Minorities in the Middle East

I recently heard an Israeli-Palestinian law-maker being interviewed on the Voice of Israel radio station. He had just returned from an academic conference in France where it seemed that Israel's treatment of its Arab minority was compared to minority treatment in Western Europe.  This can easily be misleading, annd I thought it would be a good idea to also compare Israel with other Middle Eastern countries. My findings from a brief investigation:
I rounded figures as they are very rough. Mostly they come from http://minorityrights.org.

Country	Kurdish	Large religous minorities	Large national minorities	Total population	Per capita income	Human development index	Life expectancy
Syria	10-15%	Alawite 11%	Kurds 10 - 15%	20m	1,400	107	74
		Christian 10%
Iraq	15-20%	Sunni 30%	Kurds 15-20%	35m	14,000	120	69
Iran	7%		Azeris 24% Kurds 7%	70m	2,800	96	71
Turkey	18%		Kurds 18%	75m	4,700	92	73
Egypt		Coptic-christian 7%		85m	1,250	111	70
Yemen		Shia 33%		20m	600	150	62
Saudi		Shia 15%		25m	11,200	76	72
Jordan			10% Iraqi	6m	2,500	86	72
			50% Palestinian
Israel		Moslem 18%	(or) Arab 20%	9m	37,500	19	82

As you can see the main minority in the Middle East are Kurds. The famous Sykes-Picot agreement, and the subsequent League of Nation's Mandates ignored the Kurds, giving control of their lands to "Arab" states. Defining a state solely by the language spoken by a large group of its populace is problematic: Ireland is not an "English" state and Austria is not a "German" state.

How minorities are defined varies between countries. In some countries minorities are "indigenous", in some they are "racial" and they can also be "religous".
The British do not regard indigenous people as minorities, for example the British don't consider "Scottish" or "Irish" as a minority status. European immigrants, such as Poles may be regarded as minorities but in most tables minority status is "racial" so only non-Europeans are tabulated.

In Spain, indegenous peoples such as Catalans (16%) or Galicians (5%) are generaly seen as minorities. Although Israelis refer to "Arabs", these days, religion is the primary mode of distinction. Discrimination in Israel tends to be Ethno-Religious which I suppose reflects the primarily Ethno-Religous nature of the Jewish majority and does not comfortably fit into "racial" based groupings.

Saudi Arabia and Israel are the only states (outside tiny Gulf states) with significant migration from outside the Middle East: In Israel,unusually, migrants and their descendants form the majority of the population, with most coming from other Middle Eastern countries.

Regarding the Kurds, I found this:

• Syria - There was, prior to the civil war, forced "Arabization" leading to a ban on the Kurdish language and a ban on the use of Kurdish names. 300,000 native Syrian-Kurds were not recognized as Syrian citizens. 
• Iraq - 200,000 Kurdish civillians were killed 1986-1989 (genocide) and 1.5 million fled their homes in 1991. Arabization forced many Kurds out of Kurdish-majority cities.
• Turkey - There have been Kurdish language bans (not sure of the current status on this) and forced removal of villages (don't know how many).

I left Lebanon out of the table. There is no majority in Lebanon.

Israel does not easily compare with other countries, it has charecteristics of a Middle Eastern country, of a West European and of an East European country. A valid comparison needs to use a wider base. Binary comparisons are likely ot be misleading ro fail to see the wider picture.

Is Israel a colonial state?

This is taken from an answer I wrote on Quora to the question Is Israel a colony or the Jewish homeland?

