After enjoying some delicious Israeli Pizza Hut, it was time to get back down to business. We started our afternoon by interviewing two different representatives from Israeli minority groups. There are about 1.5 million people living in the Galilee and a little over 50% of them are not Jewish. Because of this, it is imperative that we understand the lives of these non-Jewish groups in order to call ourselves real advocates for Israel.
The interviewees were Henry, a 27 year old Arab Christian from Nazareth, and Daniel, a 34 year old Druze from Judea. I will only be discussing Daniel here. I strongly encourage you to visit my friend Gabe’s blog in order to learn the perspective of Henry.
The Druze people, followers of the monotheistic religion called Druze, make up only about 130,000 people of the population of Israel. As a member of this community, we wanted to understand if Daniel identified himself as Israeli, and he said that he does without any second thought. He has lived in Israel all of his life and defended his country as a member of the IDF. Daniel believes that his experiences in the army really helped to shape him as an Israeli. He was treated as an equal among his peers and didn’t experience any discrimination whatsoever. This taught me that there is much false/exaggerated information regarding Israel outside of its borders. In the states, Israel is often portrayed as having a serious problem with how it treats its non-Jewish minorities, but inside the borders it’s almost a completely different story. Daniel further validated this point as he told us, “Don’t take anything as an obvious fact. Nothing is simple and everything is very complicated. Overall, everybody gets together pretty well”.
I used to think that a big downfall for Israel was the way it treated its non-Jewish population. But after hearing the actual perspectives of these very interesting people first hand, I can say that I feel much more at peace with the situation.