Arab Israelis: A Preview of Coming Attractions

by Rebecca Bynum (May 2009)

Arabs in Israel: Friends or Foes?
by Raphael Israeli
ACPR Publishers
Published in Hebrew in 2002, English translation, 2008

“We’re here today to say our mosques are off limits,” Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Greater Los Angeles, told the crowd last month at an Anaheim mosque.

“We goofed up, guys,” said Shakeel Syed, head of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “We brought them [the FBI] here. We brought them to our mosques, to our meetings. . . . We have to hold ourselves responsible. That’s why it’s so important to dig our heels into the ground and say we’re not going to take this lying down, we’re going to fight.”

He got the loudest applause of the night. — LATimes

One might expect a minority group under grave suspicion, the way Muslims in America are today, would be carefully compliant with law enforcement and eager to demonstrate their unwavering loyalty to America, the way the Japanese Americans behaved during World War II or German Americans during World War I. Rather, in America today, despite the numerous attacks by Muslims on American citizens, no steps have been taken against the Muslim population as a whole, yet American Muslims scream persecution at every opportunity. We have allowed this population to grow unchecked and officially refrained from showing any suspicion toward it whatsoever by allowing Muslims full access to all levels of our military and government offices. We have been repaid for our generosity by numerous cases of agitation against the state, espionage, sabotage and even treason. American Muslim soldiers have deserted, attacked and killed their fellow soldiers, and given information on ship movements and troop deployments to the Muslim enemy. American Muslim citizens even fought alongside the enemy on foreign soil. Muslim behavior in Britain and Europe is no different. This is not to mention the other sorts of anti-social and criminal behavior exhibited by Muslim populations in the West.

Raphael Israeli, Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in his 2002 book, Arabs in Israel, Friends or Foes?, recently translated into English, gives a clear-eyed assessment, delivered with passion, of what other countries are likely to face unless immediate steps are taken to end the current policy of unrestricted Muslim immigration. Step by step, Israeli outlines the pattern of pleading and coddling, the constant concessions and the endless appeasement exhibited by the Israeli government and how it has been repaid by the most blatant disloyalty, agitation and subversion, constantly escalating demands and wild accusations against the state on the part of the Muslim Arab population. Israelis on the whole are baffled because they thought, and mostly still do think, that they are dealing with human beings who are essentially “just like them” and for all their experience with Muslim Arabs, most are still in deep denial about the reality of the situation, because if they allow themselves to examine it very closely, they would see how dire their predicament really is.

We are accustomed to analyzing the jihad against Israel in terms of terrorist warfare, but Professor Israeli stresses that the major threat to Israel is Muslim Arab demographic conquest and we see in Israel the familiar patterns of Muslim demands, centered on the control of land. One particularly telling case ia the “Shihab a-Din Affair” in the city of Nazareth where the Muslims are attempting to erase Christian history and Islamize the area, multiplying Muslim sacred sites as they do. The Christian population of Nazareth has been steadily dwindling and Muslims are now the majority there. Expressing the usual Muslim solidarity across national boundaries, members of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood are now demanding the Pope apologize for his speech at Regensburg before he visits the region this month. The background for a likely confrontation between the Pope and the Nazarene Muslims as laid out by Professor Israeli is worth quoting at length:

