Surprise? Financial Times more anti-Israel than Arab media - by Elder of Ziyon

When European media is more anti-Israel than Arab media, there is a big problem.

Elder of Ziyon..
19 April '20..

Here was an absurd headline from the Financial Times last week:

The article's bias is truly insane:

Arabs make up only a fifth of Israel’s population, but represent half the country’s pharmacists, a quarter of its nurses and just under a fifth of its doctors, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Some of the nation’s largest hospitals have Arab doctors heading major departments, and the country’s leading virologist is Arab.
...
In Kafra Qara, an Arab town south of Haifa with so many medical professionals that residents call it the city of doctors, Jameel Mohsen was more critical.

“As an Arab, other jobs are closed off to us, so we became doctors,” he said, peeling off layers of protective equipment after setting up a Covid-19 ward at the Hillel Yeffe Medical Center, where he is head of infectious diseases.

If anyone can find any minority group complaining that they are over-represented in the medical professions as evidence of discrimination, I'd love to see it.

Of course, there are no professions in Israel where Arabs are not allowed.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

(Important Read) The Struggle for Israel’s Jewish Soul - By Prof. Efraim Karsh and Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The possibility of an Israeli minority government that relies on the Joint Arab List underscores the clear and present danger of accommodating political parties and movements that reject the existence of the Jewish state and propagate Israel’s transformation into a Palestinian Arab (Muslim) state.

Prof. Efraim Karsh and Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,486..
16 March '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-jewish-soul/

From its outset, the Zionist movement was committed to full civil and religious equality of the non-Jewish minority in the future Jewish state (as stipulated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations mandate). According to a draft constitution of the prospective Jewish state, prepared by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1934, Arabs and Jews were to share all rights and duties including military and civil service; Hebrew and Arabic were to enjoy the same legal standing; and “in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa.” Echoing this vision, about a decade later David Ben-Gurion avowed that “one should not even contemplate a Jewish state that lacks full and absolute equality, political, civil, and national, for all of its residents and citizens…. In a Jewish state, an Arab could be elected prime minister or president, if suitable for the post.”

Manifested inter alia by Israel’s Proclamation of Independence (May 14, 1948), which granted “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex” and urged the nascent state’s Arab citizens “to participate in the upbuilding of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions,” this ultraliberal and inclusive outlook was predicated on the assumption—underpinning the essence of all nation-states—of its citizens’ acceptance of its legitimacy and their abidance by its laws, rules, and regulations. In the case of the Arab-Jewish conflict this meant acquiescence of Israel’s Arab citizens to their minority status in Israel; that is, in the national home of the Jewish people as postulated by the 1922 mandate of the League of Nations—the UN’s predecessor as representative of the will of the international community—which tasked Britain with facilitating the establishment of this national home. In Ben-Gurion’s words: “A Jewish state does not only mean Jewish majority in that state—it also concerns the state’s purpose: it will be a state not only of and for its citizens, but a state whose mission is to ingather the exiles and to concentrate and ensconce them in the homeland.”

By way of attaining this goal, Israel passed the Law of Return, which grants Jews, wherever they are, the right to citizenship should they choose to make Israel their home, as well as specific legislation aimed at safeguarding Israel’s Jewish character, notably Basic Law: The Knesset (Article 7A). It stipulated that:

A candidates’ list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset, and a person shall not be a candidate for election to the Knesset, if the objects or actions of the list or the actions of the person, expressly or by implication, include one of the following:

1. negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;

2. incitement to racism;

3. support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel.

Indeed, when in 1965 the Central Elections Committee disqualified the Arab Socialist List organized by the irredentist al-Ard movement, which rejected Israel’s very existence, from running for the Knesset, the Supreme Court ratified that measure under the doctrine of “defensive democracy.” As the court stated in a majority opinion: “There can be no doubt that the state of Israel is not only a sovereign, independent state, which cherishes freedom and is characterized by the rule of the people—but also that it was established ‘as a Jewish state in the Land of Israel’.”

When Arabs -- including Palestinians -- dream of a better life - by Bassam Tawil

The $50 billion dollars the Trump plan offered the Palestinians will end up being withheld because Palestinian leaders have something else on their minds: to continue enriching their own bank accounts at the expense of their people. No wonder, then, that when Arabs -- including Palestinians -- dream of a better life, they often dream of moving to Israel. No wonder, as well, that most Arab Israelis do not want to become part of a Palestinian state, and have been demanding to stay in Israel.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
23 February '20..

Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip can only dream about the quality of life their Arab brethren enjoy in Israel.

Thanks to the current leaders in the PA and Hamas, the Palestinian people are sunk in abysmal living conditions. Poverty, unemployment, and repression have been their lot for decade after decade. This is because the PA and Hamas have repeatedly rejected peace plans that offer prosperity to the Palestinians.

Recently, the PA and Hamas rejected US President Donald Trump's plan for Mideast peace, which includes a $50 billion investment and infrastructure proposal to create at least a million new jobs for Palestinians. The plan calls for projects worth $27.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and $9.1 billion for Palestinians in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Projects "envisioned include those in the health care, education, power, water, high-tech, tourism, and agriculture sectors."