1. Israel is partially the product of internal Arab migration.
   Roughly half of Israeli Jews are from Arab countries, and as such, by migrating to Israel they have migrated within the Arab world. My great grand-parents migrated from Romania and Lithuania to England as internal European migrants I don’t think they were colonizers anymore then my co-worker’s Algerian grand father who migrated from Algeria to Israel is a colonizer.
2. Jews are descended from aboriginal inhabitants.
   Jews regard migrating to Israel as a return to a homeland that their ancestors left for a variety of reasons. That means that they do not self-identify as colonizers. In this context it is worth noting that much of the population (both Jewish and non-Jewish) are descended from various types of colonizers including the Crusaders, Romans, Greeks and Arabs. It is generally accepted that Jews originated in this area and before the Second World War both European and American academia regarded Jews as Middle Eastern immigrants (of inferior stock). Now academia has shifted ground but the Jews are still seen as being on the “other” side.
3. The Jewish God, language, sacred texts and religious holidays all originated in Israel.The Old Testament was written in Hebrew a Semitic language which originated in Israel. Religious holidays are timed to coincide with the weather in the Middle East and include harvest festivals, pilgrimages (to Jerusalem) and a lunar calendar which is useless in Europe where clouds cover the moon.
4. No other independent entity has existed on this territory.Most of the independent countries to have existed on the site of modern Israel within the last 2,500 years are Jewish states. There has been one Crusader state created by the Normans which was independent. All Arab or Moslem rulers had their seat of government outside the country, as part of a wider Empire.
5. The first European Jews who arrived in the 19th century identified as colonizers but arrived during Islamic rule .
   The first European Jews to arrive during the 19th Century (about 30,000) often called their settlements “colonies”. However the main ruler was the Ottoman Empire and most rejected their European origins, preferring to speak a local language (Hebrew rather than Yiddish). Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion and second president (Ben Tzvi) both served in the Ottoman Army during the first world war and attempted to recruit American Jews to fight on Turkey’s behalf. In that sense they were asylum seekers and not colonizers.
6. Zionism used colonialism as a tool.Those first European Jewish migrants were Zionists and the Zionist movement up until 1917 sought to settle the country under Ottoman rule (hence Ben Gurion’s support for Turkey). Early Zionists tried to setup universities that would serve the Turks while aiding migration. However when the chance arose the Zionists had no compunction about riding the British coat tails and using British rule to get their cause recognized. That I think is the base for the claim that Zionists were colonizers, but to some extent they were using the British and the relationship, which was always tense, eventually broke down (from 1938).
7. The Arab population are also colonizers.Although colonialism is associated with modern Europe there is a case to be made that much of the Arab population arrived in Israel as Imperial colonizers. There are communities brought here by the Turks, by the Egyptians (under Muhamed Ali) as well as Bedouin Arabs who probably came with the conquest.
8. The question is academic and not relevant.
   The Jews are here, they are blending in. In a few generations all Jews will be descended from Arab-Jewish migrants and European refugees from the Holocaust. Colonialism no longer exists and is not relevant to the modern world.

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From Gaza to Belfast: My four weeks as an Israeli soldier in Gaza

