The Jewish state has a problem it does not know how to deal with. It is the increasingly seditious actions of an ever-larger proportion of its Arab minority. These actions did not start a day ago, but they are taking on increasing gravity.


The latest such action is the call by an Arab-Israeli organization called Adalah for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. This organization represents the educated elite of the Arab minority in Israel. This comes a short time after the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Ra'ed Salah, called for active violent action against Israel over the building of a ramp to the Temple Mount. This is one in a long series of instances in which it is the Israeli Arab minority that has incited towards violence on the Temple Mount.


It occurs at the same time as, once again,

Economic factors are not the major ones behind the 'revolt.'

there is a revelation of another series of violent crimes against Jewish individuals in the north of the country. The failure of the media and police to report on the disproportionate role of the Arab minority in violent crimes is another aspect of the Establishment's failure to honestly face the worsening situation.


All this is not new, of course. Israel is the only country in the world that allows its members of parliament to go to enemy states and urge them to war against the state in whose parliament they serve, as both Azmi Bashara and Ahmed Tibi have done. Israeli Jews, in defense of the Arab minority, often claim that the Arab leaders do not truly represent their people and are far more extreme than them. This may be so, but then it is the wider Arab public that repeatedly chooses such leaders.


For years, Israel has tolerated illegal Arab building not only in Judea and Samaria, but within Israel proper. This is another area in which the politicians seem to be afraid to do anything because of their awareness that they would be branded ‘racists' by the leftist media for their actions. There is the problem that to take real action involves complicated and costly legal work, which has small promise of success in the Israeli legal system.


This increasing Arab alienation from the state comes when Israeli Arabs are being given a larger role in state institutions and places of work. And it thus suggests that economic factors are not the major ones behind the 'revolt.'


One factor is that the Arabs see themselves as the majority in the area. They have difficulty not only seeing themselves as a minority, but in understanding minority rights and obligations in the framework of a democracy. Considering the way minorities are treated in neighboring Arab states, this is not at all surprising.


The time has come for a major crackdown.



Another factor is the increasing Islamization of the Arab sector in Israel. Many of these Palestinians do not even care for a separate Palestinian Arab state. Their dream is for a greater Islamic caliphate, which will begin by ruling the Middle East.


The failure of the political, educational and legal establishments to confront the increasing hostility of the Arab minority is downplayed by the left-wing Israeli media. When a politician - even one of the stature of Benjamin Netanyahu - warns about Israel's problems with its Arab minority, he is instantly attacked by the media and silenced.


This is not a situation that is going to get better overnight. But it is time that the political, legal and educational establishments in Israel understand that their ‘tolerance' of illegal action on the part of the Arab minority in one area leads to greater illegal action in others. The time has come for a major crackdown on all kinds of illegal actions undertaken against the state and its individuals.


The message must be given in the strongest possible way to Israel's Palestinian Arab minority that the one right they do not have is the right to destroy the state in which they live.