Palestinian leaders, however, have said "no" to the Trump plan, and dubbed it an "American-Zionist conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian issue and Palestinian people's rights."

These leaders, who rejected the Trump plan even before they saw it, clearly care nothing for the well-being of their people. By refusing the $50 billion offer, Palestinian leaders have again proven that they prefer to see their people continue to live in poverty and misery than accept a proposal to fund various economic projects and provide jobs for the many unemployed Palestinians. The real losers of the Palestinian leaders' inveterate rejectionism are, tragically, the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, there are other Arabs in the region who are more fortunate than the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: the Arab citizens of Israel. These citizens are lucky that they do not live under the rule of the corrupt and incompetent leaders of the PA and Hamas. These Arab citizens are fortunate because they live in Israel.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Joint Arab List’s not so ‘historic’ recommendation of Gantz on its way to history’s dust bin - by Alex Trainman

The announcement is neither historic, influential, or practical. The 10 Arab Knesset members who went ahead and recommended Gantz over Netanyahu have no intention of joining a coalition led by either candidate.

Alex Traiman..
JNS.org..
23 September '19..

Israeli and international media have been making a lead story out of the Joint Arab List’s recommendation of Benny Gantz for prime minister, calling the recommendation “historic.” In regard to Israel’s current election deadlock, the announcement isn’t historic, influential or practical. And while the recommendation is important on some levels, it is so for reasons other than coalition-building.

For weeks leading up to Israel’s elections and in the days since, media have been counting Arab parties within the left-wing bloc led by the Blue and White Party’s Gantz. The purpose of this addition was to give Israelis the perception that Gantz’s bloc could establish a majority coalition government.

Since recommending Yitzhak Rabin the early 1990s to help promote the now-failed Oslo Accords, which were meant to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state on lands which Israel liberated from Jordan and Egypt in 1967, Arab parties have not recommended any candidate to Israel’s president to become prime minister following an election.

The Arab parties made it perfectly clear why they were recommending Gantz: because they want to push out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For 10 years, Netanyahu has been a beacon of strength and has emerged at the very front of the global fight against radical Islam. Under his watch, the Jewish state has transformed into a regional military and economic superpower, as neighboring Gulf nations have seen oil revenues plummet and other Mideast States have descended into complete chaos.

Until proven otherwise, Gantz has yet to earn the respect of Israel’s allies, let alone its enemies. Furthermore, in both the April and September election campaigns, Netanyahu has singled out the Arab parties for anti-Zionist values.

With Netanyahu now fighting for his political career, the Arab parties now are hoping they can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and help usher out the prime minister’s decade-long tenure.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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An Arab Israeli Right-winger Who Wants To Be Safe - by Sheri Oz

...The most disastrous thing that happened to me as I moved from the left side of the political map to the right was that I was called rather unpleasant names by some of my leftist friends (all of my friends were leftists) and dropped by a few of them. But my life was never threatened. I was able to find new friends on Facebook since I could be open about my views and find other like-minded individuals around the country. Sayid cannot do this.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
03 March '19..

I met an Arab Israeli who belongs to a right-wing party. That does not happen much. Sayid (not his real name) is not running for office. He is just a rank and file member alongside Jewish Israelis who believe in the right-wing ideology. A young academic in his thirties, he lives in an Arab village and grew up just like thousands of other Arab Israelis. But he pines for the freedom to speak his mind, to have the right to voice his opinions openly, to break the isolation he experiences in his own community. To not-need me to use a pseudonym for interviews like this one.

He once did try to stand up for Israel, the country he grew to love. He wanted to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). But after being the target of serious threats to his life, he desisted. To this day, he still hurts over the loss of the opportunity he was forced to abandon.

Did you always support Israel, or is that something that developed at some point along the way?


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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The message of the missing Israeli flags - by Evelyn Gordon

Arabs didn’t come to the protest in Tel Aviv as proud Israelis who felt that Israel was betraying its best values; they came because they oppose the very existence of a Jewish state, up to and including its most innocuous symbol.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
15 August '18..

Ever since Saturday night’s demonstration against the nation-state law in Tel Aviv, which was organized by Israel’s Arab community, people have been talking about the presence of Palestinian flags. But too little attention has been paid to something even more disturbing—the enforced absence of Israeli ones.

Certainly, demonstrators who wave Palestinian flags while chanting slogans like “With blood and fire, we will redeem Palestine” merit attention. As Jonathan S. Tobin noted earlier this week, those protesters clearly weren’t seeking to reform Israel, but to eradicate the Jewish state.

Nevertheless, the demonstration’s organizers explicitly asked people not to bring Palestinian flags since they hoped to attract Jewish moderates rather than just the usual far-left fringe, and understood that Palestinian flags would make Jewish moderates uncomfortable. Nor is it their fault that some people ignored this request; at any demonstration with tens of thousands of participants, some people will disregard the organizers’ instructions. So while the chants and Palestinian flags certainly say something about the intentions of those particular demonstrators, they don’t necessarily indicate the views of the majority.

