Most
Israeli Jews celebrated Israeli Independence Day (according to the
Hebrew calendar) recently. Meanwhile, thousands of Israel’s Arab
citizens decried the “Nakba” (The Catastrophe), namely the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, with a day of protest
and mourning. Many more Israeli Jews will have fun, less than two
weeks from now, on Lag B’Omer. Israel’s Arab community protested
and mourned again, on May 15th (the general calendar
date), when the British Mandate was officially terminated, and the
State of Israel came into being. Arab MK Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al),
spoke at a Nakba Day event in Ramallah.
The Nakba Day accusation
Arab MKs Ayman Odeh (Hadash-Ta’al) and Mtanes Shehadeh (Balad)
spoke at a Nakba ceremony, just outside the gate of Tel Aviv
University. Shehadeh reminded the mob that on Nakba day,
We remember the expulsion of more than 700,000 people
from their lands, the destruction of more than 530 Palestinian towns
and the murder of many others. Israel has been trying for 71 years to
erase the Palestinian’s identity and collective memory by any
possible colonial means, from the Nation-State Law to the ‘deal of
the century,’ to squelching freedom of expression, demolishing
homes, political persecution and continual occupation and violation
of international law.
MK Uzi Dayan (Likud) said he condemned the statements made by the
Arab MKs, and the idea of Nakba day in general. “Seventy-one years
have passed and for you, nothing has changed,” Dayan said. “You
are stuck in 1948, while we march toward 2048. We send a spaceship to
the moon and you fly incendiary balloons over the Gaza border. Your
thoughts and behaviors are your Nakba,” Dayan concluded.
A literally incendiary response
In the Gaza Strip,thousands rioted by the fence, as was expected,
and launched incendiary balloons into Israel. Israeli firefighters in
southern Israel had to put out nine fires.
That says everything…
So while the Jews were happy and dancing, on Independence Day, and
then will dance again, on the anniversary of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochi’s
death (hundreds of thousands flock to his grave in Meron annually),
the Arabs are crying this time of year, over the tragedies that
befell them. Isn’t that just the way it should be?
Well, Happy Nakba Day!
In Lod, a Jewish city in Israel, with Arabs living there, several
years ago, over 1,500 Arabs attended a “Nakba Day” rally. MK and
Balad party leader Jamal Zahalka said to them, “This is a day of
mourning for the Palestinian people. Lod is a special place for us,
because it is here that the massacre [?] of 1948 took place at the
Great Mosque, and that is why the city has become a symbol for us.
Our message is that we will never forget and never forgive for what
happened. We have come here to say that the Arab population will
remain in Lod forever.”
What really happened in Lod?
Several major attacks by Arab forces occurred in the Lod area
during Israel’s War of Independence. Lod and Ramle were
counter-attacked by the IDF because they were on the Tel
Aviv-Jerusalem road and convoys attempting to resupply and reinforce
Jerusalem had to travel through the streets of the two towns,
routinely under fire. The IDF could not afford to allow Jerusalem to
be cut off from the rest of the country.
Yitzhak Rabin, then a commander involved in the operation, later
said he agreed with Ben-Gurion’s order to expel the Arabs of Ramle
and Lod. The Arabs in Lod were “armed and hostile,” Rabin said,
presenting a danger, and they had to be driven away. Fighting with
Arab gunmen took place, but no massacre occurred, the enemy during
wartime was dealt a heavy blow.
Lod remains a problem
Lod is a town where till this day, the Arab population has been
consistently harassing the Jewish population. See my article, “The
Jewish Struggle Against Arabs in Israel.”
“This is our memorial day,” National Democratic Assembly
member Gabi Tanus said, in Lod at the time. “It is more important
to us than the Holocaust is to the Jewish nation.”
Notice according to them, the Arabs suffered more than the Jews
did from the Holocaust…
Happy Nakba day!
The Roman occupation…
Lag B’Omer by the way, also marks the end of a period of
mourning, over the death of thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students.
