The New York Times · 19 May 1987

CP-1987-054

Arabs and Jews in Israeli Schools Rally Against Unequal Tuitions

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, May 18 — Israeli Arabs led thousands of Jewish university students in demonstrations today against a decision by the Israeli Cabinet to charge students who have not served in the Israeli Army — Israeli Arabs, primarily — nearly 50 percent more in tuition than those who have served.

At the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Arab university leaders delivered speeches rejecting the Government’s tuition plan and led some 2,000 Jewish and Arab students in chants of “Equality to Jews and Arabs in education!” “Down with a racist society!” “Stop the apartheid policies!” and “No, no, fascism must go!”

Students could recall no other similar display of Jewish-Arab solidarity. … There are about 4,000 Arabs among the 75,000 university students in Israel. Only Israeli Jews are required to serve in the army, or to do equivalent Peace Corps-style national service in underdeveloped areas. Israeli Arabs are not drafted by the army, although a few volunteer.

While many religious Israeli Jews do not serve in the army, most of them also do not attend secular universities. In light of the Cabinet’s decision, many students wore badges today that read: “$1,550: Second Class Citizen.” Some Arab students also came to campus sporting yellow badges that recalled the badges the Nazis forced Jews to wear.

‘A Seventh-Rate Citizen’ “I’m sick of living this way; I feel like a seventh-rate citizen, not a second-rate citizen,” Adil Gamami, an Arab student from a village near Nazareth who worked as a contruction worker last year to save money to attend Hebrew University, told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

“Everybody gets reductions and all at the expense of the Arab population. If there is peace I will serve in the Israeli Army, but not in an occupying army. I cannot fight against my Arab brothers.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from a scan of the printed page. Both the date and the newspaper are fixed from the page itself: the running head reads 'THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, MAY 19, 1987', and 19 May 1987 was a Tuesday, against a dateline of 'JERUSALEM, May 18'. THE EXCERPT CONTAINS AN ELISION, marked with an ellipsis: the opening runs continuously to 'Jewish-Arab solidarity', then the Cabinet-vote and coalition-politics paragraphs are skipped before the transcription resumes and runs continuously to the end of the quoted student's words. The student quoted at the end is quoted by the Times from the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, not from an interview of its own. The printed 'contruction worker' is as set and has not been repaired. The scan is a full page carrying a second, unrelated article beneath this one. Read from crops magnified to between eleven and sixteen times page scale.

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