What’s far more telling is that the organizers also banned Israeli flags at the protest, arguing that they would make Arab demonstrators uncomfortable (here, too, some people disobeyed). They did this knowing that it would undermine their goal of strong Jewish participation since many Jews opposed to the nation-state law would still feel uncomfortable at a protest where Israeli flags were unwelcome. And this wasn’t a decision by a few rebellious protesters; it was made by the Arab community’s most representative body—the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which consists of elected mayors, Knesset members and other community leaders.

In other words, the organizers believed that Israeli flags were unacceptable to most of their community. So they informed Jews that no partnership was possible, even over an ostensibly major shared concern, unless the Jews agreed to forgo even the most basic symbol of their Israeli identity.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Israeli Arabs’ Growing Israeli Identity - by Evelyn Gordon

...Many years must also pass before change percolates through the Israeli Arab community to the point where the Baklys are more representative than Zoabi. But the trend is clearly moving in that direction. And despite their best efforts, the community’s vocal anti-Israel contingent seems powerless to stop it.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
17 October '17..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/israeli-arabs-growing-israeli-identity/

Over last week’s Sukkot holiday, Israeli Arab couple Khalil and Reem Bakly launched their own personal coexistence venture by building a completely kosher sukkah (aided by an Orthodox Jewish employee of Khalil’s dental practice) and inviting any and all Israeli Jews to come visit. That same week, a delegation comprised entirely of Israeli Arabs—Muslims, Christians, and Druze—made final preparations for a speaking tour defending Israel on American college campuses.

Both could easily be dismissed as unrepresentative of Israel’s Arab community. After all, that very same week, Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi asserted in a speech in Dallas that Jews have no right to self-determination, because “the Jews are not a nationality.” And Zoabi, who is only slightly more inflammatory than her party colleagues, was elected on a joint ticket that receives the overwhelming majority of Israeli Arab votes.

But as a recent poll of Israeli Arabs proves, the community is changing—and not in Zoabi’s favor.

Perhaps most striking was the fact that a decisive majority of respondents identified primarily as Israeli rather than Palestinian, which is something that wasn’t true even a few years ago. In 2012, for instance, just 32.5 percent of Israeli Arabs defined themselves as “Israeli” rather than Palestinian. But the figure has risen fairly steadily, and this year, asked “which term best describes you,” 54 percent of respondents chose some variant of “Israeli” (the most popular choice was “Israeli Arab,” followed by “Arab citizen of Israel,” “Israeli,” and “Israeli Muslim”). That’s more than double the 24 percent who chose some variant of “Palestinian” (15 percent chose simply “Palestinian.” The others chose “Palestinian in Israel,” “Palestinian citizen in Israel,” or “Israeli Palestinian”).

Moreover, 63 percent deemed Israel a “positive” place to live, compared to 34 percent who said the opposite. 60 percent had a favorable view of Israel, compared to 37 percent whose view was unfavorable. These are smaller majorities than either question would receive among Israeli Jews, but they are still decisive. Even among Muslims, the most ambivalent group, the favorable-to-unfavorable ratio was a statistical tie (49:48). Among Christians, it was 61:33, and among Druze, 94:6.

Israel, the Zvulun Regional Council and Ras Ali – A Bedouin Success Story - by Sheri Oz

North of Haifa there is a road that seems like it is going nowhere. I knew there was a town at the end of the road, an Arab town, but I had no idea what kind of town I would find there other than that it has a population of about 700-800 people, perhaps a bit more. Small.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
08 August '17..

There is lots of activity in the region, now that Highway 6 is working its way feverishly northward, including modernizing Highway 70, building tunnels and otherwise helping traffic move smoothly between north and south. A new road parallel to Hwy 70 has been paved for local traffic, but immediately after passing the Bedouin town of Khawaled, the road turns into the kind I often travelled decades ago in this country: not much wider than a single lane, twisting and turning along the contours of the land, with narrow dirt shoulders.

Signs at the side of the road promise that soon there will be a modern road here as well, leading to the small town at its end, Ras Ali.

After a number of twists and turns in the road, flanked only by rolling hills in green, gold and brown, I see a cultivated valley open up to the left of me. I then see buildings on a hill, but they give no real hint of what I will find when I turn the last curve before town, and when I finally do, my mouth drops open.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam Vindicates Bibi Netanyahu — Surprise!

I think we should prepare to see more of Ali Salam.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
05 August '16..





Nazareth Mayor Salam: Bibi was right! Arabs were surging to the polls . . . under the influence of Abu Mazen. And I helped them do so.

* * * * *

Seems like a growing part of international diplomatic relations involves clandestine efforts to influence elections in countries that are not one’s own. The USA is worried that Russia is using espionage to change the natural course of the American presidential election by disclosing the underhanded manipulations that apparently took place in making sure that Hillary won the Democratic nominations over Sanders.

