Among the most disturbing, humiliating experiences Binur felt as an Arab was when one of his Jewish employers backed up next to him with a lover as Binur was washing dishes in a cramped kitchen. "I lowered my eyes," says Binur, "and concentrated on washing the dirty dishes in the sink, so I wouldn't embarrass them with my presence … Then a sort of trembling came suddenly over me. I realized that they had not meant to put on a peep show for my enjoyment. Those two were not the least bit concerned with what I saw or felt even when they were practically fucking under my nose. For them I simply didn't exist. I was invisible, a nonentity. It's difficult to describe the feeling of extreme humiliation which I experienced. Looking back, I think it was the most degrading moment I had during my entire posing adventure." [BINUR, p. 69]
Binur was also roughed up by Jews (merely for being perceived as an Arab) and was warned that a group of Jews were planning to attack him. [BINUR, p. 115-116] Eventually he found work on a kibbutz, the legendary socialist communal work/living experiment famed in pioneer Zionist folklore. Despite the fact that kibbutzim have a reputation for openness and liberality, Binur found serious problems for him as an Arab there too. "The kibbutzim," he wrote, "are probably the best representation of the moderate left in Israel. With its liberal ideology which stresses equal rights for all members of the human race and its high regard for the dignity of labor … I quickly learned that fear, suspicion, and prejudice against Arabs existed no less around kibbutzniks than among other Israeli Jews." [BINUR, p. 120] Here too he was warned by a friendly Jew that others planned on beating him up one night with the intention of driving him off the kibbutz. [BINUR, p. 134] Completely innocent, he was also accused of theft. [See also David Grossman's account, in his The Yellow Wind, of similar tales of chronic exploitation and Arab degradation at the hands of Jewish employers].
(The anti-Arab racism in Israeli society stretches to all corners of Jewish society. In 1989, a Bedouin man formally converted to Judaism under prominent Orthodox Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Joseph. The Arab had served in the Israeli army and moved with his Jewish wife to a moshav –a [Jewish] agricultural settlement. When his original identity became known, he was driven out by the Jewish community, a community was not, by political standards, a "conservative" group; 83% of the moshav had voted for the liberal Labor party in the last election. [LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 25] )
Among Binur's conclusions after his experiences posing as an Arab in Israel are that:
"[The Palestinian Arab] sees and recognizes the value of freedom,
but is accorded the sort of treatment that characterizes the most
backward dictatorial regimes. How can he be anything but
frustrated?" [BINUR, p. 196]
"This book has sought to emphasize how, on the level of day-to-
day interactions, Israeli Jews have exploited and humiliated their
Arab neighbors." [BINUR, p. 198]
"The Palestinians, employed as a cheap labor force, are forced into the role of active observers with respect to Israeli society, whereas Israeli Jews don't even do that much and are satisfied to rule without ex
