Summary
Magid Shihade’s name, in his section heading ‘The Racialisation of Religious Communities: Muslims, Christians and Jews’, for the Israeli state’s conversion of religious affiliation into national and ethnic categories: Judaism turned into an official ethnic and national category by the state’s self-definition as a Jewish state, while the Palestinians who remained were turned into members of religious communities lacking national identity — Christians, Muslims and Druze — under the external label ‘Israeli Arabs’, a policy of internal division and external disconnection from the Palestinian and Arab peoples (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.2-4 / printed p.109-111).
Details
- The Jewish side of the conversion: by defining itself “as a state for the Jewish people, or a Jewish state, Israelis turned the Jewish religion into an official ethnic and national category”, regardless of Judaism’s millennia as a religion and of Jews’ life as a religious community among different societies, including Arab and Palestinian societies (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.3 / printed p.110).
- The Palestinian side: those who remained were identified on national identification cards by religious affiliation — Christian, Muslim, Druze — and in the dominant terminology as ‘Israeli Arabs’; “[t]he aim was not only to divide and rule, but also to disconnect them from the larger Palestinian community and the Arab people at large”; “[i]nternally, they are defined as a collection of religious sects; to the outside they are branded as ‘Israeli Arabs’” — “A policy of internal ghettoisation and of external disconnection” (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.3-4 / printed p.110-111).
- The result stated as a transformation of identity: “Thus, as of 1948, they turned from being Palestinians, to become Christians, Muslims, and Druze”, while ‘Israeli Arabs’ is “a category that makes them belong fully to neither” (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.4 / printed p.111).
- Its furthest case is the Druze: recognised first as a religious community and in the 1950s as a separate ethnic group, their religious identity “ethnicised, politicised, and directed towards hostility against Arabs and Palestinians”, supported by a manufactured myth of ancient Druze-Jewish affinity, military conscription, a separate education system and preferential funding — though the Druze remain discriminated against vis-à-vis Jews and their land subject to confiscation (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.4-5 / printed p.111-112).
- Its instruments beyond categorisation: separate education systems for Jews and Palestinians and within the latter for Druze, curricula emphasising affinity with Jews and Israel, a military regime of permits and curfews that ghettoised the remaining Palestinians from each other, and the persistence of hundreds of emergency regulations after the regime’s official end in 1966 (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.5-6, 12 / printed p.112-113, 119).
- Its discursive reversibility is part of the mechanism: in the official narrative of the 1981 Kafr Yassif attack, Druze are “talked about as part of the Palestinian Arab community and culture – they are no longer separate religious and ethnic group with ancient ties to Jews” when ‘Arab violence’ is the explanation required (Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, PDF p.9 / printed p.116).
Related pages
Settler Colonialism and Conflict: The Israeli State and its Palestinian Subjects, Druze, Remainers, Politics of fragmentation, Settler Colonialism, Racism