Of direct concern to us Israelis, the US State Department has revealed that the suspicions that Obama and/or his people illegally interfered in the most recent Israeli elections may be based on fact. And now we have a disclosure that suggests that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman, Abu Mazen (also called Mahmoud Abbas), tried to alter Israeli history via our elections. Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam admitted that Abu Mazen called him on the day of elections with a request.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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We Will Not Accept a Jewish Israel - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...It is as if Bahloul and the other Arab Knesset members have solved all the problems of the Arab community inside Israel and all that is left is to make sure that no one calls a Palestinian stabber a terrorist. Needless to say, this issue does not top the agenda of the Arab citizens of Israel. The betrayal thus runs wide and deep. Israeli Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by privileging the perceived interests of Palestinian Arabs, while Palestinian Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by continuing to deny any link between Jews and the land. This is a stance that makes peace a non-starter in the Middle East. When the international community is presented with settlement complaints and the like, it might wish to ponder these small but critical points.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
15 April '16..

Israel as a Jewish state remains anathema to the Palestinian community. This is a top-down attitude, communicated on a constant basis by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is based on the argument that such a move would mean giving up the "right of return" for millions of "refugees" into Israel. This refusal is also based on the continued denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land.

In recent weeks, the PA president has once again reiterated his strong opposition to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is one of the main obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Settlement construction complaints are nothing more than a Palestinian Authority smokescreen.

There is much talk these days about the Palestinian Authority's intention to ask the United Nations Security Council to issue a resolution condemning Israel for construction in the settlements. It is not yet clear whether the PA will carry out its threat. What is clear, however, is that this obsession with the settlements is certain to divert attention from core issues, such as Palestinian recognition of a Jewish Israel. Many Palestinians continue to regard Israel as one big settlement that needs to be removed from the Middle East.

Why, in fact, do the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state?

Abbas has consistently failed to state his reasons for his total rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. In January 2014, the PA president declared:

"The Palestinians won't recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel and won't accept it. The Israelis say that if we don't recognize the Jewishness of Israel there would be no solution. And we say that we won't recognize or accept the Jewishness of Israel and we have many reasons for this rejection."

On another occasion that same year, Abbas stated: "No one can force us to recognize Israel as Jewish state. If they [Israel] want, they can go to the UN and ask to change their name to whatever they want -- even if they want to be called The Jewish Zionist State." Again, Abbas failed to explain the vehement Palestinian opposition to this demand.

The Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has shed some light on the matter. "We have already recognized Israel's existence on the 1948 borders of Occupied Palestine," Erekat explained. He added that he made it clear to former Israeli Foreign Minister Tipi Livni during a meeting in Munich that the Palestinians "won't change their history and religion and culture by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state."

While Palestinian leaders have been rather reluctant to elaborate on the reasons behind their rejectionism, other Palestinians have been more generous about the issue.

Time to Enforce the Law Equally? Long Past Time! - by Ari Briggs

The strength of the naysayers in the Arab sector has always been their threat to ensure fire, hail and brimstone if the government actually enforced the law.

Ari Briggs..
Opinion/JPost..
13 January '16..

Israel is currently suffering from a horrific wave of terrorism. However, below the radar, Israel has been suffering from increasing lawlessness for quite some time.

These two developments violently converged recently on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, when a terrorist, an Israeli Arab who lived in an illegal house in Arara, murdered three civilians in cold blood on a quiet Friday afternoon.

The heinous attack in Tel Aviv is a bitter result of the progressive Israeli surrender of sovereignty in the Arab sector. One that could possibly have been stopped had the rule of law been upheld consistently and throughout the country.

This surge of lawlessness includes everything from seizing land, illegal construction and agricultural theft to protection rackets and corruption. Here is a small example of how entrenched this lawlessness is: In the town of Arabeh in the north, fines for illegal construction imposed by the regional development committee on town residents were offset by the town, which gave them a discount on arnona (municipal tax) equivalent to the amount of the fine.

What’s happening on the ground is massive illegal construction in the Arab sector, in the south, center and north of the country.

In the Negev, the illegal seizure of state land spreads over 200,000 acres in the area between Beersheba, Arad and Dimona. One just has to look at Google Earth to see more than 1,000 villages, hamlets and illegal outposts that expand exponentially each year, taking more and more land, encouraging even more Beduin to leave their legal dwellings and venture into the “business” of stealing land and illegal building.

In the center, one only has to venture into Taiba, Tira, Kalansuwa or Jaljulya to see the lack of enforcement of building codes, in stark contrast to the strict enforcement in place in neighboring towns of Kfar Saba or Hod Hasharon.

In the north there are an estimated 30,000 illegal structures. The threat of violent protests and general strikes should the government start to enforce the law is very real. This is based on the experience of the last demolition of an illegal home in the north, which happened in Kfar Kana in 2013, where fire bombs, burning tires and rioting coincided with a three-day general strike.

However, illegal construction is only a symptom of a much wider problem: The failure of the State of Israel to impose the law equally, on all its citizens, throughout the land. This has led to rates of serious crime in the Arab sector increasing dramatically.

Tax evasion is rampant, with hundreds of thousands of citizens not paying municipal taxes and/or income taxes. There are over 25,000 illegal weapons of all kinds in the Arab sector, and their elected officials incite against Israel day and night.

