In the case of Israeli Arabs, many of them in smaller towns on the periphery of Israel’s economic centers, the low level of education and employment has not been ameliorated sufficiently by government interventions, including their policy of subsidies.

Systemically, for political reasons, they have received less than their per capita share in educational, municipal and economic resources allocated to this sector for the last sixty years, as well as the suffering from ad hoc discrimination against Arabs by employers in higher wage categories. In addition, Israeli Arab parties do not participate in the ruling coalition, whether right, left or center – both because of their ideology and because of Jewish parties’ discrimination – therefore their interests are not represented in special governmental allocations for sectors that are party to coalition agreements.

Too slowly and haphazardly, the Israeli judiciary has been forcing the Israeli executive – the government and civil service – to close these gaps. In 2001, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled, concerning budgetary discrimination against Arab municipalities, that the state was not allocating budgets objectively in regard to Project Renewal housing, improvements to low-income families:

The principle of equality is binding on all the country’s public bodies. It is binding, above all, on the State itself. The principle of equality applies to all areas in which the State operates. It applies, first and foremost, to the allocation of the State’s resources. The State’s resources, whether land or money or other resources, belong to all citizens, and all citizens are entitled to enjoy them according to the principle of equality, without discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, sex or any other improper consideration…. Discrimination on the basis of religion or national affiliation in the allocation of the country’s resources is forbidden even if it is done indirectly, and, a fortiori, if it is done directly.” (Israeli High Court 1113/99 Adallah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights v. Minister of Religious Affairs, 2001)

As a result, for example, the lion’s share of budgets for building schools in Jerusalem has gone to build desperately needed schools in the Arab neighborhoods. If this process of upgrading the educational levels of the Arab citizen and residents of Israel continues, then the quality and quantity of employment should improve, though the gap compared to most Israeli Jews may still grow. From a value point of view – democratic, Jewish and Zionist – this is a moral imperative. The voice of democracy rings out in the aforementioned Israeli Supreme Court decision. Now we will add voices of Halakhic Judaism in the former chief Sephardi rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Haim David Halevi (1924-1998), and of Socialist Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, which are in this case in agreement.

Rabbi Haim David Halevi rules that the mitzvah of tzedakah obligates the Israeli government to provide jobs for its citizens and here he explicitly includes citizens, resident aliens and strangers who are not Jews.

It is most obvious that inasmuch as Joshua and the chieftains of the community had sworn to them [the Gibeonites] that they [the leadership of the people Israel] would sustain them (Joshua 9:20-21), i.e., that they [the leadership of the people Israel] would accomplish this by supplying them work whereby they could earn a livelihood, that it is therefore the obligation of every government to be concerned for the subsistence of its citizens, whether they are permanent residents or strangers. And this is all the more so [in an instance such as this] where they [the leadership of the people Israel] had sworn [such concern].

The great moral to be derived by every government among the people Israel is that it possesses an obligation to conduct itself towards its minorities and those who are strangers in its midst with integrity and fairness. In so doing, it will sanctify the Name of Heaven and the name of Israel in the world.” (Aseh l’kha Rav 7:70-71)

One of the most articulate Zionist voices for inclusion of Arab citizens in the full benefits of citizenship was David Ben-Gurion himself, the author of the Israeli declaration of Independence:

How the Jewish State behaves towards its citizens will be an important factor—although not the only one—in our relationships with the Arab countries. To the extent that Arab citizens feel at home in our state … and their status in no way differs from that of their Jewish counterparts, and is perhaps better than that of an Arab in an Arab country, and as long as the State honestly and consistently helps [the Arab sector] to catch up with the Jewish population’s standard of living in economic, social and cultural terms, then Arab suspicions will shrink and a bridge will be built to a Jewish-Arab Semitic pact in the Near East. (1957)

No less committed to the rights of Israeli Arabs was Zeev Jabotinsky (died 1940), head of the Revisionist Movement that later produced the Likud Party. Though he believed in extending the borders of Israel to include both the West and East bank of the Jordan River, the original area of the Balfour Declaration, he maintained that the Arab nations emerging from Turkish Imperial rule deserved their own nation states but not in the historic area of Israel. Those Arabs who stayed in the Jewish state should have full political rights, as he wrote in his draft constitution for the Jewish state (1934). The Arab minority would be on an equal footing with its Jewish counterpart “throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.” The two communities would share the state’s duties, both military and civil service, and enjoy its prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arabic should enjoy equal rights and that “in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa.”

There are two primary reasons why Israeli Arabs have low participation rates in the economy. First, because they are not drafted into the army, they, like the haredim, are less likely to develop the entrepreneurial and improvisational skills that the IDF inculcates. Second, they also do not develop the business networks that young Israeli Jews build while serving in the military, a disparity that exacerbates an already long-standing cultural divide between the country’s Jewish and Arab communities.

The authors of Start-Up Nation detail the causes of wasted Israel Arab labor that raise moral and social, as well as economic issues. There are two primary reasons why Israeli Arabs have low participation rates in the economy, they said. First, because they are not drafted into the army, they, like the haredim, are less likely to develop the entrepreneurial and improvisational skills that the IDF inculcates. Second, they also do not develop the business networks that young Israeli Jews build while serving in the military, a disparity that exacerbates an already long-standing cultural divide between the country’s Jewish and Arab communities.

Each year, thousands of Arab students graduate from Israel’s technology and engineering schools. Yet, according to Helmi Kittani and Hanoch Marmari, who codirect the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development, “only a few manage to find jobs which reflect their training and skills…Israel’s Arab graduates need to be equipped with a crucial resource which the government cannot supply: a network of friends in the right places.” And in the absence of those personal connections, Israeli Jews’ mistrust of Israeli Arabs is more likely to hold sway.

Another problem is the bias within the Israeli Arab community against women in the workplace. “Arab society is predominantly patriarchal, where men are perceived as the decision-makers and women as inferior and ideally subservient…A man who treats his partner other than [according to] the acceptable norm endangers his social standing.”

Taking a step in the right direction, the former Labor party Minister of Social Welfare, Isaac Herzog, grandson of the first Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, sought to integrate academically educated Arabs in Jewish businesses and law firms, and the New Israel Fund and the Abraham Fund have devoted resources to the Arab sector to enable it to organize for self-help initiatives for financial success and for advocacy for governmental aid, but much, much more remains to be done. Both democracy and economics demand more initiatives and changed attitudes among the employers.