The Or Commission Report was released yesterday. Key among its findings was that the Israeli police used excessive force in reaction to the October 2000 riots by Israeli Arabs:
In a landmark report on the country’s treatment of the Arab minority, a commission of inquiry has found police used excessive force in stopping Arab riots three years and that the country’s leaders badly underestimated the community’s anger after decades of systematic discrimination.
Thirteen Israeli Arabs were killed in the October 2000 protests, in which thousands threw stones and blocked streets in a show of support with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A Jewish motorist was killed by a rock at the time.
After hearing 377 witnesses in nearly three years, the Or Commission released its report of several hundred pages. It was only the fourth probe of such a scope in the country’s history. The others were a 1974 investigation into reasons why the government failed to predict the Yom Kippur War, the 1983 commission into massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon and an investigation into the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The commission’s recommendations are not legally binding, but carry strong weight. The 1983 findings forced Ariel Sharon to resign from his post as defense minister.
The reaction to this has been instantaneous, on all sides. And as usual, I feel the need to weigh in with my two cents.
On the one hand, it’s fair to say that the excessive use of force should be strongly condemned. If, as the report’s findings suggest, rubber and then live bullets were used too readily, and the situation escalated too quickly, then those responsible ought to be taken to task. In addition, the report brought the very important problem of discrimination against Israeli Arabs – often swept under the rug – to light. While it is illegal to institutionalize racism in Israel, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. The problem exists, like in most democratic societies, and in Israel it is compounded by the decades of hostility and all-out war by what too many generalize as “the Arabs”. Understandable, maybe, but not excusable.
On the other hand, the commission of inquiry system speaks to the relative transparency of the Israeli system. And what I find frustrating is the knowledge that this will be used to paint Israel as the sole villain by the Palestinians, who would never dream of mounting a similar commission of inquiry for any wrongdoing on their side. The very transparency that makes Israel what it is, in a sense, is also its weakness. Israel is shining a self-reflecting light on its own shortcomings, knowing full well that the Palestinians would never do the same. And the Or Commission report will become nothing but another propaganda tool. I mean, could you ever conceive of a Commission of Inquiry held by the Palestinians in their eventual state, finding that police used “excessive force” against a Jewish minority? Palestinian security force members who kill Jews don’t get reprimands; they get hero’s welcomes.
It also makes me uneasy to read things like this:
The report put the blame for the riots squarely on the shoulders of the Israeli establishment, saying a major cause was systematic government neglect of the Arab minority.
“The state and all its governments failed consistently in dealing with the problems raised by the existence of a large Arab minority within a Jewish state,” it said.
That sounds suspiciously like a “root cause” argument.
Now, for the record, I’m not denying the existence of “root causes”. I think they are important in the long-term in working to alleviate tensions and solve problems. But in the immediate term, the blame for an action has to be on the person causing the action, not on those reacting.
Israel holds itself to a higher standard than the rest of the Middle East. And a cornerstone of democracy is the ability to self-examine and self-criticize. For those reasons, the findings of the Or Commission are important.
But instead of self-criticism or a long hard look in the mirror, the rest of the Middle East prefers to use such admissions of wrongdoing as additional propaganda against Israel. Because it’s easier to point the finger outwards than inwards.
Update: Imshin gives her personal take on the events.
It’s an interesting dilemma. The report deals with the relationship between Israel’s national majority and the largest of its national minorities. As in any other country, it is in this sense a matter of internal politics — and needs to be written, read, and acted on that way.
Although written in large part, it seems, from that perspective, reading it and acting upon it without creating linkages with campaigns waged over Israel’s borders as a country is obviously a difficult task for all parties.
If Israel is to advance as a country, though, it will have to try and accomplish the difficult task of treating this and acting upon it in terms of relations between Israeli citizens of differing groups. That, even though one of those groups is linked quite explicitly — though in varying degrees depending on who is speaking — to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict outside Israel’s borders.
That would be facilitated if there were a feeling of general agreement among both Arab and Jewish Israelis that the end-goal of such reforms was to improve and strengthen the character of Israeli democracy. I doubt that anyone involved in implementing the solution will take the time to recognise that, though.