The failure for Israeli Arab voters isn't in the Joint Arab List being denied a place in Israel’s government - by Jonathan S. Tobin

One shouldn’t expect Arab voters to be ardent Zionists, yet they can’t expect to be treated as full partners when the people who claim to speak for them want to pull down the state as it is and replace it with something that will disenfranchise Jews.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
03 April '20..

It turns out that some ultra-Orthodox Jews are not the only ones resisting Israel’s stringent regulations about social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. There have also been incidents in which residents of Israeli Arab communities are not following rules. In one case, police efforts to enforce social distancing led to a riot in an Arab neighborhood in the city of Jaffa with protesters assaulting police and burning tires and garbage dumpsters in a scene reminiscent of the first intifada.

Critics of Israel are falsely portraying this unfortunate episode as evidence of the country’s mistreatment of Arab citizens. This is nonsense, though at a time when the BDS movement has gained support and leading Democrats, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, routinely refer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “racist,” it can’t be ignored.

Efforts to promote this misleading narrative have gained ground since the March 2 Knesset election, when the Joint Arab List won a record 15 seats. The party’s success was rooted in a strong turnout of Arab voters. But while the Joint Arab List’s success is proof of Israeli democracy, the fact that it will not be part of the next government is being depicted as evidence of racism.

Part of the disappointment being expressed by the Arab population stems from the actions of Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz. Though he eventually decided to throw in with Netanyahu and create a unity government, Gantz spent weeks flirting with the idea of forming a government with the help of the Joint List. He decided against it in part because of resistance from members of his own party, and also because polls showed that Israelis were outraged about the notion. The Joint List is a coalition of advocates for a Communist state, an Islamist state, a Palestinian nationalist state and a pan-Arab state, and has no place in any government of a state that they wish to destroy. But Gantz’s decision is being depicted in Israel’s left-wing media as an insult to all Arab voters, a theme that has been picked up in the international media.

The problem here is not just the distorted coverage of Israeli attitudes towards the Joint List. As unfair as the racism canard being thrown about with respect to opposition to its participation in any Israeli government may be, that debate has unfortunately polarized the discussion about the place of Arab citizens in Israeli society. If the party that Arabs voted for are “terrorists” and supporters of those who wish to tear down the Jewish state, then that undermines efforts to fully integrate Arabs into Israeli society.

(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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Clearly there is a right to vote, but not to dismantle the state - by Jonathan S. Tobin

In comparing Arab doctors to Joint List Knesset members, Israel’s critics are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to promote the lie that Zionism is racism.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
17 March '20..

It seems like a devastating argument. If Israeli Jews are willing to accept life-saving treatment from Arab doctors, why won’t they give their representatives in the Knesset a seat in the country’s government?

That’s the point The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger made last week both on Twitter and in an article that made the same point. It’s been echoed elsewhere in features in the Israeli press.

But the premise is false. The idea that objections to giving anti-Zionist Arab parties a role in the government of Israel is racist is more than a cheap shot aimed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters. The attempt to use the coronavirus pandemic as a way of chipping away at the legitimacy of a Jewish state demonstrates that Israel’s critics consider the catastrophic spread of a deadly disease as merely just another opportunity to take pot shots at Zionism.

It’s important to separate two arguments being made here. One is about the yearlong standoff between Netanyahu and his political opponents as the two sides continue to battle over who will lead the country’s next government, and whether the votes of Knesset members who support Israel’s enemies should be the deciding factor. The other is a more fundamental question about whether Israel can be both a state devoted to protecting the national rights of the Jewish people while granting equal rights to non-Jewish citizens.

Of course, Jews gratefully accept treatment from Arab doctors and nurses working in the country’s hospitals. Arabs—both those who are citizens of Israel and residents of the territories—also accept the care they got from the far larger number of Jewish doctors and nurses that work in the same medical facilities. It should also be pointed out that even the families of hostile Palestinian terror groups based in Gaza or the West Bank have been admitted to Israeli hospitals, where they are treated with the same scrupulous devotion that any Jew gets.

So when Dr. Ahmad Tibi, a physician who also serves as a Knesset member of the Joint Arab List, which won 15 seats in the Knesset earlier this month, claims that Jews who would accept his services as a doctor, but don’t want him deciding who will be prime minister, are racists and hypocrites, he isn’t being honest.

(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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(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’.”

Truthfully? No, not all votes are equal - by Martin Sherman

Blue and White persists in an obsessive effort to include the inimical Joint Arab List in determining the fate of the Jewish nation-state.

Am Yisrael Chai?

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
14 March '20..

… the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. … This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State. … Accordingly, we … hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. … The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration. — From Israel’s Declaration of Independence

Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three things which prevailed there: idolatry, illicit sexual relations, bloodshed. … But why was the Second Temple destroyed, seeing that in its time they occupied themselves with Torah, mitzvot [religious observance] and acts of charity? Because baseless hatred prevailed. This teaches you that baseless hatred is equal to the three sins of idolatry, illicit sexual relations and murder. — Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 9:B

The election results put us in the position of choosing which election promise to break. In this situation, removing Netanyahu is the main goal. We have no choice but to rely on the Joint List.” — MK Moshe (Bogey) Ya’alon, Blue and White, March 12, 2020

“It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change.” — Alice in “Alice in Wonderland” (The film)

These four excerpts encapsulate concisely, yet precisely, much of the implausible events that transpired in Israel’s political arena over the last few days—from the disturbing departure from the founding ethos of the State of Israel to the pernicious conduct of those, who allow their personal pique to undermine the very foundations of Jewish sovereignty.

