On Arabs who feel persecuted by Jewish symbolism in Israel

An article in the Times caught my attention. “A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a ‘consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews.’” Commissioned by Israeli-Arab mayors, “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel” was the product of efforts of some 40 Arab academics. “They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights” arguing that Israel “inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocation.”

Immediately I wrote to Prime Minister Helen Clark, President Pervez Musharraf and Governor Rick Perry demanding that they rename, respectively, Christ Church, Islamabad and Corpus Christi. So far, no response. By my very unofficial count, 8 national flags fly a version of the star and crescent of Islam, 18 some form of the cross or other symbol of Christianity.

Recently nationalists were incensed when an Arab, Ghaleb Majadele, of the Labor Party, was offered and accepted a position in the Israeli cabinet. Jewish nationalists don’t trust Arabs, and Arabs don’t want other Arabs to join mainstream Israeli parties, preferring instead the martyrdom of marginalization. Yet even Majadele said that he was “uncomfortable with national symbols like the flag...and the anthem, which speaks of the ‘Jewish soul’ yearning for Zion.”

According to the Times, “most Arab Israeli politicians have rejected the document as unrealistic, exposing divisions within the Arab community.” This attitude of the politicians reflects the general Arab mood. According to a recent poll, only 14% of Israel’s Arab population think Israel should remain a Jewish state as currently constituted; 25% want a Jewish state that guarantees full equality to its Arab citizens, and 57% want a bi-national state. What this all means, from the Arab intelligentsia and the Arab street, is, at best, a rejection of the two-state solution propounded by moderates on both sides.

Yasser Arafat (may soon he have many interesting conversations with his pal Osama in a hell unimagined even by Dante) used to claim that the Palestinians were what their name purports them to be, descendants of the Philistines who were living in the land when the Jews first dared show their faces back around 1250 BCE. This, of course, is historical nonsense, but it’s convenient nonsense, the sort that people who want to believe will believe. I don’t. Even Arabs don’t believe it. Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO Executive Committee said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper in March 1977: “The Palestinian people does not exist... In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism ... The moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.’” That was thirty years ago. Muhsein (who was the Fatah commander of the Palestinian forces which massacred over 300 Christians in the town of Damour, Lebanon the year before) is dead. In their hearts do Arabs still believe that there is but one Arab nation? Are the Palestinians part of the whole or independent? Do they want peace with Israel or haven’t they figured it out yet.

What is Israel to do in this circumstance of ambiguity? Preserve its will to exist; preserve the intention of the founders that Israel be a state dedicated to “full equality in social and political rights to all inhabitants,” Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Arab jihadists and intifadists have that will for their people. It is not now the time for Israel, the Jewish state, to surrender its identity to those whose parents wanted to destroy it aborning. In the 1948 war some Arabs were killed, some fled, some fought. Those who stayed, stayed as citizens of a republic that assures them autonomy—they don’t go to Jewish schools unless they want to; they don't serve in the Jewish army, but they do vote in Israel’s elections and they do elect their own people as mayors and Members of the Knesset. Israel has since 1967 had problems with the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. Is this survey the opening shot in a campaign to weaken the internal relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs? I wish I knew.