For a decade, we have warned about the loss of sovereignty in the Arab sector. It should be clear to all that sovereignty is not a theoretical issue. When it is not enforced, it no longer exists. The unbelievably high numbers of illegally built structures is not only a good example but a major source and enabler of lawlessness. The facts speak for themselves: There are more than 110,000 illegally built homes in the Arab sector that have been conveniently ignored.

For decades, the State of Israel has been content to turn a blind eye to this severe phenomenon, and to take shortcuts in maintaining the rule of law. The price is now being paid by all citizens of the State of Israel, including members of the Arab sector.

A timely but unfortunate example is the amount of illegal construction in the town of Arara, where the terrorist who carried out the attack in Tel Aviv lived. Out of 4,368 homes there, 942 are illegally built – over 20 percent.

It is argued by some that the true reason for the illegal construction is that Israel does not approve building plans.

So here are the facts: the municipal plan for Arara, approved in 2006, enables the construction of thousands of additional housing units – a fact that pulls the rug out from under those that claim discrimination.

It now seems to be clear, even to the government, that changes need to be made.

The return of the rule of law - by Caroline Glick

...By demanding loyalty and pledging to apply the law equally to Arabs and Jews alike, Netanyahu put Odeh and his international supporters on notice. Israel will not allow radical Arab politicians and their radical supporters in Washington to continue to intimidate the government out of enforcing the laws of the state to all of Israel’s citizens equally. With the support of the vast majority of Israeli Arabs, who realize that Odeh and his colleagues are endangering their future, the government will root out and destroy the jihadists and their supporters, and so ensure that Israeli remains the Jewish democracy that extends full rights to its Arab citizens it has always been.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
04 January '16..

Last October, as the Palestinians began their latest round of terrorist war against Israel, lawmakers from the Joint Arab List participated in mass anti-Israel rallies in major Arab towns. One such rally in Nazareth in mid-October attracted some 2,500 participants. After it ended, some demonstrators started throwing rocks at Jews.

The next day, MK Ayman Odeh, who heads the Joint Arab List stood on a street in Nazareth and gave a live interview to Channel 2 news.

Just as the camera began filming, Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam drove down the street. Seeing Odeh, Salam stopped his car and began bellowing, “Get out of here! Enough of your interviews. Go ruin things somewhere else!” Odeh tried lamely to get the camera to stop filming. But Salam continued shouting.

“You guys ruined the city. I’m the mayor… there wasn’t even one Jew here today. Not even one! What are you being interviewed about? What are you doing to us?... You had a march, you guys torched the world. Shut up! Leave! Move it!” Salam’s outburst did not come out of nowhere. He was voicing the frustration that most Israeli Arabs feel towards their Knesset representatives who spend far more time demonizing Israel than advancing the interests of Arab Israelis inside of Israel.

According to the latest detailed survey of Arab Israelis published in November by Prof. Sami Smooha, 60 percent of Israeli Arabs do not trust their representatives in the Knesset. Two thirds of Israeli Arabs say that their Knesset representatives are not advancing their interests.

A full 80% of Israeli Arabs believe that it is the job of the Arab members of Knesset to advance their communal interests rather than concentrate on political war against Israel.

Most Israeli Arabs would probably agree that they are hurt by the political war against Israel. After all, 77% of Israeli Arabs define themselves as Israelis, 60% accept Israel as a Jewish state, and 54% believe Israeli democracy extends to them.

While Odeh’s constituents feel betrayed by him, the Obama administration apparently can’t get enough of him and his anti-Israel message.

Myths and Facts about Israeli Arabs by Evelyn Gordon

...There are two lessons here for liberals concerned over the situation of Israel’s Arab citizens. First, that situation is much better than you think. But second, if you want it to continue improving, it’s time to stop supporting “authentic” Arab voices like JAL, which oppose integration, and instead start supporting those who truly favor being part of the Jewish state.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
17 November '15..

The fact that several perpetrators of Friday’s terror attacks in Paris were French citizens ought to pose a serious logical dilemma for all those liberals who blame terrorism on Western behavior. After all, it has become accepted wisdom on the left that Israel severely oppresses its own Arab citizens. But if terror is truly a response to oppression and Israel truly treats its Arab citizens worse than other Western countries do, how do you explain that while French Muslims have repeatedly committed terror attacks against their own country, Israeli Arab involvement in anti-Israel terror is negligible? In the latest wave of anti-Israel attacks, for instance, only two out of almost 100 perpetrators were Arab citizens of Israel – and one was a woman with a history of suicide attempts who was apparently just trying to achieve her own death by brandishing a knife in a crowded bus station and ignoring police orders to drop it.

Fortunately for liberals’ cognitive dissonance, there’s no need to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable axioms, because both of them are nonsense. I debunked the theory that terror stems from “relative deprivation” last week. And the accepted wisdom about how Israel treats its Arab citizens can be debunked simply by examining some of the findings of the Israel Democracy Index, a sweeping annual survey whose 2015 edition was released last week.

