The essence of a democracy is a correlation between duties and rights. On the program of Arye Goose about the New Middle East on the Voice of Israel, on September 14, 2003, a representative of Israeli Arabs declared that it is inconceivable to consider enlisting Israeli Arabs into the army just as it was not asked of French and German Jews to serve in the army?s of their states. But this is untrue. In WWI, French and British Jews fought German Jews and none was free from military service because a Jew might kill another Jew.
Actually, Israel is the only country in the world that endows a community of its citizens with full voting rights, on both local and national levels, without also requiring them to serve in the army. This is deeply undemocratic.
Israeli Arabs even refuse an alternative - National Service. They even refuse a national service in their own communities and exercise intimidation against members of their community who raise the subject. For example, in 2001, a janitor in an Arab Israeli secondary school, who tried to convince pupils of the higher classes to consider volunteering to do national service in their community, was fired from his job for this 'unpatriotic' attempt.
It is to be emphasized that the case of ultra-orthodox Jews is different, since it is not a case where a whole community of citizens is free from military service, but only part of this community is free to postpone their military service under well-defined conditions.
There is something deeply undemocratic in the fact that Israeli Arabs can, for example, decide whether there will be a withdrawal from the Golan without themselves being willing to pay the price in blood, in case of a decision gone wrong.
The question of what will happen if all of a sudden Israeli Arabs will have a complete change of heart and they suddenly become keen to do military service is so improbable that it is, at present, impractical even to consider such eventuality. At present all the MKs (members of the Israeli parliament) of the Arab parties are against the notion of a Jewish state. It is also the case that increasing numbers of Israeli Arabs manifest disloyalty to the state of Israel and some of them even take an active part in helping and carrying out terrorism. It is thus hard to envisage how they could serve in the Israeli army even if they wanted to.
Yet the reason for not serving in the army is immaterial. If they are judged to be disloyal enough so as not be allowed to serve in the army, so be it. What counts is that it is undemocratic to endow a well-defined community of the population with full voting rights on the national level and simultaneously not to require them, or to be in a position to require them, to serve in the army.
Why is it so important to behave in a really democratic way and to remove voting rights on the national level from Israeli Arabs?
There are three major reasons. First, there is the moral reason. That Israel will be even more democratic, in the sense that there will be a better correlation between rights and duties with respect to a greater proportion of its citizens. That the singular position of Israel among all democracies, which entails giving full voting rights to a whole community that is not required to do military service, will be abolished.
Israeli Jews begin their studies or working life three years later than Israeli Arabs. In addition to three years of compulsory military service, they face decades of reserve duty every year, which disrupts their family and working life, and their attractiveness to employers. And, of course, many of them lose their life and health during these long decades. Is it moral that those that are not subject to these duties and dangers will exercise the same voting rights on the national level, where the consequence of their vote will not primarily affect them, but only the Jewish part of the population ?
Second, this will remove the pretext that we cannot densely settle Western Palestine with Jews - a settlement that is encouraged by international law - because of the demographic danger. The Arabs themselves claim to be one nation and therefore deserve one state only, but, singularly, they have already 22 states to fulfil their national aspirations. All Arabs in Western Palestine could vote to a parliament in Amman. Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state that occupies the greater part of Palestine (and this while all of Palestine was destined by international law to become a Jewish state; see http://jewishinternetassociation.org/articles/shifftan_18sep03.html).
Third, there is no doubt that many decisions that do not serve the interest of the Jewish nation are taken by Israeli politicians in an effort to court the Arab vote on the national level. And the best way to court this vote is to advance towards the goal of Israel ceasing to be a Jewish state. The process of removing Jewish emblems, titles etc. is already under way. For example, already the name of the Histadrut, the general trade union, was changed so as to omit the word Eretz Israel. The destruction of Jewish archaeology is already underway. This courting includes the setting up of various inquiring committees. It also includes decisions not to exercise self-defense in a manner exercised by other Western democracies, which results in a great loss in Jewish life.
A typical example was the decision not to use the air force (after a warning to civilians to evacuate the area) in Jenin in April 2002, with the ensuing loss of 23 reservists. From the point of view of Israel?s image in the world, this sacrifice - as the many analogous sacrifices - was in vain. For example, in the British House of Lords, a certain Lord Achmed repeatedly talked to the BBC about the massacre in Jenin and was not challenged.