A Kafkaesque aura

On March 11, a surreal, almost Kafkaesque, aura descended upon political realities in Israel, shrouding them in a thick swirl of bizarre fog, distorting familiar perspectives and conjuring up outlandish spectacles, previously considered inconceivable, before our very eyes.

Incredibly, and despite fervent assurances to the contrary, official envoys from Blue and White, Knesset members Ofer Shelah and Avi Nissenkorn, unashamedly proceeded to engage the heads of the Joint Arab List in an effort to cajole them into entering a coalition to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office, or at least into supporting the establishment of such a coalition.

This, of course, constitutes a breathtaking abandonment of principle by Blue and White—a party headed by three former IDF chiefs of staff, who time and again assured the electorate that any government that their party formed would not rely in any way, neither directly nor indirectly, on the overtly anti-Zionist Joint List.

This was a pledge that appeared eminently plausible. After all, the Joint List, a motley, ad hoc political amalgam of Stalinists, Islamists and Arab ultra-nationalists, united only by an incandescent animosity towards Israel as a Jewish state, is a party that represents the utter negation of everything the leaders of Blue and White have dedicated much of their adult life to defend.

What makes this endeavor even more perverse is the fact that less than a year ago, prominent Joint List members repeatedly accused the heads of Blue and White of war crimes.

(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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Temple Mount Vs. Joint Arab List's Chutzpah - by Nadav Shragai

Don't let the boundless appetite of the Joint Arab List to fix what it sees as a historic wrong fool you into allowing Israel to give up one of the few remaining rights Jews have on the Temple Mount.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
11 March '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-joint-arab-lists-chutzpah/

Here it is, earlier than expected. As the country celebrates Purim, the masks have come off: the Joint Arab List is demanding that when Blue and White forms a government, it put an end to Jews visiting the Temple Mount. Or as the Arab Israeli and Palestinian discourse has referred to these visits for years now: "Visit by settler extremists."

That is how they refer to Jews who wear kippahs, who comprise the vast majority of the Jews who visit the Temple Mount in recent years.

The Joint Arab List's appetite and audacity, it seems, knows no bounds. The list is counting its chickens before they're hatched and is seeking to prevent one of the last remaining things the status quo allows Jews to do on the Temple Mount – visit it. This is only the beginning, but what a symbolic beginning it is.

The fact that the Jewish people have risen up in the Land of Israel is like a bone in their throats, and the fact that 53 years ago, Israel liberated holy Jewish sites – first and foremost the Temple Mount - they see as a major accident of history, but one that can be rectified. This is the reason behind the many attempts in recent years to attack Jews who visit the Mount. This also explains the terminology that the Palestinians and some members of the Joint Arab List use: "To save/liberate and redeem the Temple Mount from the hands of the Jews who sully it by their very presence there."

Some of the Joint Arab List MKs talk about the "Israeli people," much like the Palestinians do. They don't recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. The idea of tolerating Judaism as a subservient minority religion has been replaced by the idea of "a state of all its citizens," and often this is only the first step of a much longer-term plan.

The idea of a "state of all its citizens" has a handful of blind followers on the far Left, but we need to hope that Blue and White will now open its eyes and see that the Temple Mount is only the first step and that the flag has been raised to erase the "mistake" of a state for the Jewish people.

Don't be confused: The state of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, made its biggest, most incomprehensible decision about the Temple Mount, a concession that is unlike anything any other religion in the world has done. It allowed its most holy site to be left in the hands of a competing religion, Islam, and forewent the rights of Jews to pray there, and only allowed them to visit the Mount.

Question. Have you given up on the Jewish state? - by Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash

The attempt to present opposition to relying on the Joint Arab List as racist – is contemptible. Neither religion nor skin color forms the basis of this opposition, rather an ideology that strives to erase the existence of the Jewish nation-state.

Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash..
Israel Hayom..
11 March '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/have-you-given-up-on-the-jewish-state/

The past election year presented us with no shortage of important issues, beyond partisan divisions and the question of who Israel's next prime minister will be. The recent election was over the defense of democracy against the courtacracy, the public's trust in the legal system, and also about the application of sovereignty versus the idea of territorial disengagement.

But the uproar to emerge in recent days over Benny Gantz's intention to establish a government with the support of the Joint Arab List, crystallizes the essence of the battle, perhaps the most significant Israeli society is facing. We've again reached a junction where the arrows pointing Left or Right are unclear, leaving us only with the fundamental argument about the very Jewishness of the Jewish state.

What began as slanderous campaigns decrying "religious coercion," which continued with blatant anti-religious propaganda and assurances of a "secular and liberal" government – now appears to be a type of abdication of the country's Jewish character, rather than its supposedly religious character. This is undeniably a fight over the very existence of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. A democratic state that espouses human and civil rights for all its citizens, but a state whose national identity is singular: Jewish. A country which promotes and ratifies the right of Jews to return to their homeland, encourages their arrival and grants them immigration benefits and support. It is a country whose national flag is with the Star of David and whose national anthem specifies the "Jewish soul" and "an eye toward Zion."

Apparently, what seems natural to so many Israelis is perceived by others as discrimination or racism. Whether we are headed to a fourth election or not, this is a fundamental question that demands an answer: Is Israel a Jewish state or a state of all its citizens? And the question isn't new; for years it served as the basis for various arguments, for example over the policies the country adopted to combat illegal immigration or disqualification of a Knesset candidate or another. This time, however, the question appears as an explicit argument, almost as a blunt accusation against those who support the state's Jewishness. In just one example, political pundit Amnon Abramovich told viewers this week that if we don't include the Joint Arab List in the next government, we are no longer a democratic state. In other words, if we reject a government that rests on anti-Zionist views and opposes Israel's Jewish character, we have reached the end of democracy.