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It is commonplace to attribute much of Israel's domestic tensions to supposed Jewish discrimination against the country's Arab citizens.1 Nearly every Israeli Arab nongovernmental organization insists that such discrimination characterizes the Jewish state in general and its labor markets in particular.2 The Israeli media routinely interview Israeli Arabs (and non-Ashkenazi Jews) who claim to have been victims of discrimination. These allegeations are echoed by Jewish Israeli academics, think tanks, and journalists, especially on the political Left, not to mention the international anti-Israel movement and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State has even joined the growing outcry concerning Israel's alleged racist discrimination against its Arab citizens.3
Of course, in reality, Israel is the only Middle Eastern entity that is not an apartheid regime, and the apartheid slander holds no water whatsoever save in the minds of the Jewish state's enemies and defamers. Yet discrimination is a scientifically empirical question subject to testing and not a matter of subjective personal opinion. Stripping away the venomous anti-Israel rhetoric, the legitimate question remains whether and how much discrimination really exists in Israel.
Inequality Myths
Ethnicity in Israel is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Both Jews and Arabs are subdivided into ethnic sub-groups, making exploration and analysis of ethnic disparities a complex challenge. In official statistical data on income, Israeli Arabs are treated as a single population group, but this is somewhat misleading. There are important differences in socio-economic status and performance among Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, and Druse. Those sub-categories are in fact amalgams of even smaller divisions. For example, there are interesting differences between "ordinary" Arab Muslims and Bedouins. The Israeli Income Survey sample does not include the Arab population of the "occupied territories," except for East Jerusalem and the small population of the Golan Heights, both of which are formally annexed to Israel.
Ethnicity among Jews is even more complex. It is commonly measured in Israel for statistical purposes based upon the continent of birth of the person or the person's father. Jews bom in Asia and Africa (or the children of fathers bom there) correspond roughly to Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. Those bom in Europe, the United States, or Australia (and their children) correspond roughly to Ashkenazi or Western Jews....