And in the super-liberal democracy that Israel is, an Israeli Arab, who has members of his family admitting to support for terrorism - they were convicted in court - and who has not expressed regret over their behavior, was allowed to produce and screen a film about Jenin that is a pack of lies. And this is done with the blessing of Israel's Supreme Court, in the name of freedom of expression. Israel is a democracy under siege that has to defend itself, but it allows itself a 'liberal' approach that even democracies at peace do not afford themselves. The effect on IDF morale and motivation is suicidal.
The courting of the Arab vote includes concealing pro-Israel facts in Israel?s internal and external Hasbara (PR and information) policy and in its education policy. A central example of this is that, while the criticism of Israel focuses on the illegality of the settlements, there is a stubborn refusal on the part of official Israel for at least a decade to declare the truth - that the settlements are not only legal, but are to be encouraged according to international law. (See http://www.think-israel.org/shifftan.html.) This working against one's national interests continues even these days, when the Bush administration reduces the loan guarantees because of the fence and the settlements, when the UN General Assembly moves the question of the fence to the court in the Hague, and the European community wants to tax products from the settlements. Had Israel's official representatives openly told us and the world that international law requires the encouragement of Jewish settlements in the whole of Western Palestine (see http://jewishinternetassociation.org/articles/shifftan_29jul03.html ) , these anti-Israel moves could be effectively counteracted.
Furthermore, at a time of increasing fears from WMD, including from Iran's nuclear capability, a logical approach would entail explaining to the Israeli public and to the world at large the- greater-than-usual importance of densely settling Jews in the whole of Western Palestine and in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (YESHA) in particular. An Arab settlement next to a Jewish one just increases the deterrence against the use of WMD. Instead, the government wants to do the opposite and concentrate Jews in a very limited area with a minimum amount of Arabs around. The Jews will then constitute a more attractive target.
One way to see how things have changed since the beginning of the Oslo process, and the extent of the psychological warfare directed at Israel, is to observe that before the nineties "Lenin's fools" such as Yossi Sharid and Shulamit Aloni would not be considered for Minister of Education or Yossi Beilin for Minister of Justice. This would be inconceivable, for example, even under a 'left-wing' Labor government of David Ben Gurion. The real danger posed to Israel by Lenin's useful idiots is surveyed in: Israel and the Post-Zionists: a Nation at Risk (2003; Edited by Shlomo Sharan. Sussex Academic Press).
Perhaps the best example of the catastrophic effect of the courting of the Arab vote was the generation of the Oslo Process. As was detailed in the newspaper Hadashot in 1992, Yossi Beilin was sent by Shimon Peres to Arafat telling him that if Arafat will convince Israeli Arabs to vote for Labor, then, as a reward, contacts with the PLO will be made legal and the road to a "Palestinian State" will be initiated. And this is indeed what happened. Even later, the Oslo Accords would not have passed in the Knesset without the Arab vote. To realize the absurdity of allowing Arab voters a say in the acceptance of the Oslo Accords, one has to recall that this Arab vote would object to the existence of a Jewish State in 1948, and ever since.
Furthermore, when it became clear that the Palestinians are not keeping their part of the agreement, this, and the ongoing incitement in the Palestinian media, were actively hidden from the Israeli public all through the nineties. Amazingly, all along, and even recently, Peres justified the giving of the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat (indeed, if Arafat's Nobel Prize is not justifiable, then automatically, Peres' Nobel Prize is not justified). There is no need to detail the cost in Jewish blood and other assets as a result of the catastrophic Oslo agreement. It simply makes sense that the Jewish vote alone be determinate in decisions such as whether to accept or reject such an accord as Oslo.
