By Adar
Today I went to a restaurant with an Israeli, who afterwards posed an uncomfortable question for me. She asked, "Do you know how to tell whether he was Arab or Jewish?". Arabs are people who speak Arabic as their native language, so there can technically be Arabs of all backgrounds. But the question of can you be Jewish and Arab is one not based on technicality, but based on self-identity and group-identity. As far as I've been able to discern, and will discuss with some very broad generalizations, most Jews that come from Arab-speaking countries, such as Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, etc. do not consider themselves Arab. They have not been able to find a place within their local Arab communities, and therefore consider themselves separate. This may or may not be the case with Jews descended from European backgrounds, who for centuries were fairly well assimilated into their communities (until they were thrown out of many). Whether or not someone can be both Arab and Jewish is a question I'm very interested in, because I believe it is near the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. If the answer is no, then it's potentially easy to tell "whom is against whom". But if the answer is yes, it thoroughly blurs the lines.
I think this concept is prevalent within the Jewish community as well. Divisions between Ashkenazi (European descent) and Sephardic (North African and Middle Eastern descent) are noticeable here, though certainly more subtly. And in particular, the difference between religious Jews and non-religious Jews is a huge cleavage in modern Israeli society. About 20% of the population is Orthodox, while nearly 70% do not consider themselves religious. The remaining 10% are somewhere in between. One of the current issues in the Knesset, which is in a way preventing the new government from even being formed since elections occurred over a month ago, is power in the hands of Orthodox Jews. The basics of the issue is that Orthodox Jews are tax exempt and are on welfare from state taxes. They do not serve in the military and they do not work. The idea is that they contribute to the state by studying scripture and praying. Many secular people are not particularly satisfied with that, and are demanding that the situation change.
The comment the Israeli I was with brought up earlier makes me think that perhaps this is part of the Israeli mind. The organization of groups and what they stand for, whether I am in them, and whether they are different from me, is quite an interesting (if not a little unfortunate) way of looking at the people around you. And if the majority of people here think this way, judging everyone else based on physical and behavioral characteristics that places them in a "not like me" category, then it's no wonder it's so hard to find common ground here.