“In early 1997, even before the dramatic events that will be described below took place, the City Council, of which Salman Abu Ahmed, head of the opposition Islamist faction as well as head of the Political Department of the Southern Islamic Movement (that was also supposed to be the moderate one), decided to build the Church [of the Annunciation] plaza to host mass assemblies and ceremonies [for the Christian millennium celebrations]. Members of the faction did not oppose the project on principle, but they rather raised the question whether the state-owned lot was a waqf property, in which case the municipality would be prohibited from building upon it. Of course, had it been a waqf property, it would have been public knowledge…According to the Islamists, it was enough to raise doubts and qualms regarding the status of the area, in order to transform it from approved project to bone of contention, thereby creating an opening for subsequent far-reaching demands. [See the definition of waqf here.] At that stage an additional character, Abu Nawaf, supervisor of the waqf in Nazareth, who from that point on would be the front man in all of the upcoming confrontations, entered the arena, while the Muslim faction and in fact most of the Muslims in Nazareth and later the Muslims throughout the country stood behind him in what became a power struggle between them and the State of Israel. Thus, in December 1997, while the development of the area of the plaza of contention gathered momentum, Abu Nawaf appeared in the municipality, demanded to see the Christian mayor, and presented before him a grandiose plan to establish a mansion on the lot, which would serve as a mosque reaching the heavens and would overshadow the Church of the Annunciation in terms of stature and splendor. This is not a program that is prepared in one day and the financing for it is cannot be raised in one hour. The conclusion is that the plan was conceived, and supporters and financiers were recruited (presumably from wealthy Muslim oil-producing countries famous for their tolerance of other religions) long before and at that point the pretext presented itself to turn the backup plan into reality. The mayor, agitated and stunned after seeing his program that he cultivated to bring about a revolution in the wake of the millennium was doomed to oblivion, requested a delay in order to pass the new, monumental proposal through the various building committees. However, Abu Nawaf and his sponsors had a different, tighter timetable. They decided to overrun the lot, to transform it into the focal point of Nazarene politics and in their reliance on the pliability of the authorities that would not do a thing, they constructed an enormous tent-mosque, i.e. a “sacred” site that no one would dare to touch.”

It also happens that the grave of Shihab a-Din (a nephew of Saladin) lies nearby and was soon transformed into a focus of Muslim religious interest lending weight to the Muslim claim to the much larger Church plaza area. However, after a considerable time, the Israeli courts eventually ruled that the Church plaza was not waqf property and never had been, and that the Muslim occupation of it was illegal, but by that time it was too late. Politicians wanted to appease the Nazarene Muslims (who are Israeli citizens and voters) and would bend the law to do so. The police had no stomach for evicting the squatters knowing how such action would play in the press. Therefore, the matter remains unresolved to this day because no one is willing to simply uphold the law as ruled by the courts. Of course, this merely postpones the reckoning. If the Pope enters the Church of the Annunciation, it will likely be to scenes of much wailing and fury on the part of the local Muslim population. No doubt the Pope will then be accused of provocation.

Israelis have found out the hard way that Muslim Arabs can never be true Israelis, completely assimilated into the Jewish state. They demand all the rights of citizenship, including the vote, while taking on none of the responsibilities including military service that is obligatory for all Jewish Israelis. Those Arabs who do volunteer to fight for Israel are ostracized from their communities and Israel recognizes that they pose a security risk in the military and thus exempts them from service.

Arab Israelis refuse to pay many of the taxes, including property tax (an implicit non-recognition of Israel’s sovereignty) while taking full advantage of state relief. They demand the full protection of the law and take advantage of all the opportunities the state provides while working constantly to undermine it, including openly siding with Israel’s enemies at every single turn.

All the while, the demographic conquest proceeds unabated. As the Muslim Arab population grows in an area, Israel seems to have no choice but to cede that area to the Palestinian Authority. Otherwise, the voting strength of these Muslim Israelis would eventually destroy the Jewish state from within. This is a pattern Muslims have repeated again and again throughout history because Islam is the only religion to require territorial sovereignty. The taking or re-taking of land and placing it under Islamic control is a religious obligation. The phrases, “the kingdom of heaven is within you,” and “my kingdom is not of this world,” are incomprehensible to a people whose religious kingdom is found solely in this world – a religion based in matter, not in spirit. (“The light shown in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.”) The control of land is the utmost religious imperative for Muslims worldwide. Witness the no-go areas springing up all over Europe, where police, firemen and ambulances are routinely attacked upon entry. No other immigrants behave in this manner.

There are many reasons why Muslims will remain unassimilable in the Western world, not least of which is their lack of a true Islamic moral structure.

All human beings are subject to pressure from two poles of passion – sentimentality and brutality. Between those two poles lies culture, which informs us how we should feel and should behave in any given set of circumstances. Culture lends refinement to our emotions and informs and enforces self control. The skeleton of culture, the thing that upholds it, is morality – the enjoining of that which is right. Without a cultural morality requiring self control, man lurches from sentimentality to brutality with nothing between to balance them. This is exactly what we see among Muslims. (It is becoming an increasing pattern in secular society as well, but that is the subject of another paper.)

