Four years ago, a group of Aramean Christians living in Israel applied for recognition as a separate ethnic group under Israeli law. Until now, this community has been lumped together with Arabs despite having nothing in common with their Arab neighbors except speaking Arabic. Arameans have lived in Israel since before Arabs conquered the Holy Land, and have retained a distinct culture as well as their ancestral language of Aramaic – the common tongue spoken in the time of Jesus.
Led by Father Gabriel Nadaf, the Aramean community is anxious to shed their Arab identity and more fully integrate with mainstream Israeli society. Loyal to Israel and friendly to their Jewish neighbors, many Aramean young people voluntarily join the IDF and serve alongside their Jewish peers.
The Israeli Knesset’s recent acceptance of their petition to establish their ethnicity as Aramean instead of Arab is seen by the community’s leaders as correcting a historical error. Spokesman Shadi Khalloul explained the significance of the decision:
“The Aramean people are finally seeing justice after being persecuted across the region. We have existed in this region for thousands of years. We accepted Christianity, but then had Arabic forced upon us during the Arab conquest, just as local Jews did. But we preserved our language in churches and other cultural settings.”
“I refused to officially register my two-year-old son after his birth because the Interior Ministry wanted to register him as an Arab,” he said. “Now I can happily register him as an Aramean.”
H/T Israel Today.
