Fighting Discrimination: Our Independence Day Heritage

I can’t think of a better way to mark Independence Day than to examine what Israel’s done to fight racism and discrimination during the past year. No kidding.

The plethora of government bodies combatting these societal ills provides a panoramic overview of the situation on the ground. These are not amorphous bureaucracies but rather actual Israelis with names and faces, all remarkable in their commitment and persistence.

The Justice Ministry’s National Anti-Racism Unit, for example, is among the numerous offices that I’ve had the privilege to interact with since creating the Foreign Ministry’s social impact policy section more than six years ago.

True to its mission, the Unit recently launched, in partnership with the Education Ministry, a new anti-racism training initiative on the sports field and in the school system at the elementary and junior high levels. The project is a follow-up to a pilot the Unit conducted late last year among the youth programs of Israeli soccer clubs.

Myself an enthusiast of information-based action, I find it heartening that the Unit regularly checks the country’s pulse to help guide its activities. Its latest study, released in late March on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racism, is another illustration of this modus operandi.

Based on 6,400 civil service respondents, the report indicated that 48% of employees of Ethiopian background experienced racism in their workplace in 2024. Similar negative experiences were reported by 43% of Arabs, 33% of Druze, 23% of Haredi Jews, and 22% of Israelis whose families originate from the former Soviet Union.

The Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities, like the Unit, also believes in combining data with concrete action. In this spirit, the Commission recently filed suit against the WIZO daycare center network and three of its personnel, including the CEO. WIZO is accused of refusing to provide sign language services for parents with a hearing impairment.

Other government bodies tasked with fighting discrimination include the Economy Ministry’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), headed by a member of Israel’s Druze minority community.

The EEOC’s 2024 report states that the number of men filing complaints accounted for 56% of the total, for the first time exceeding those of women (65% in past years). The primary complaint this past year, from both women and men, concerned workplace discrimination due to IDF reserve duty service. This development reflects Israel’s growing security needs following the Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023.

The level of complaints tied to pregnancy stood at 6%, according to the study. In past years, this subject led all the registered categories.

Israel’s Civil Service Commission has continued its own annual examination of gender equality issues. According to its new report for 2024, women accounted for 63% of all civil servants; however, they only comprised 46.1% of senior-level positions.

The Anti-Racism Unit was established back in 2016, following widespread protests by Ethiopian-Israelis against over-policing. This issue has remained on the national agenda ever since.

A reminder of this came from a new Knesset (parliament) Research and Information Center report, recently prepared for a scheduled session on the matter. Seeking to assess the situation on the ground, the document grapples with what it terms the partial nature of Israel Police enforcement data.

To compensate for the deficiency, the report highlights polls regarding community views on the use of force, racism and profiling. Based on the data from these, it determines that the polls “consistently indicate that public confidence in the police is low among the Arab, Ethiopian and Haredi-Jewish communities.”

Acknowledging the challenges and working to overcome them constitute the very best reflection of how Israel continues to realize the vision of itself, as originally embodied in its May 1948 Declaration of Independence:

“It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

Israel’s ability to continue its society’s fight against racism and discrimination, even as our enemies persist in their efforts to destroy us, is a thing of great wonder. We should all be proud of this, as we celebrate another year of independence.