Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the former chief editor of The Jewish Press and the author/editor of 10 books, including “In a World Gone Mad: An Appeal for Sane Thinking on Israel, Trump, War & More."
Guess how many Knesset seats Arab parties won in 1949. The answer is two.
In 1951, 1955, and 1959? Five.
In 1961, 1965, and 1969? Four.
In 1973? Three.
In 1977? One.
In 1981? None.
In 1984? One.
In 1988? Two.
My point is: For many years, we were able to ignore a very obvious problem. G-d was good to us. He inspired 600,000 Arabs to flee Israel in 1948 and, for four decades after that, He blinded the Arabs to their own political power.
Our grace period is now over. The Arab political parties - which detest Israel and support terrorism - won 19 seats on Tuesday. That means Benjamin Netanyahu can’t form a proper right-wing government. And neither will any future leader unless the right-wing camp wins 60 percent(!) of the Jewish vote.
Many people are shocked by Tuesday’s results, but Israeli Arabs represent 20 percent of Israel’s population. So they really sould have 24 Knesset seats (even without foreign interference). The only reason they have a “mere" 19 is because east Jerusalem’s Arabs are “permanent residents," not citizens, and thus can’t vote in national elections.
Israel defenders like to pretend that Israeli Arabs are loyal to the state, but deep down they know (or at least suspect) that they’re not. That’s why even leftists never demand that Arabs serve in the IDF as required by Israeli law. For they know it’s suicidal to give them machine guns.
And yet, we allow these very same Arabs to vote on the destiny of the Jewish people. Should yeshiva students serve in the army? Should buses run on Shabbat? Should we cede land in the "West Bank" to our enemies? Antisemitic Arabs vote on all three questions - and hundreds more.
Many Jews know that Arab parties don’t belong in the Knesset, but they feel stuck. They believe barring Arabs from electing their own representatives would render Israel undemocratic. But they are gravely mistaken. Democracy is a system of government. It dictates who should govern a particular society. It says nothing, however, about who should belong to that society.
It doesn’t even require that everyone within a particular society be given the right to vote. Thus, ancient Athens was a democracy even though only free adult males could vote, and 18th century America was a democracy even though only male property owners could vote. Even today, prisoners in many U.S. states can’t vote in federal elections. Neither can the residents of Puerto Rico despite being subject to U.S. law. America is nonetheless a democracy.
If I created a Resnick club and determined its rules exclusively, it would be an autocracy. If wealthy Resnicks made the rules, it would be an oligarchy. If only noble Resnicks did so, it would be an aristocracy. But if all (or most) Resnicks did so, it would be a democracy. And it would be a democracy even though only Resnicks belong to the club. The exclusion of Greenbergs and Silvermans - and every other family in the world - from the Resnick club wouldn’t make the club undemocratic.
The analogy is obvious. Only Italians can vote in Italy, only Americans can vote in America, and only Jews should be allowed to vote in the Jewish state.
The Jewish nation is not an exclusive body. Anyone can join it just like anyone can join the American people. But to become a member of the latter you must commit yourself - under oath - to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. The Jewish state should have the same exact rule. If you commit yourself to the principles of the Jewish people’s constitution - i.e., the Torah - you can become a member of the nation and vote on its future. If you are Jewish by birth, you are of course already a member just like someone born to American parents is generally automatically American regardless of his beliefs.
It happens to be that adopting the national principles of the Jewish people is harder than adopting the national principles of America, but the standard is the same. Adopt the principles of the nation and you’re a citizen. If you don’t, you’re a non-citizen and can’t vote.
Currently, the Jewish state permits people to be citizens even without subscribing to the Jewish people’s principles. It calls them Israeli Arabs. But it’s time for us to be honest. “Israeli-Arab" is an oxymoron. Arabs are descendants of Ishmael, not Israel. To be Israeli, one needs to join the Children of Israel.
Unfortunately, the people who founded the modern state of Israel had a “complicated" relationship with their Jewishness. Thus, while they created a flag with Jewish symbols, adopted a national anthem that speaks of the “Jewish soul," and created a Law of Return that applies to Jews exclusively, they tried to create a national identity - an “Israeli" identity - that was divorced from Judaism.
We must end this charade. One cannot be Israeli if one doesn’t belong to the People of Israel. Thus, Arabs should not be allowed to vote in Israel’s elections. The Jewish state was created for Jews, not for Arabs and certainly not for Jew-hating Arabs.
When Arab parties had only two or three seats in the Knesset, we could ignore this issue. We can’t any longer.