... meet with a similar number of Jew-Loving Arabs.
And do you think this was newsworthy enough for us in the US to have heard about it? No. Whatever the reason -- media ignorance, or a fear of puncturing anti-Israeli media stereotypes, this kind of massive movement isn't worth ever remarking upon...
Michael J. Totten:
The Druze serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. And the Druze are as Arab as anyone else in the region. The biggest problem the Israeli government has with Druze members of the IDF is not that they are not loyal. The biggest problem is that they are consistently the most roguish and brutal toward Palestinians. They speak Arabic as their first language. Palestinians say they are traitors.
Bedouin also serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. The skills they learn as desert wanderers make them the perfect trackers.
Don’t assume the only reason Bedouin work with the Israelis is because they are loyal to the state they happen to live in, as may (or may not) be the case with the Druze. The tight relationship between Israeli Jews and Bedouin Arabs crosses international borders.
Lisa told me the Bedouin in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula speak Hebrew.
“Why?” I said. “Did they learn it during the occupation?” Israel seized the Sinai from Egypt during the Six Day War in 1967 and gave it back when Anwar Sadat agreed to a peace treaty.
“No,” she said. “They wanted to learn Hebrew so they can talk to us when we go down and visit.”
“When you go down there and visit?” I did not know what she was talking about.
“Last year 200,000 Israelis visited the Bedouin during Passover," she said.
“Two hundred thousand,” I said. “On just one day?”
“You didn’t know about this?” she said.
Ummm... no, we sure didn't. Probably because our acclaimed international media couldn't report the broad side of a barn if it bit them. (To mix metaphores in a most painful manner.)
Heck, there's even a racy element to this story:
“No,” I said. Before I went to the Middle East I had no idea Israeli Jews had any kind of genuinely friendly relations with Arabs in any country except right-wing Lebanese Maronites. And a significant number of Maronites say they aren't even Arabs at all.
“The Bedouin roll our joints for us,” she said. “They sell us hashish. Israeli women like to go topless.”
“You go topless in front of the Bedouin?” I said. “Isn’t that offensive?” Bedouin are arguably the most conservative people in the entire Middle East.
“It doesn’t bother them,” she said. “They understand that our cultures are different. They don’t impose their values on us. And I never once saw a Bedouin man with wandering eyes.”
The Bedouin men must be made of sterner stuff than us Americans. I must confess, if presented with the same spectacle, *I'd* probably be alternating between congratulating God on the magnificence of femaledom (a la Adam) and asking his forgiveness for appreciating them in quite that manner.
It made sense once I thought about it. Bedouin may be Egyptian Arabs, but they are completely isolated from Hosni Mubarak’s deranged state-run media. They could not care less about the politics of the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. No one ever told them they are supposed to hate Jews. When politics can be pitched over the side, Israeli Jews and at least some Arab Muslims have a natural affinity for one another and they get along great.
“They are our brothers,” she said.
How is anyone supposed to be well informed when something this significant, on such a hot topic, mind you (Arab/Jew relations -- not to mention the toplessness) goes completely unreported?