Israel can’t create loyal Arab-Israeli citizens because Jews and Arabs have very different interests.
While the Knesset Ethics Committee decided to ban three Arab MKs from parliamentary activity earlier this week following a meeting they held with families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis, the silence of the country’s 1,800,000 Arab citizens was deafening.
There have been a couple of notable exceptions to the Arab Israeli citizenry’s opting out of assuming any responsibility for the outrageous behavior of its chosen representatives.
In late 2015, Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam shouted at Israel’s leading Arab Israeli politician, Ayman Odeh, to leave the city since his party’s MKs are ‘ruining coexistence’ between Jews and Arabs.
Then there’s Arab-Israeli newscaster Lucy Aharish, whose blunt criticism of her Arab-Muslim brethren included an on-air tirade against Arab-Israeli leadership and the culture of victimhood.
Neither of these two Progressive voices deny the existence of legitimate Arab-Israeli grievances against the Israeli government.
However, Salam and Aharish represent a painfully small minority of Arab-Israelis who believe that the best way to solve a problem is to speak up, not silently acquiesce to attacks on Jewish men, women and children.
