Why am I still shocked when I read things like this?
The following appeared last week in the Palestinian daily Al Hayat Al Jadida:
"The teacher wondered how any Geography teacher in the Arab schools could convince his students that Safad [in Arabic] was changed to Zefat[Hebrew] and that Sefuriya [Arabic] had suddenly become Zipori[Hebrew.] He expressed the opinion that the students would rip up these maps and the teacher who would accept them would be considered a traitor... He was reminded of [a recent] distribution of Israeli flags... the students ripped them to pieces and threw them in the garbage..."
These words wouldn't be surprising if they were said by any teacher in a Palestinian Authority [PA] school. However the person being quoted was an Israeli Arab teacher. The children ripping up Israeli flags were Israeli Arabs kids. The teacher who will not consider using a map showing Israeli cities in his classroom is an Israeli Arab on salary from the Israeli Ministry of Education.
With the media focus this week on the Or Committee's criticism of Israel's police during the Israeli Arab riots, it was virtually forgotten why the police were shooting. It was October 2000. The Palestinian Authority had started war against Israel. Two days into the war thousands of Israeli Arabs throughout the Galil joined the battle on the side of Israel's enemies, supported vocally by Arab leaders and passively it seemed by the general population. They threw stones, firebombs, burned tires, killed one Israeli Jew and injured many others, as they closed down the main roads of the North for days. Israel, it seemed, had lost the allegiance of 20% of its citizens, who in a time of war, had sided with the enemy. How did it happen?
While there certainly are many contributing factors, there is ample evidence that this transfer of allegiance was one of the prominent goals of the Palestinian Authority long before the start of the October 2000 War. The PA implemented a systematic and determined policy towards Israel's Arabs, especially the youth, targeting them continuously with the message that their identity and allegiance should be with the PA alone.
This article at Palestinian Media Watch goes on to detail a truly insidious program specifically designed to create a fifth column in Israel. How is it possible to respond rationally to such a situation? It goes without saying that a democratic society must fight bigotry and racism at every turn. But what do you do with a large and vocal minority that continues, in increasing numbers and with increasing ferocity, to pledge allegiance to those who seek to annihilate you?
In Arafat's office there was a special wing, called 'the Committee for Contacts with the Residents of Occupied Palestine'. Terms like 'Inside Arabs' and the 'Residents of Occupied Palestine' are all PA euphemisms for Israeli Arabs. The PA denied the possibility of the existence of an 'Israeli- Arab' writing in one 1999 editorial - "there can not be an Israeli Arab. How can the executioner and the victim be one?"
[Al Hayat Al Jadida August 18, 1999]
[ . . . ]
The opening gestures by the PA were actively accepted by Israel's Arab leaders who joined in urging Israeli Arab youth to reject any Israeli identity they may have considered. MK Azami Bashara, for example when campaigning in Israel, marched with tens of Israeli Arab youth holding PA flags. He explained on television that were they to lose their Palestinian identity, all that would remain would be their family and tribal identity, but not an 'Israeli-Arab' identity, because 'there is no such identity.' Speaking to Arab youth he said "The blue card [Israeli ID card] you have in your pocket is not an identity card; it is a residence card."
Can we imagine members of the U.S. Congress making speeches stating that there is "no such identity" as "African-American?" Or "Arab-American?" Or "Jewish-American?" Speeches advocating not the dreaded "dual loyalty," but a treasonous, monolithic loyalty to one's own ethnic or religious group or country of national origin? What would America do in the face of a blatant campaign to recruit any of our sizeable minorities to the cause of our enemies? And is that, in fact, an entirely theoretical question?
Is there a point where the values of tolerance and pluralism must give way to self-preservation and, if so, how do we know where that is? And what, exactly, do we do if and when we reach it?
Beats me.