The demoralizing and misleading effect of allowing the Arabs who do not serve in the army - as distinct from the Druse community - a vote on the national level is reflected in the multitude of polls carried out recently by Haaretz and by the Voice of Israel. The leftist commentators discuss with great enthusiasm, and marvel at, results such as: "30% of the Israeli public are for the Geneva Program of Yossi Beilin"; "30% of the Israeli public support the 27 renegade Israeli pilots," and many other similar polls. On the basis of such polls, the commentators then go on to advocate pro-Arab policies that most sane Israeli Jews would not even consider. What the public is not told, explicitly, is that these polls include the Arab Israeli public (20% of the population), which does not serve in the army and would automatically support any move that would weaken Israel as a Jewish State. When the Voice of Israel was approached about this, its spokespersons responded that it would be almost racist to state it explicitly. But this is hypocritical, since they normally do many sub-polls; e.g., how many voters from a particular party support a certain opinion. This is a serious matter, in particular since most of the public in Israel and abroad does not think that you have to reduce 20% from such polls. For example, in the example above, only 10% meaningfully support the propositions. It is also serious because of "acharei rabim lehatot"; i.e. because of the human tendency to support what the majority supports.
The Israeli public does not seem even to realize the aberrations in its super-liberal-and-suicidal democracy. The reasons for this could involve a certain provincial streak and also the psychological warfare directed at the Israeli public by external agencies, via the services of Lenin's fools, who often also get a material reward. It could also involve a type of Stockholm Syndrome, aggravated by the weariness of years of conflict and a desperate search for peace, that results in a tendency to ignore reality and to cultivate wishful thinking.
For example, it is inconceivable that a British citizen would be an advisor to Hitler and immediately afterwards become a British member of Parliament. Or, even though the Irish underground never threatened the existence of the British state, it is inconceivable that a British citizen would be an advisor to the Irish underground and immediately afterwards would become a British member of Parliament. But in Israel, an Israeli Arab (Achmed Tibi) is allowed to be an advisor to Arafat and immediately afterwards, with no cooling period, is allowed to become a member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset). There was not even a discussion about the conflict of interest involved.
Israeli Arab MKs go to Syria and other Arab countries and meet with terrorist leaders and express in public their support for those leaders? activities, denote the deliberate killing of defenceless civilians and children as freedom fighting, act explicitly against the dominant Jewish nature of the state of Israel, praise Hizballah as patriots and describe those Lebanese and other Arabs who are friendly to Israel as ?traitors?, etc., but they are secure in their seats in the Knesset because of parliamentary immunity. The Arab Israeli MKs use the democratic tools, which they would never have enjoyed in any Arab country, in order to subvert the only Jewish State. And it is the super-liberal, unparalleled and suicidal nature of Israeli democracy that allows them to do it.
Actually, Israel is the only country in the world that endows a community of its citizens with full voting rights, on both local and national levels, without also requiring them to serve in the army. This is deeply undemocratic.
Israeli Arabs even refuse an alternative - National Service. They even refuse a national service in their own communities and exercise intimidation against members of their community who raise the subject. For example, in 2001, a janitor in an Arab Israeli secondary school, who tried to convince pupils of the higher classes to consider volunteering to do national service in their community, was fired from his job for this 'unpatriotic' attempt.
It is to be emphasized that the case of ultra-orthodox Jews is different, since it is not a case where a whole community of citizens is free from military service, but only part of this community is free to postpone their military service under well-defined conditions.
There is something deeply undemocratic in the fact that Israeli Arabs can, for example, decide whether there will be a withdrawal from the Golan without themselves being willing to pay the price in blood, in case of a decision gone wrong.
The question of what will happen if all of a sudden Israeli Arabs will have a complete change of heart and they suddenly become keen to do military service is so improbable that it is, at present, impractical even to consider such eventuality. At present all the MKs (members of the Israeli parliament) of the Arab parties are against the notion of a Jewish state. It is also the case that increasing numbers of Israeli Arabs manifest disloyalty to the state of Israel and some of them even take an active part in helping and carrying out terrorism. It is thus hard to envisage how they could serve in the Israeli army even if they wanted to.
Yet the reason for not serving in the army is immaterial. If they are judged to be disloyal enough so as not be allowed to serve in the army, so be it. What counts is that it is undemocratic to endow a well-defined community of the population with full voting rights on the national level and simultaneously not to require them, or to be in a position to require them, to serve in the army.
Why is it so important to behave in a really democratic way and to remove voting rights on the national level from Israeli Arabs?
There are three major reasons. First, there is the moral reason. That Israel will be even more democratic, in the sense that there will be a better correlation between rights and duties with respect to a greater proportion of its citizens. That the singular position of Israel among all democracies, which entails giving full voting rights to a whole community that is not required to do military service, will be abolished.
