ABSTRACT
In this essay, Calvin Goldscheider examines Israel’s connection to Jewish communities outside Israel and calls into question the role that ethnically Arab citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) might play in Israel’s future. The two largest Jewish communities in the world are those of Israel and the United States. American Jewish identity over time has become defined less by religious ritual and belief and more by “ethnic” Jewishness, and particularly by support for the state of Israel. Yet the two communities are diverging. The American commitment to the separation of church and state is at odds with Israel’s religiously infused politics, and the American tolerance of Jewish diversity contrasts sharply with Orthodox Judaism’s intolerance of religious diversity in Israel. Arab Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza have not been officially integrated into Israel as citizens. In contrast, Arab Israelis are caught in the middle because, although they are Arabs, they are also Israeli citizens, albeit citizens who rank below Jewish Israelis in the social hierarchy of Israel. So long as being Israeli involves a dominant component of Jewish history and culture, Arab Israelis can never be fully Israeli. Barring fundamental changes in the Jewish state of Israel, Arab Israelis will remain socially and economically disadvantaged, and the nature of their links to the Palestinians and to Arab states will therefore remain an open question.
