper. “And then, the paper began publishing headlines on ‘How Haredim blackmail the state.’ It felt as if, while I held the paper to do the crosswords, I was also spreading this misperception.
“So I decided to stop reading this paper.
This is my small, personal protest. I no longer give a hand to such hatemongering.”