Unsurprisingly, the IDI didn’t show that Israel has become the first country in history to eliminate discrimination or racist attitudes; both still exist, just as they do in every other Western country. Indeed, a majority of Jewish respondents readily acknowledged that Israeli Arabs still face discrimination, which is clearly a necessary step toward reducing it.

Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of Arab respondents evinced no desire to live anywhere but Israel when asked the following question: “If you had the opportunity to become a citizen of the United States or any other Western country, would you prefer to move there or to remain in Israel?” Fully 83.4 percent said they would rather remain in Israel – virtually identical to the proportion among Israeli Jews (84.5 percent). That strongly implies that Israeli Arabs don’t consider their situation to be too bad; if they did, more would express interest in emigrating.

This conclusion was confirmed by a question asking how respondents viewed their personal situation. Almost two-thirds of Israeli Arabs – 65.1 percent – characterized their personal situation as “good” or “very good.” That’s lower than the Jewish rate (76.5 percent), but hardly consonant with liberal claims of severe oppression.

Attitudes toward state institutions were also noteworthy. Arabs and Jews expressed virtually identical levels of trust in two key law enforcement agencies, the police, and the Supreme Court. Even more surprising, Arabs outpolled Jews – often by large margins – in their level of trust for many other state institutions, including the Knesset, the media, political parties, the National Insurance Institute, and the health maintenance organizations. Only three institutions – the army, the executive branch, and the state president – won higher levels of trust from Jews than Arabs.

Needless to say, if Israeli Arabs were really suffering severe oppression and discrimination, one would expect them to have much lower levels of trust in state institutions than Jews do. The fact that this isn’t the case indicates that Arabs, on the whole, don’t see themselves as getting a raw deal from the state.

Will Israel’s Arab sector impose on itself more homemade wretchedness?

...The plain fact, though, is that no boycott was ever declared, much less that one resulted from a plot by Israel’s leadership. This is the stuff of fables and fabrications that submerge Israel’s Arab communities in a mire of false premises, which distance them increasingly from the Jewish mainstream. The inclination of most Jews is to avoid giving their custom to those who identify with genocidal enemies. These are individual decisions which no authority needs to pump up and which none can reverse. It’s mostly in the hands of the Arab sector to correct or exacerbate.

Channel 2 screenshot of Nazareth mayor
Ali Salem yelling at MK Ayman Odeh.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
18 October '15..

The kneejerk response in Israel’s Arab sector is to declare general strikes to underscore what is hyped as “popular anger.”

The latest expression of such “anger” took place last week when throughout Israel’s Arab communities businesses shut down for a day. Doubtless many were forced to do so but the truth is that many others were willingly swept up in the well-orchestrated volatility.

What did they aim to achieve? Whom did they aim to hurt?

Surely they realized that they are only shooting themselves in the foot. Their strikes simply and serially fail to awe the mystified Jewish majority. The only effect strikes have, if any, is to hone even further the already deeply ingrained impression that this country’s Arabs side unequivocally with Israel’s existential and implacable foes.

To resort to extreme understatement, this in no way contributes to the cause of coexistence.

Hot on the heels of a spate attacks against Jewish civilians in nearly every nook of this country, the Arab general strike invariably helped establish an association – whether subliminal or conscious – between Arab businessmen and the recurrent stabbings, shootings, fire-bombings and rock-throwing.

Such connections needn’t be iron-clad and incontestable. The delicate psycho-economic equilibrium can be easily upset by an intensifying sense of a tie between terrorists and the population that appears to support the deadly assaults on innocent Jews.

Inevitably this will keep Jews away – at least for the short haul – from Arab entrepreneurs. Some of the latter are already complaining vociferously against what they allege is a Jewish conspiracy to boycott them. Moreover, a sizable minority altogether charges that none other than the government is spearheading an anti-Arab boycott.

The plain fact, though, is that no boycott was ever declared, much less that one resulted from a plot by Israel’s leadership. This is the stuff of fables and fabrications that submerge Israel’s Arab communities in a mire of false premises, which distance them increasingly from the Jewish mainstream.

The inclination of most Jews is to avoid giving their custom to those who identify with genocidal enemies. These are individual decisions which no authority needs to pump up and which none can reverse. It’s mostly in the hands of the Arab sector to correct or exacerbate.

Where's the Coverage? Majority of Israeli Arabs Proud to Be Israeli

...So, the supposedly "apartheid" state of Israel inspires a much higher rate of pride among the supposedly oppressed minority Arab population than the United States does among Americans broadly. That’s news. And yet… where’s the coverage?

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA Snapshots..
07 January '15..





According to the annual Democracy Index, published by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of Israelis are proud to be Israeli – including a majority of Israeli Arabs.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The poll of 1,007 respondents, representing a statistical sample of the Israeli adult population, has a margin of error of only 3.2 percent.

Since 2003, the Index has served as a critical barometer of Israeli public opinion for Israeli politicians, government decision-makers, and newspapers of record around the world.

