Echoes of Mudar Zahran: In Their Own Name, Against Their Interests: Arab Workers Warn UK Settlement Sanctions Will Hurt the Very People They’re Claimed to Help

Peloni

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The Daily Mail recently published an important article in which Arab workers and businessmen located in Judea and Samaria were  interviewed by the Daily Mail to gain insights into what their concerns and perspectives might be in regards to the recent declaration to impose sanctions by the British govt on Israeli settlements.  While their comments may be surprising, it exposes the long-tried effort of Europeans to attack Israel on behalf of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria while remaining indifferent to the actual consequences these actions are having on these same Arabs.

Samech, an Arab Israeli businessman from Jerusalem who employs 20 Arabs employees and eight Israelis, cautions that the British government is making a “big mistake.” He explains that the economic war being imposed on Israel could result in punishing the roughly 7,000 local Arab workers who come to the commercial center each day.  He notes that this could additionally create a ripple effect disrupting other local businesses and families further harming the Arabs in Judea and Samaria. He argues the people working there have no interest in politics and remind the world that Arabs and Jews live and work side by side.

This sentiment is echoed by Arab workers from Judea and Samaria who told the Daily Mail that the economic penalties introduced in their name against Israel could cost them their jobs, leaving them and their families without a way to make a living.

Ibrahim, an Arab worker from Jericho in Judea, has worked at Maya Food Industries for 20 years, and asks that politics be kept separate from employment, warning that the sanctions will come to create many distinct problems for the local inhabitants.

Other Arab employees at the facility also expressed concern. Ten workers wishing not to be identified shared that they were “upset” and “worried” about the sanctions, describing the actions of the British government as being misguided.

Ilan Amoyel, a marketing manager at Maya Food Industries, indicates it will be those workers “at the bottom of the food chain” who will ultimately suffer from the efforts of the British govt.  He points to the fact that the company employs some 350 Palestinians and that a decline in British exports would mean lead to its predominantly Arab workforce being challenged with the heavy burden of being unemployed.

Amoyel goes on to remind the Daily Mail that Arab employees can earn substantially more working for Israeli companies, reinforcing the absurdity of these jobs being threatened presumably on behalf of these same Arabs. He notes that workers at his company are paid roughly twice as much as non-Israeli jobs, with some earning as much as three times as much, not to mention other employment benefits. He also shares that these Arab employees are treated no differently from the company’s Israeli employees.

The article concludes with an illustration of the close personal relationship between the Arab employees and their Israeli colleagues: Ibrahim puts his arm around Amoyel and warmly remarks that “all this man does is smile every day.”

Thus, the Arab workers’ perspective presented in the article is that the Israeli businesses provide important employment, wages and benefits, and that British sanctions intended to assist Palestinians could instead undermine the economic relationships on which many Arab families depend.

In reading this article, I was struck by the similarity it bore to the comments made by Mudar Zahran when speaking before the EU Parliament in 2018.

In a fiery speech which left the entire Parliament hushed, Zahran challenged the EU with the fact that their attempts to attack Israel economically belies the reality that those economic blows would be carried on the backs of the Arabs employed by the Israeli targets of those economic blows.   At the time, Zahran was chastising the EU for its support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, but the consequences and purposes and pitfalls of the BDS movement are echoed in the current UK sanctions policy – the tactics of economic warfare on Israel is mired in the same motivation and will result in the same consequences. Note that Zahran warns that the economic threats raised against Israel ignores the importance which Israel plays in providing both stability and income for the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.

Similar to the voices shared with the Daily Mail, Mudar Zahran highlights the complicity for which the Europeans are responsible in

Note also that Zahran speaks as one who has family who are directly affected by the economic assaults which the EU and the British raise against Israel, and like those who were interviewed by the Daily Mail, he can speak of the firsthand hardships which an economic blight on the Jews of Judea and Samaria will have for the Arabs of the area as well.

Zahran goes on to conclude with a look at the consequences of the economic attacks made against Israel and a plea for support from the EU, real support for employment rather than poverty, and support for peace rather than tyranny, but the tyranny he highlights is not from Israel, but for those institutions of repression around which the EU and the UK have historically been coordinated and continue to be so to this day:

Standing against them is standing against us. Our interest is Israel’s interest. We will only thrive when Israel does and Israel will only thrive when we do. And this should serve as a last call for the European establishment, which I still insist is good intended. Either you stand with us, either you support peace and drop the terrorist Islamist, radical, antisemitic regimes like the Palestinian Authority, like the Hashimite Kingdom of an unelected, undemocratic, tyrannical regimes, unless you drop them, you will be ousted soon from the entire game. It’s either that you accept change or you simply stay out of it.

You have been very destructive to my people without knowing it. You have been supporting our oppressors. Morgini, the European Parliament Union’s foreign minister would have she’s a personal friend of both Abbas and Jordan’s king will she talk to a real representative of the people like myself? No, she wouldn’t.

This has been very destructive to us.  Enough with the pain that we have suffered, both of us. Enough.

And I’m asking you, let my people go. Let both our people go. The Palestinians and Israelis.

Let us go

So in the words of Mudar Zahran, the UK and Europe should end their acts of complicity in weaponizing the abuse of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria while supporting the mechanisms of tyranny and poverty which are the true consequences of such acts of economic warfare waged against the Jews of Israel, acts which include both the recently declared UK sanctions and the ongoing efforts in support of the BDS movement.