This essay, by Barry Rubin, first appeared in Pajamas Media. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
As the waitress whose family had come from Ethiopia put the pizza on the table at the Tel Aviv Italian restaurant, I contemplated the ridiculous misuse of “race” as a factor in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Regardless of skin color, we belong not only to the same country by way of citizenship but also to the same nation and people in a very profound way that isn’t true for countries that are merely geographical entities.
Among the scores of ridiculous things said, thought, and written about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the pretense that it has something to do with “race” ranks high among them. This has been interjected for two reasons.
First, this is a blatant attempt to demonize and delegitimize Israel.
Second, as part of that point but also due to trends in Western intellectual discussions, there is a conflation of nationality and race. Often, there is an attempt nowadays to portray any form of nationalism in the West as racist, though this is never applied to Third World nationalist situations. Neither the internal conflicts in Iraq (among Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds) nor in Lebanon (among numerous groups) are about race, but rather arise from national, ethnic, and religious (sometimes all rolled up into one) conflicts.
