ISRAELI ARABS WORK TO UNDERMINE JEWISH CHARACTER OF ISRAEL

Israel's Arabs work to undermine the Jewish character of the state (JTA)
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- ....The crux of the debate is what Israel's Arabs make of the very idea of a Jewish state in the ancestral land of the Jews. And our conclusion since the fall of 2000 has been -- as the famously dovish TV journalist Amnon Abramowitz put it at the time -- that while we pro-Oslo Israelis were devising two states for two peoples, our Arab counterparts, on both sides of the Green Line, were contemplating two states for one people: the Palestinians.

Down in the field, a small but increasing number of Israeli Arabs have participated in terror attacks, including driving suicide bombers to their destinations and in some cases performing the bombings themselves. At the same time, the Israeli Arab community's elected leaders are attempting to hammer away at the idea of a Jewish state: They demand the abolition of the Law of Return, seek the alteration of the national anthem and hide behind a seemingly innocent apron like the quest for a country of all its citizens.

The tactics deployed in this well-crafted assault are as simple as they are cunning: diversion and deceit. The diversion is in the systematic changing of the subject from the real aim, which is Israel's extinction, to issues that Jews care deeply about like freedom of expression, right of ownership or equality before the law. The deceit is in that all this crusading energy disappears once one leaves Israel's borders. They fail to demand rights and freedoms for those living under Arab rule throughout the Middle East. ...

There was a time when Israelis like me honestly believed in the imminent emergence of a new Middle East, one where people, goods, capital and ideas would transcend borders as naturally as they do in North America and Western Europe. We have since been disillusioned -- by Middle Eastern despotism, Palestinian violence and Israeli Arab deceit.

The day when we Israeli Jews can roam the Middle East as freely as Italians roam Europe, and purchase real estate in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Syria as freely as New Yorkers do in Ontario has yet to arrive. Worse, the effort to deprive us of what land we have has yet to abate.

Now one can say, "but Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens," and I so much want to say, "Gosh, that's so true." But the truth is that Israeli Arab leaders are for now identifying with and actively assisting Israel's enemies, and we Jews have yet to consolidate our grip on the country our parents have built, so that in the future no Jew will be landless.