The poll found that 86% of Israeli Jews and 65% of Israeli Arabs described themselves as either very or quite proud to be Israeli. Only 13% of Jews and 34% of Arabs were not so proud or not proud at all to be Israeli.

Despite the fact that “newspapers of record around the world” supposedly rely on this poll, most of the media has ignored it completely. Only the Israeli or Jewish press has reported on this finding.

Israeli Arabs Prefer Israel to Palestinian Authority. Where's the Coverage?

...Smooha points out that his own annual opinion survey, the Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel (based on a random representative sample of 700 face-to-face interviews of those 18 and up, taken in fall 2013), shows that 63.5% of Arabs said Israel is a good place to live. It also found that only 20.9% of the Arabs are willing to move to a Palestinian state. These facts seem to undermine the popular media narrative. Is that the reason we’re forced to ask… Where’s the coverage?

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
25 November '14..

The mainstream media relishes reporting on a proposed bill being debated in Israel that would identify the Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. News outlets are falling over themselves to quote the bill’s critics and Israel’s critics, regurgitating the tired accusations about Israel’s broken or failing or stained democracy and how anti-Arab and racist Israel must be.

But, they are utterly silent about a new poll released by Israel’s Channel 10 News and conducted by the Statnet Research Institute, headed by Israeli Arab statistician Yousef Makladeh. Israel Today reports:

Makladeh asked fellow Arabs plainly and clearly: "Under which authority do you prefer to live, Israel or the Palestinian Authority?"

A full 77 percent of respondents chose Israel.

The vast majority – over three quarters – of Israeli Arabs prefer to live under the “racist” “apartheid regime” of Israel rather than under the Palestinian Authority.

The Apartheid Libel and Palestinian Opinion

...If Jebreal wants Israel to become a place where Arab-Jewish hostility is lessened, then she should address her complaints to her fellow Arabs who support Hamas and whose hostility ensures the seemingly indefinite perpetuation of the conflict. But by invoking the apartheid libel about Israel and not the settlements in the territories she is giving away her real intent. Not even a total withdrawal from the lands won in 1967 would satisfy her any more than it would Hamas. What she wants is an end to the Jewish state, not a civil-rights movement as she disingenuously claims. So long as this is what passes for informed Arab opinion, no one should be surprised that Israelis have given up on peace for the foreseeable future.

Bratislav Milenkovic
NYT

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
28 October '14..

The latest poll of Palestinian opinion provides another sobering dose of reality to those who think that Israeli actions are the sole obstacle to peace. Following on the heels of previous surveys taken in the aftermath of this past summer’s war, the poll from the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center again shows that most Palestinians think Hamas won the conflict. More importantly, support for the Islamist terror group and the idea of continuing a military struggle against Israel continues to go up while backing for the supposedly more moderate Fatah declines. This is important in understanding not just how remote the chances of convincing those Fatah moderates to negotiate even a favorable peace deal with Israel are, but also why Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians have changed.

The polls tell us that the same people who were being used as human shields by Hamas in Gaza as well as other Palestinians in the West Bank are still unwilling to rethink their backing for the group’s efforts to wage war and ultimately destroy Israel. This is puzzling to those in the West who bother to look at the numbers, since it makes no sense. Hamas’s campaign of “resistance” against Israeli “occupation”—the phrase by which they refer to pre-1967 Israel and not just the West Bank—has no prospect of success. All it brings the Palestinians is more devastation, suffering, and bloodshed.

And yet the majority of Palestinians remain so hostile to Israel’s existence and the Jewish presence on even the land it held before June 1967 that the struggle remains popular. From its beginnings in the early 20th century, Palestinian nationalism has always been inextricably linked with the war on Zionism. Reinforced by a constant drumbeat of incitement from both the official media of the Palestinian Authority and its leadership, the political culture of the Palestinians remains implacably hostile to Israel even if one takes Hamas out of the equation. That culture of denial of Israel’s legitimacy feeds the terrorism of Hamas in the form of missiles and terror tunnels, but also the Arab violence in the streets of Jerusalem against Israeli citizens that has created a steady toll of casualties in recent months.

It is also in that context that we should read the latest diatribe against Israel in the New York Times. An op-ed published today by Israeli Arab journalist Rula Jebreal is a compendium of charges all aimed to depict the country as fitting into the “apartheid state” libel. In her telling, every aspect of the country’s laws is geared toward discrimination against the Arab minority population. Israel is, like any democracy, imperfect and it would not be true to claim that Israeli Arabs have no cause for complaint. Some of what she writes about is true and some are distortions. But one doesn’t have to read too far between the lines to see that the purpose of her indictment is not redress of specific wrongs but the end of the Zionist project. The rights of national minorities should be protected in any society but the existence of that minority does not give them the right to thwart the basic purpose of the state.

Darkening clouds this side of Gaza

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
28 July '14..




