Middle East Post

A few days ago two Arab students Ali Bhar and Nasser Odeh that study in the Hebrew university of Jerusalem were punished and humiliated because they refused to shake hands with the Israeli president Shimon Perez. The students were stopped by the security of the president and the university. Two days after the accident Ali’s dorms were searched and he was demanded to leave the dorms. According to the university Ali is to leave the dorms because he kept a nargilah (an Arab traditional smoking pipe) inside it.

The story began when President Shimon Perez was visiting the campus of the Hebrew University and shaking hands with the students because of the beginning of the academic year after a long strike. When Perez reached Ali, the last told him that he refuses to shake hands with someone who is responsible of the Qana massacre in Lebanon which happened in the time Perez was the Israeli Prime Minister.

The question of democracy that should be asked here is about the citizen’s freedom to express his or her political opinions and attitudes without being followed, punished, or accused. Ali’s opinion is not important in this accident but the whole picture of democracy that the Israeli state believes to work upon is under questioning once a student is punished for expressing his opinions face to face with the President of the state. The university took Ali’s student card and asked from him to meet the Dean for following steps of punishment that the university is thinking of.

The political situation in the campus is complicated once Arab and Israeli students race to express their political beliefs. The highest percentage of the Arab students that come to study in this university hold the Israeli citizenship that was given them after the establishing of the Jewish state on their lands. Even after giving them this citizenship they are not allowed to express their political and national actions without being followed by the Israeli intelligence and police. The rights that are given to these people are nothing in compare with the rights of the Jewish Israelis that live in Israel.

The Israeli community accept the idea of the right of the Jews who come originally from outside Israel of expressing their feelings of belonging to the state they come from, but once we are talking about Arabs, any action they make expressing their belonging to their Arab and Palestinian roots is considered a terrorist act and a support of terrorism.

The question is what if a Jewish settler did the same thing and expressed his or her feelings by accusing an Israeli leader of betrayal or attacking Palestinian farmers in the West Bank…will they be accused and punished the same way like Ali and Nasser were or they will be considered Israeli citizens expressing their feelings in an emotional state.

International Concerns, Palestinian, Israeli Conflict abu, ali, arab, bhar, democracy, east, hebrew, israel, jerusalem, khalil, middle, nasser, odeh, of, post, students, university, zayyad, ziad