Russ Roberts: evaluation

Transcript context

…As you well know, a significant portion of the population of Israel is Arabic in descent. What do you think you’re learning about those Arabic cultures, living in Israel? Not as much as I’d like to yet. I’ve only been here six months. There’s a lot of — it partly depends on where you live, of course, but in the parts of Jerusalem that I live in and walk in near our campus here, there’s a lot of Arab Israelis. Most people don’t know this — I don’t know it well, so I may embarrass myself — but people who are born within the borders of the Jewish state right now, in the borders of Israel, who are not Jewish — Arab Israelis — are full citizens. They get full healthcare, they get to go subsidized to the universities, they vote. They don’t serve in the army, which is fascinating. They don’t want to serve in the army, incidentally, which I also understand. It’s complicated for them. And those are distinct from the West Bank of Gaza, who are Palestinians. Then there’s some special categories of folks who live in East Jerusalem, which is a disputed, more challenging — and I don’t know all the ins and outs of that. But my wife is going to ulpan — ulpan is Hebrew lessons. She goes to ulpan three hours a day, four days a week. Twenty-two of her 23, I think, or 21 of her 23 classmates are Arab Israelis who think their Hebrew is not good — they all speak Hebrew. They speak very good English, but their Hebrew is not good enough, so they’re improving their Hebrew because they want to go to a good university, they want to get a good education, they want to be in business. And they’re all young, by the way; they’re all in their 20s. I don’t have much exposure to the Arab Israeli population yet. It’s something to find out about. You’re both non-Muslims. What is it you think we can or should learn from the Quran?…

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