Muslims Protest Jewish Dominance Of International Tanakh Contest

“Clearly the selection of winners is far from random, which raises all sorts of red flags for a society that claims to be democratic and pluralistic,” said MK Zehava Gal-On.

Jerusalem, May 12 – The annual ritual involving the final round of the International Bible Contest took place once again on Israel’s Independence Day, with the victory going to a teenager from the community of Beit El, who narrowly edged out the sister of last year’s champion. However, local Muslim leaders are charging discrimination, saying that not once has a non-Jew, let alone a Muslim, won the contest.

The Bible Contest attracts students from around the world vying for top honors in mastery of the Tanakh, the Jewish scriptures. Muslim community leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Authority wrote to government officials today in the wake of yet another Jewish contestant securing the victory, to express their alarm that an official government function, run by the Ministry of Education itself, would appear to exclude more than a fifth of the country’s population.

“We find it disturbing, as well as suspicious, that the annual Hiddon Tanakh has yet to produce any finalists, let alone winners, from the Muslim community, the largest non-Jewish minority in Israel,” they wrote in a letter to Minister of Education Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who personally congratulated the winner and runners-up. “Statistically, we would expect to see a little more than twenty percent of the winners from the non-Jewish population, if the contest were truly representative. The situation looks even more distasteful when one takes into account the international participation, since outside the country, non-Jews far outnumber Jews, yet only Jews have ever won this contest. We believe forces are at work that prevent Muslims and other non-Jews from advancing through the various stages of the contest.”

Records are not formally kept of the religion of participants, according to Bible Contest administrator Bea Wilderd. “We don’t ask the youth what faith community they belong to, if any,” she insisted. Nevertheless, a survey of the names of all winners and runners-up in all fifty-three years of the contest appears to reflect uniformity of Jewish heritage among the contestants, lending credence to the letter-writers’ allegations.

“Clearly the selection of winners is far from random, which raises all sorts of red flags for a society that claims to be democratic and pluralistic,” said MK Zehava Gal-On of the Meretz Party. “I intend to raise this issue in the various Knesset Committees, and not rest until something is done to remedy this injustice.”

An aide then whispered to Ms. Gal-On that the contest involves intense study and mastery of a set of Jewish texts central to the religion. “Wait, I take that back,” said the MK. “I wouldn’t want to encourage study of Jewish religious  lore.”