Umm el-Fahm, August 21 – This all-Arab municipality in northern Israel approved a scheme earlier this year to celebrate the killings of their Jewish co-citizens at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, by providing free sweet to students and to have students do the same for passers-by in the streets of the Ara Valley town – but the realization that the only sweets available in sufficient quantity come from Jewish-owned Israeli manufacturers forced the municipality’s Education Department to cancel the plan, lest Jews profit from the endeavor.
Department sources disclosed that four school principals in Umm el-Fahm alerted the municipal higher-ups last month that the only reliable suppliers of chocolates, mass-produced confections, sucking candies, and chewy treats are “Jewish” Israeli corporations such as the Elite company. Public support for the BDS movement – Boycott, Divest, Sanctions – against Jewish Israelis runs high in this town, even if the movement’s principles are honored mostly in the breach, given everyday necessities. This optional expense, however, risked a clear violation of the principles, and the principals refused to comply with it.
“It can be difficult to balance the benefits and advantages of Israeli citizenship with the desire to destroy the very state that gives us those benefits and advantages,” acknowledged Fashla Fadiha, headmaster of the Al-Himar Elementary School in the eastern section of the town. “Go from grocery store to grocery store, from kiosk to kiosk, in this town, and all you’ll see is Israeli chocolate. The market realities dictate the dominance of Jewish-owned companies. Of course there’s plenty of room for local establishments, but those can’t handle the production demand that the proposed program would create, and we’d have to order from those Jewish companies. Obviously no one wants that.” Fadiha provided the answers to a reporter’s questions via a mobile device with key components developed by Jewish Israelis.
Arab citizens of Israel – a small but vocal portion of the demographic include “Palestinian” as an identifier – remain keenly aware of the freedoms, safety, and relative administrative competence and fairness available to them as citizens of Israel, none of which their “fellow” Palestinians living under Fatah or Hamas rule in the autonomous Palestinian areas enjoy. The overlapping loyalties of “Israeli citizen,” “member of the Palestinian people,” “Muslim/Christian” and “Arab” create contradictory dynamics in Israeli Arab society, encapsulated by the predicament of failing to find, in the Arab sector, a suitable supplier of enough candy to celebrate when Palestinians murder Jews.
{Reposted from PreOccupied Territory}