In 1996, I did 4 weeks reserve duty with the Israeli army in Gaza. It was the only time I ever served in the occupied territories. I was posted as a medic attached to a field hospital, near the Palestinian town of Rafiah at the South end of Gaza. The field hospital was manned by fellow reservists who knew each other and a doctor who commanded them. I was not normally part of this field hospital, so the doctor who commanded it, placed me "in the field", supporting the soldiers.
Our unit was an artillery unit which had been sent to guard "the Philadelphi road". At the time it was probably the most dangerous place under Israeli control, outside of South Lebanon which was also occupied.
The Philadelphi road was a narrow strip of land running along the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Between 1967 and 1977 the Israelis governed Sinai and Rafiah spread into what had once been Egypt. After the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, the city was spread across both sides of the border and a narrow road went through it, which was the new border. The width of the road varied at different points but it was mostly about 10 meters wide. There were Palestinian houses on either side and the road was lined with concrete barriers, placed there to protect the soldiers. A fence ran along the Egyptian side of the road, marking the boundary between the two countries and preventing infiltration (this was before the tunnels). There were also watch towers along both sides: Small Egyptian watch towers (about one or two floors high) and massive Israeli watch towers.  I no longer remember their height but they towered over the surrounding area and I would guess they were about 4 floors up. There was a ladder to climb up and the watch tower was like a boat made of inch thick steel floating above Rafiah. When the wind blew, you could feel it swaying. As you climbed the watch tower you could see all of Rafiah and it amazed me that nobody took shots at us.
I was the medic for the Philadelphi road. I sat in the back of a jeep and we drove up and down the border, patrolling it. The seats in the back of the jeep were benches running along the side walls (not car seats), designed to allow us to rapidly jump out the back and to carry more men. I was taught to sit with my rifle poking out the back of the jeep - so if I accidently opened fire, the resulting bullet would not bounce around the jeep and so I was already in place to attack anybody trying to assault the jeep.  When guards in the watch towers needed to go for a shower, I climbed the ladder and sat in the tower, replacing them until they returned, so I saw all the watch towers. They were horrible.
We didn't only patrol the border, we also drove around the surrounding areas. I remember sitting in the jeep on the first day and there were four of us: The driver was an Ethiopian immigrant, the jeep commander, who sat next to him at the front, was born in Israel and in the back was me - born in the UK, and next to me a Russian immigrant. Both I and the Russian sat with our rifles poking out the back. On our first day we were looking for the army petrol station and I looked up from a vague day dream to realize we were about to drive up a back road into Rafiah.  "We are going into Rafiah!  We are going into Rafiah!" I screamed several times.  The driver stopped and the commander paused, we hastily backed up. It was probably the most dangerous moment in the 3 weeks.  Had we gone into Rafiah we would have faced being lynched or shooting our way out.
I didn't see many Palestinians. We lived in a small fort right near the Philadelphi road, but on occasional visits to the field hospital, which was in a large secure military base, we went through a checkpoint used by Palestinian civilians. I remember an old lady loudly gasping in horror as she saw my rifle poking out the back of the jeep. Later I was in another jeep whose commander liked to drive down to the beach and gaze at the bathing Palestinians. It looked wonderful, I wryly reflected that had it been safe for Israelis we would have been down there in the thousands eating cheap Humous and enjoying the beach.  Eventually I told the commander that we had to stop doing it because we were spoiling their relaxation time. He listened and we stopped going.
On one occasion we were sent to protect a technician who was repairing the border fence with Egypt. We stopped the jeep and I got out and stood next to him like a bodyguard.  Most artillery men are small and unfit, that is why they are in artillery. I was the opposite, as a new immigrant the fact that I was tallish and fit got me into artillery even though I had little military training.  Most people were fooled, I looked very war like, especially with all my medical equipment (I routinely carried 2 or 3 litres of intravenous drip fluid, not to mention a selection of bandages). Eventually the commanders realized that I had little military training and moved me to a less exposed position, but it took a while. While I guarded the man fixing the fence, a Palestinian woman wearing nothing but a bath robe came out onto a balcony next to the road. She started motioning for me to come to her. An Egyptian border guard scowled at her and she scowled back. I hadn't seen a woman for 10 days and it was all I could do not to start running over. Fear of a trap stopped me.
There was another fort right up against the Egyptian border which we visited. It had a table with a bullet stuck in the wood, and they said that the backyard was an Egyptian tourist spot. Busloads of Egyptians would climb onto a little platform to ogle the Israeli soldiers. When I head this, I said that I has to see it. I went out and walked to the backyard, as I walked I heard loud gasps from the assembled tourists.
The unit that replaced us were full time soldiers (doing national service), not reservists. They had a massive tank-like armoured personnel carrier,  We were the last reservists on the Philadelphi road.

A few weeks later, I got a new job working for an Israeli phone company.  They sent me to Ireland to learn about their new billing system. On my first day at work, I was given 2000 dollars in cash and plane tickets. I flew to Galway in Ireland. After a few weeks in Galway, Southern Ireland, I decided to go see Belfast.
I hired a car and told the car hire man where I was going.  "Is it a problem?" I asked.  "No" he said and then "I have just the car for you". He rented me a metallic green Audi. As it happened I was wearing a green fleece. I didn't realized the significance of it.  In those days there were no motorways in Ireland, but there was outside Belfast and I drove into Belfast at 100 miles per hour. Children waved at me. I didn't understand why.
In Belfast I went to the notorious Falls Road area, there I saw British troops creeping between the houses, trailed by small children carrying stones.  It was like Gaza except that it was Europe and the houses looked lovely - though there was a noticeable lack of cars.
When it was time to eat, I found it very hard to find a restaurant (Belfast had little night life) but someone told me to try near the university. I found a massive 3 floor pizza place next to the university and had a good meal. There was a stag night party there and as I left the restaurant I saw what was clearly a stripagram - a woman wearing little but a fur coat - going into the restaurant.  I cursed my back luck at leaving the restaurant too early. At that second a British army jeep went by. A rifle was poking out the back in my direction.

Three months later, Netanyahu opened a tunnel that ran along the Western Wall in Jerusalem. There were massive riots and all hell broke out along the Philadelphi road. 17 soldiers died (shots came from both Egypt and Gaza) and an Israeli Colonel was killed in the fort on the border (the one with the bullet in the table). My reaction was massive relief: I was glad it didn't happen when I was there.