Zelda Biller writes about racism in Israel

Dear Dana,

I had a nightmare last night. I was sitting with friends in a café in Tel Aviv, the sun was shining, we were surrounded by couples in love and small families. As a waiter with dyed-pink hair and brightly painted fingernails served cheeseburgers to a woman and her daughter next to us, there was a loud scream. I turned and saw the frightened face of a little boy with sidelocks and a crocheted kippah standing behind a glass wall, staring through it at us cafe-goers. His father tried to reassure him by explaining that not so long ago it was normal for a pink haired man to serve unkosher food to a woman and for a mother to have only one child—yes, the unbelieving lazy children are ultimately women been the reason for the extinction of this strange species. It was only then that I realized that I wasn’t really sitting in a café in Tel Aviv, but in an Israeli museum that exhibits secular Jews like me, and a moment later I woke up, distraught. When I opened my laptop at breakfast, my dream started all over again: I subconsciously stole it from the Israeli presenter Eyal Kitzis, whose museum sketch for the satirical show “Eretz Nehederet” was still open in the browser because I opened it before going to sleep had seen on Facebook.

When I later told my friend Avi, who is an Ethiopian Jew, about the clip and my dream, he laughed and said: «I feel like you. The fact that the Jewish jihadists in the new government would like to turn Israel and the occupied territories into a theocracy scares me more than their racism. Most Israelis are racists anyway.” I briefly wondered if it was so easy to separate them, given that openly racist and homophobic ministers like Ben Gvir and Smotrich mostly represent religious rather than secular Israelis. But then I remembered the 25-year-old friendly chef from last week, who said to me ironically during the room tour that he couldn’t stand Arabs. Avi is right, I thought, racism is everywhere here – probably a by-product of the decades-long struggle with the Arab neighbors.

I concluded that wherever there are racists there will of course be right-wing nationalist governments from time to time, but as long as a country is democratic – and hopefully Israel always will be – they can be fought. What else is there for the opposition in the Knesset and half of all Israelis who don’t see themselves represented by Netanyahu’s right-wing religious cabinet? “We simply have to fight harder than ever for a secular, democratic Israel,” I said euphorically to Avi, who immediately took away my hope: “Don’t forget how many children the Orthodox in Israel have on average. Our opponent will soon outnumber us.” Avi was right again. And since then I’ve been wondering how we can combat the explosive mixture of religion and the right. Do we also need an inner-Israeli two-state solution at some point? One thing is clear: If my nightmare comes true, I’ll be right back in Berlin.

your zelda

Zelda Biller, born in 1997, works as a freelance journalist and has been doing her master’s degree in history in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem since October 2022. Zelda Biller and Dana Vowinckel write letters from Tel Aviv to Berlin and back on a weekly basis.