Israeli Jews begin their studies or working life three years later than Israeli Arabs. In addition to three years of compulsory military service, they face decades of reserve duty every year, which disrupts their family and working life, and their attractiveness to employers. And, of course, many of them lose their life and health during these long decades. Is it moral that those that are not subject to these duties and dangers will exercise the same voting rights on the national level, where the consequence of their vote will not primarily affect them, but only the Jewish part of the population ?
Second, this will remove the pretext that we cannot densely settle Western Palestine with Jews - a settlement that is encouraged by international law - because of the demographic danger. The Arabs themselves claim to be one nation and therefore deserve one state only, but, singularly, they have already 22 states to fulfil their national aspirations. All Arabs in Western Palestine could vote to a parliament in Amman. Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state that occupies the greater part of Palestine (and this while all of Palestine was destined by international law to become a Jewish state; see http://jewishinternetassociation.org/articles/shifftan_18sep03.html).
Third, there is no doubt that many decisions that do not serve the interest of the Jewish nation are taken by Israeli politicians in an effort to court the Arab vote on the national level. And the best way to court this vote is to advance towards the goal of Israel ceasing to be a Jewish state. The process of removing Jewish emblems, titles etc. is already under way. For example, already the name of the Histadrut, the general trade union, was changed so as to omit the word Eretz Israel. The destruction of Jewish archaeology is already underway. This courting includes the setting up of various inquiring committees. It also includes decisions not to exercise self-defense in a manner exercised by other Western democracies, which results in a great loss in Jewish life.
A typical example was the decision not to use the air force (after a warning to civilians to evacuate the area) in Jenin in April 2002, with the ensuing loss of 23 reservists. From the point of view of Israel?s image in the world, this sacrifice - as the many analogous sacrifices - was in vain. For example, in the British House of Lords, a certain Lord Achmed repeatedly talked to the BBC about the massacre in Jenin and was not challenged.
And in the super-liberal democracy that Israel is, an Israeli Arab, who has members of his family admitting to support for terrorism - they were convicted in court - and who has not expressed regret over their behavior, was allowed to produce and screen a film about Jenin that is a pack of lies. And this is done with the blessing of Israel's Supreme Court, in the name of freedom of expression. Israel is a democracy under siege that has to defend itself, but it allows itself a 'liberal' approach that even democracies at peace do not afford themselves. The effect on IDF morale and motivation is suicidal.
The courting of the Arab vote includes concealing pro-Israel facts in Israel?s internal and external Hasbara (PR and information) policy and in its education policy. A central example of this is that, while the criticism of Israel focuses on the illegality of the settlements, there is a stubborn refusal on the part of official Israel for at least a decade to declare the truth - that the settlements are not only legal, but are to be encouraged according to international law. (See http://www.think-israel.org/shifftan.html.) This working against one's national interests continues even these days, when the Bush administration reduces the loan guarantees because of the fence and the settlements, when the UN General Assembly moves the question of the fence to the court in the Hague, and the European community wants to tax products from the settlements. Had Israel's official representatives openly told us and the world that international law requires the encouragement of Jewish settlements in the whole of Western Palestine (see http://jewishinternetassociation.org/articles/shifftan_29jul03.html ) , these anti-Israel moves could be effectively counteracted.
Furthermore, at a time of increasing fears from WMD, including from Iran's nuclear capability, a logical approach would entail explaining to the Israeli public and to the world at large the- greater-than-usual importance of densely settling Jews in the whole of Western Palestine and in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (YESHA) in particular. An Arab settlement next to a Jewish one just increases the deterrence against the use of WMD. Instead, the government wants to do the opposite and concentrate Jews in a very limited area with a minimum amount of Arabs around. The Jews will then constitute a more attractive target.
One way to see how things have changed since the beginning of the Oslo process, and the extent of the psychological warfare directed at Israel, is to observe that before the nineties "Lenin's fools" such as Yossi Sharid and Shulamit Aloni would not be considered for Minister of Education or Yossi Beilin for Minister of Justice. This would be inconceivable, for example, even under a 'left-wing' Labor government of David Ben Gurion. The real danger posed to Israel by Lenin's useful idiots is surveyed in: Israel and the Post-Zionists: a Nation at Risk (2003; Edited by Shlomo Sharan. Sussex Academic Press).