For Israelis, the disturbing signs of an armed terrorist insurrection emerging from multiple quarters among the Arabs who shares our cities, hospitals and buses - the non-Gaza Arabs - are mounting and becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. A small and random selection:

A Mahmoud Abbas speech signals preparations for war

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ended a speech about the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza with a quote from the Quran justifying war. His Fatah party interpreted Abbas' statement to mean that fighting against Israel is justified on religious Islamic grounds: "[PA] President [Mahmoud Abbas] concluded his brief speech with the first verse of the Quran that permits Muslims to wage war for Allah." [Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", July 22, 2014] [Source: Palestinian Media Watch | July 24, 2014]

(Continue)

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The question ‘Are you a Jew?’ should remain as a “teachable moment” for all of us

These types of attacks occurred throughout the Arab world before the establishment Israel and before a single Israeli settlement was ever built.

MK Shimon Ohayon..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
06 July '14..

There are not-infrequent moments which perfectly illustrate what our long-standing conflict is all about. Many, especially around the world, accept the lazy assumption that it is mainly about land, occupation and settlements. However, for this to be true it would be a sine qua non that before Israel liberated Judea and Samaria in 1967, built a single community over the Green Line or even before the State of Israel was proclaimed, there was no conflict.

However, those with knowledge of history will be familiar with an ancient enmity expressed by radical adherents of Islam toward the Jewish People.

It is surely no coincidence that one of the most popular rallying calls at anti-Israel demonstrations around the world is “khayber khayber ya yahud, jaysh Muhammad saya’ūd!” (“remember the Khyber, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed is coming now”). This genocidal chant recalls perhaps the first massacre of Jews under Islam as the ancient Jewish community of Khayber (in present day Saudi Arabia) was almost wiped out by Muhammad and his first followers. Those that did survive had their land confiscated, were humiliated with oppressive laws and forced to pay the jizya tribute tax.

These enforcements, meant to hold the Jews collectively in an endless inferior status, set the standards for Jews who found themselves under Islam during the Arab conquest and occupation of the Middle East and North Africa over the next almost millennia and a half.

During this time, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred across what became known as the “Arab world,” in places like Granada, Fez, Algiers, Damascus and Sana’a. All of this long before the rise of modern political Zionism.

In Hebron, the oldest Jewish community in the Land of Israel, during 1929, 67 Jews, many of whom were yeshiva students, were hacked to death, disemboweled and burned.

These types of attacks occurred throughout the Arab world long before the reestablishment of Jewish statehood in Israel, and decades before a single Israeli settlement was built.

Although it is hard to accept, the roots of the conflict are a negation of the rights of the Jewish People to equality and liberation from the yoke of Arab torment. The highest insult to the Islamist sensitivity was the reconstitution of Jewish sovereignty in the heart of dar al-islam, an area which was theologically assigned to Islam in perpetuity.

This is what fueled the wars against Israel and still fuels the hatred against Jews around the world. The war has never been against Israel per se, it has been against the Jewish People, and its major front is directed against the Jewish state.

Israel, the Israeli Arabs and Jabotinsky

...Arab residents face a choice — should they continue to live as a national minority in Israel (or go to another Western country), where they will have civil rights, a great deal of freedom, and economic opportunity; or should they move to an Arab country (even Gaza or the PA) where they would be part of the cultural majority but lack rights, freedom and opportunity? This is up to them. The one option that must be closed to them is to live in Israel and insist on a specifically ‘Palestinian’ national identity that includes — as it must — the commitment to regain ‘Palestine’ (which, in fact, they never had) from the Jews.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
20 May '14..





From TheTower.org:

An Israeli news station has reported this morning on a poll conducted by Professor Sammy Smooha of Haifa University showing that the acceptance of Israel by Israeli Arabs increased markedly between 2012 and 2013.

Channel 10/Nana reported (Hebrew) that the poll’s surprising results bucked conventional wisdom:

The research shows that between 2012 and 2013 there was an increase in the percentage of Israeli Arabs recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, and Israel’s right to maintain a Jewish majority. Similarly, the percentage of Arabs who define themselves as “Israeli Arabs” without a Palestinian identity has increased.

Among the specific results reported were that the percentage of Israeli Arabs who accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state rose to 52.8% from 47.4% the year before. There was a more pronounced rise in the percentage of Israeli Arabs who believe that Israel can exist as a Jewish majority state to 43.1% up from 29.6% a year earlier. The number of Israeli-Arabs who accept their identity as such without identifying as Palestinians increased from 32.5% in 2012 to 42.5% in 2013. In 2013, 63.5% of Israeli Arabs consider Israel to be a good place to live up from 58.5% in 2012.

I don’t think this is so surprising. Israeli Arabs have relatives in the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and they understand very well that it is characterized by nepotic corruption, arbitrary police power and gangsterism.

But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that these Arabs are Zionists. Many of them are well-educated professionals who are pragmatic in their politics, but when there are conflicts, like the intifadas, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9) or the almost-war with Hamas that happened in 2012, attitudes become more nationalistic.

In fact, the results of the survey quoted could have more to do with the bad relations in 2012 than the better ones of 2013.

There are also some hard-core supporters of Hamas or other anti-Israel organizations among the Arab citizens of Israel. And it seems that the rhetoric from Arab members of the Knesset has not moderated very much.