Social Revolution of Arab Women in Israel

 The status of Arab women in Israel is improving significantly. Hadas Fuchs, a researcher at the Taub Institute, published a study in 2018 on the integration of Arab women in the labor market in Israel. 

The most striking detail of her research relates to a revolution in the education of Arab women: 15% of students in higher education in Israel are Arab women, even though the proportion of Arab women among the general population is only 10%. In fact, the number of female Arab students in higher education has doubled since the beginning of 2000. 

As a result, women in Arab society are much more educated than men. Female students at Arab high schools comprise 52% of students studying computer programming and sciences, 55% in electronics, 59% in mathematics, and 70% in chemistry. The employment rate of Arab women jumped from 35% to 40% in the past year alone.

Israeli-Arab captain of women’s basketball team. 

Shahd Abboud, who plays for the Hapoel Petah Tikvah women’s basketball team in Israel, opened the 2018/19 season as their new captain, making history as the first female Arab captain of a professional Israeli basketball team in the top league. 

Bedouin woman joins Israeli police rescue unit. 

Rana Jaboua, a resident of the Bedouin Negev village of al-Fara’a has become the first female Bedouin in Israel to join the Israel Police Rescue team, Jaboua is part of a unit that helps hikers in the Judean Desert if they become lost or injured.

 Rana Jaboua

Israeli Bedouin Policewoman Blazing Trail  

Recently, Israel dedicated new police stations in the Arab villages of Jisr azZarqa and Kafr Kanna. Four days later, a short video on Facebook showed Sabrin Saadi, a young and also the first policewoman from the Bedouin village of Basmat Tabun, making her way to the Kafr Kanna station in her uniform wearing a hijab, walking past a group of Arab demonstrators. 

Saadi's father, Ali Saadi, said, "We are part of this society, so we should serve it. The people attacking her are a gang of wild kids with nothing better to do with their lives. They should go find themselves and think about what, if anything, they have actually done on behalf of their community." 

Wheelchair-Bound Bedouin, Israel’s Newest Doctor of Physics

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This is the inspiring story of an Israeli Bedouin who overcame social and physical obstacles to achieve his dream. For full article read here.

Among the graduates receiving their doctoral degrees at Ben Gurion University of the Negev on Wednesday, one stood out above the rest.

Ramadan Abu-Ragila, 34, has muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that results in increasing weakening and breakdown of skeletal muscles. He is wheelchair bound and relies on an oxygen machine to breathe. A Bedouin, from the town of Segev Shalom, southeast of Beersheba, Abu-Ragila has just completed his doctorate in physics, specializing in the diffusion of water particles.

“I felt enormous satisfaction at achieving a goal and reaching a far off point that I had set for myself,” Abu-Ragila told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

Abu-Ragila said he set that goal for himself back in high school. “People told me that physics was a very tough subject, so I decided to pick it as a major. I thought it would be very challenging, but challenges are not something I shy away from.”

Abu-Ragila didn’t face those challenges alone. His brother Jihad, who is two years younger, took it upon himself to help his elder sibling achieve his goals.

“One day I saw Ramadan sitting at home. He told me he had enrolled to study nuclear engineering at university, but didn’t have a way to get to Beer Sheva. I decided I would help him, and from the first day of his first degree, right through to his doctorate I accompanied him. He was the brains and I supplied the legs,” said Jihad.

Ramadan says the switch from the sheltered life of a small Bedouin village to the world of academia was not an easy transition. “At the beginning it was very difficult, the first month, the first year. They were really hard,” Abu-Ragila recounted.

“I understood that the transition from high school to academia was not at all simple. But thankfully I had a very supportive environment. My brother Jihad, my family and friends. Slowly I got used to it.  My success is their success,” he says.

Overcoming Hurdles in Life

Abu-Ragila steers away from talking about how he coped with his deteriorating physical condition alongside the rigorous demands of his academic chores. All he is willing to say is that he never received any special provisions and was always taught to believe in his abilities “until I believed in them myself.”

His experiences have taught him one central lesson in life: “Whoever you are and no matter what path you choose, there will be always be hurdles. It is our duty to strive to overcome them.”

Having achieved his goal, Abu-Ragila isn’t about to stop there. He has already enrolled for post-doctoral study at Haifa’s Technion-Institute of Technology. “From my perspective the next stage for me is to serve the academic community and to continue to develop my field of research in order to serve humanity.”

Why BDS Still Targets SodaStream

Zahava Raymond 2nd Mar 2016 for Honest Reporting

When SodaStream moved out of the West Bank in October 2015 under pressure from BDS, 500 Palestinian employees lost their jobs. Another 74 were able to continue working at the new factory close to the southern town of Rahat, but only on temporary work permits. On Monday, those permits expired and SodaStream was forced to let its last Palestinian employees go.

Thanks to the BDS movement’s actions, close to 600 Palestinians have now lost their jobs.

BDS activists have clearly demonstrated beyond all doubt that their only goal is to harm Israel, and they don’t care one iota if that causes Palestinians to suffer. Mahmoud Nawajaa, the BDS coordinator in Ramallah, called the loss of the Palestinian jobs at SodaStream

“ part of the price that should be paid in the process of ending the occupation.”

BDS caused  irrevocable damage by costing 600 Palestinians their livelihoods, but the movement got what it wanted. BDS supporters claim they are against “the occupation,” and SodaStream has moved out of the West Bank. What more could there possibly be left for them to do now?

Join the Fighting BDS Facebook page and follow @FightingBDS on Twitter and stand up against the delegitimization of Israel.

The boycott movement will still be targeting SodaStream as leaders claim that operating from the Negev “amounts to participation in Israel’s plans to forcibly displace at least 40,000 Palestinian Bedouins into townships,” and according to BDS leader Omar Barghouti, “colluding in the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin Palestinian citizens.” Except the Bedouins are not Palestinians, and BDS is simply hijacking their identity to fit their narrative portraying Israel as an occupier of Palestinian land.

This is in reference to the contentious Prawer-Begin plan which was dropped while the government sought to formulate a new version, but aimed to resolve the issues of illegal Bedouin settlements and to more fully integrate them into Israeli society.

The SodaStream factory was built in a new industrial zone in the Negev administered by the Bedouin city of Rahat, the Jewish town of Lahavim and the Bnei Shimon Regional Council. Around 40 factories will be based in this industrial zone when it is fully developed, providing employment for hundreds of workers, including many Bedouins from nearby towns. A college and hospital are also being built. The Negev is uncontested land under Israeli sovereignty, but to BDS it is another area that can be used in the attempt to delegitimize Israel altogether.

Just like the 600 Palestinians who lost their jobs, the plight of the Bedouins and the reality of the situation are irrelevant to BDS. The movement will take any opportunity to demonize Israel, even if it is to the detriment of the people it claims to care about.