Perhaps the best example of the catastrophic effect of the courting of the Arab vote was the generation of the Oslo Process. As was detailed in the newspaper Hadashot in 1992, Yossi Beilin was sent by Shimon Peres to Arafat telling him that if Arafat will convince Israeli Arabs to vote for Labor, then, as a reward, contacts with the PLO will be made legal and the road to a "Palestinian State" will be initiated. And this is indeed what happened. Even later, the Oslo Accords would not have passed in the Knesset without the Arab vote. To realize the absurdity of allowing Arab voters a say in the acceptance of the Oslo Accords, one has to recall that this Arab vote would object to the existence of a Jewish State in 1948, and ever since.
Furthermore, when it became clear that the Palestinians are not keeping their part of the agreement, this, and the ongoing incitement in the Palestinian media, were actively hidden from the Israeli public all through the nineties. Amazingly, all along, and even recently, Peres justified the giving of the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat (indeed, if Arafat's Nobel Prize is not justifiable, then automatically, Peres' Nobel Prize is not justified). There is no need to detail the cost in Jewish blood and other assets as a result of the catastrophic Oslo agreement. It simply makes sense that the Jewish vote alone be determinate in decisions such as whether to accept or reject such an accord as Oslo.
The demoralizing and misleading effect of allowing the Arabs who do not serve in the army - as distinct from the Druse community - a vote on the national level is reflected in the multitude of polls carried out recently by Haaretz and by the Voice of Israel. The leftist commentators discuss with great enthusiasm, and marvel at, results such as: "30% of the Israeli public are for the Geneva Program of Yossi Beilin"; "30% of the Israeli public support the 27 renegade Israeli pilots," and many other similar polls. On the basis of such polls, the commentators then go on to advocate pro-Arab policies that most sane Israeli Jews would not even consider. What the public is not told, explicitly, is that these polls include the Arab Israeli public (20% of the population), which does not serve in the army and would automatically support any move that would weaken Israel as a Jewish State. When the Voice of Israel was approached about this, its spokespersons responded that it would be almost racist to state it explicitly. But this is hypocritical, since they normally do many sub-polls; e.g., how many voters from a particular party support a certain opinion. This is a serious matter, in particular since most of the public in Israel and abroad does not think that you have to reduce 20% from such polls. For example, in the example above, only 10% meaningfully support the propositions. It is also serious because of "acharei rabim lehatot"; i.e. because of the human tendency to support what the majority supports.
The Israeli public does not seem even to realize the aberrations in its super-liberal-and-suicidal democracy. The reasons for this could involve a certain provincial streak and also the psychological warfare directed at the Israeli public by external agencies, via the services of Lenin's fools, who often also get a material reward. It could also involve a type of Stockholm Syndrome, aggravated by the weariness of years of conflict and a desperate search for peace, that results in a tendency to ignore reality and to cultivate wishful thinking.
For example, it is inconceivable that a British citizen would be an advisor to Hitler and immediately afterwards become a British member of Parliament. Or, even though the Irish underground never threatened the existence of the British state, it is inconceivable that a British citizen would be an advisor to the Irish underground and immediately afterwards would become a British member of Parliament. But in Israel, an Israeli Arab (Achmed Tibi) is allowed to be an advisor to Arafat and immediately afterwards, with no cooling period, is allowed to become a member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset). There was not even a discussion about the conflict of interest involved.
Israeli Arab MKs go to Syria and other Arab countries and meet with terrorist leaders and express in public their support for those leaders? activities, denote the deliberate killing of defenceless civilians and children as freedom fighting, act explicitly against the dominant Jewish nature of the state of Israel, praise Hizballah as patriots and describe those Lebanese and other Arabs who are friendly to Israel as ?traitors?, etc., but they are secure in their seats in the Knesset because of parliamentary immunity. The Arab Israeli MKs use the democratic tools, which they would never have enjoyed in any Arab country, in order to subvert the only Jewish State. And it is the super-liberal, unparalleled and suicidal nature of Israeli democracy that allows them to do it.