Rabbi Akiva was an arms smuggler for Bar Kochba’s revolt against
the Roman occupation of Judea (according to Maimonides). Tradition
tells us that the 24,000 students died during a plague. But, others,
like Rav Sherira Gaon, claim they died in the battles to liberate
Judea from the Roman occupation, basically like Hesder Yeshiva guys
today in the IDF.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochi (one of Rabbi Akiva’s top students), was
a vocal critic of the Roman occupation, and was forced to flee for
his life and hide in a cave, because he was found out. There, he and
his son studied Torah night and day for 13 years, till the “secrets
of creation” were revealed to him. His teachings were later written
down as “The Zohar,” the Book of Splendor, a mystical commentary
on the Hebrew Bible.
…and the British
Just as the Jews of Judea fought and gained independence
from the “super-power of their time,” the Roman Empire, for 3 and
a half years, Modern Israel finally gained independence, over 1,800
years later.
Arabs never satisfied
And the Arabs? They sit and weep, just as Jews did for those
intervening 1,800 years. The only difference is that the Arabs are a
recent settler population, who came to the Land of Israel only in the
last hundred years or so, and have no real connection to this place,
in spite of their weeping (and terrorism). For example, Saeb Erekat,
the Secretary-General of the PLO, claimed in 2014 that he is a direct
descendant of the Canaanite tribes who lived in Israel some 9,000
years ago. Yet according to Erekat’s own Facebook entry, the Erekat
clan is from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula and settled in the
Palestine area around 1860. See also, my article, “Who is a
Palestinian Refugee.”
Notice they are not mourning the loss of the 1967 territories, but
all of “Palestine.” Coming up in about three weeks is Jerusalem
Day. Jews the world over will celebrate the liberation of Eastern
Jerusalem, with it’s Temple Mount and Western Wall. Hebron, Judea,
Samaria, and the Golan Heights were all delivered out of the hands of
the Arab occupiers and into the hands of their rightful Jewish
owners.
A serious question of trust
Israeli Arabs were never a happy bunch, even though they have full
civil equality. But since Oslo, there has been growing
“Palestinization” within their community, brought on by their
involvement with Palestinian terrorists from the Palestinian
Authority. Combined with their growing vocal repudiation of Israeli
Independence Day as their “Catastrophe,” it’s proven to many
Israeli Jews, what they always suspected, many Israeli Arabs are not
trustworthy citizens.
The Israel Democracy Institute’s recent study, the “2018
Democracy Index,” asked, “Does Israel have the right to be
defined as the nation-state of the Jewish people?” 69.2% of Israeli
Arabs, Somewhat or Strongly Disagreed.
And, when the Israel Democracy Institute’s “The Peace Index of
April 2017” asked, “To what extent do you feel yourself to be
part of the State of Israel and its problems?” It found that only
57.5% of Israeli Arabs agreed, compared to 82% of Israeli Jews.
Should the Arabs leave?
According to the Israel Democracy Institute’s “Israeli
Democracy Ranking and Poll of 2010,” 53% of Israeli Jews said, “the
government should encourage Arabs to emigrate.”
Similarly, the Washington-based Pew Research Center, a
non-partisan think tank, conducted a poll from October 2014 to May
2015, and found that 48% of Israeli Jews said they agreed with the
statement that, “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from
Israel.”
Maybe Israel will one day soon, decide to solve its “Arab
security and demographic problem,” the way most Jews in Israel
would like to, not by expelling Jews from parts of their ancestral
homeland (like what happened in Gush Katif), but by removing “the
thorns in our side,”(Numbers 33:55), like Ben-Gurion and Rabin
understood to do.
I just want to wish all of Israel’s “good” Arab
citizens,Happy Nakba Day!
Biography
Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a
Master’s Degree specializing in International Relations, Political
Economy & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous
news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers. His latest
articles can also be read on his archive: The
Think Tank by Ariel Natan Pasko.
© 2019/5779 Pasko
About the image
CNAV took this photo in
2011 of a memorial to the IDF troops who died in the Six Day War in
1967. This memorial stands on the road into Jerusalem.
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