Islamic morality collapses in on itself because it is based on two things: 1) expediency (that which is good for Muslims is good) and 2) the word and deeds of Muhammad (whose words and deeds were often immoral). So, without a true moral structure to uphold it, Muslim culture collapses into barbarism and Muslims exhibit an extreme emotionalism lacking all self-restraint.

Of course this very emotionalism is what causes the authorities in the West to treat Muslims like children and give them any candy they demand so they will stop crying. Especially galling to an Israeli patriot like Professor Israeli, who sees through this game, is when foreigners meddle in Israeli efforts to try to discipline this unruly minority. He writes:

“Recently, a new trend developed among American Jews, of remorse over the fact that they did not “promote” Israeli Arab interests, allowed too great a gap to develop between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority, and thereby, they believe, allowed the enmity to develop and erupt into the October events [the second intifada]. It is true that until now two foundations funded by Jewish philanthropists from America – the New Israel Fund and the Abraham Fund – functioned, inspired by the good-hearted, naïve liberals, who hoped that by cultivating educational activities and joint Jewish-Arab dialogue, they would minimize tensions and improve the situation. However, after twenty years of verbal masturbation, which cost several millions that could have had a much greater impact had it been invested in Jewish education, those naïve benefactors are faced with failure. The balance is clear for all to see: After two decades and tens of millions of dollars, the Jewish-Arab enmity within Israel has not diminished, but it has grown, no Arab individual or organization within Israel has expressed gratitude to any of these foundations for the money that they disbursed, which, more than they support understanding and progress, benefit the bureaucracies that are supported by the activities. All of that massive aid, which was wasted over the course of two decades, was based on the mistaken assumption that promoting understanding between nations, improving the level of education among Arabs and staging meetings of intimacy and understanding between them and the Jews, fail to understand that the Arabs will take any money given to them, even by the Jewish Satan, as long as it is for their personal advancement. However, the moment that politics is placed on the agenda, the rifts are more profound than ever, as it turned our recently, because the tensions do not stem from a “lack of understanding”, but rather from an all too accurate understanding of one another and a mutual understanding of the collision course that the situation presents. The Israeli Arabs side with the Palestinians, period. No money bribe, initiation of dialogue or broad-mindedness will convince them to act otherwise. They derisively, amusedly, and pitifully smile beneath their moustaches at those pious, good, naïve and agonized Jews, who are willing to give them their money. Why not take it?”

The same pattern is playing out with Muslim populations all over Britain, Europe and America, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid lavished on the “Palestinians” each year in the naïve hope that they will become self-governing, acquire the Protestant work ethic, turn wholeheartedly to the pursuits of peace and learn to love their Jewish neighbors – in short, that they will forget all about Islam.

Professor Israeli advances another solution, one not based on wishful thinking. His ideas seem to have been hugely influential on the Israeli right in recent years, but to the left, to the Europeans and even to America, they may still seem radical. He rejects the bi-national state solution and also rejects the two-state solution as currently envisioned. The main thrust of his proposal involves re-opening the original partition of the land divided during the British Mandate of Palestine and redrawing the map between Israel and Jordan with Israel’s ceding of Judaea and Samaria to the new “Hashemite Palestinian Kingdom” of Jordan.

Professor Israeli posits that by giving the Israeli Arabs citizenship in this new state (and simultaneously removing their Israeli citizenship) would neutralize their presence in Israel and make their removal unnecessary.

Would King Abdullah, the sullen, overweight son of the “plucky little king” Hussein, accede to that? Possibly, if the bribe were large enough. Would the “Palestinian” Arabs accede to that? Again, possibly, if the bribe were large enough and if they thought they would still have a good chance to destroy the Jewish state. There’s the rub. Anything that would give them a smaller chance of destroying Israel is unlikely to gain support among the Arabs. And furthermore, it involves Israeli Arabs giving up rights they already possess, which are a major weapon against Israel internally. I can’t imagine what pressure could be exerted to cause them to accept such a plan short of the threat of mass deportation and it is unlikely the Israelis have the stomach for that, at least at this point.

There is much food for thought here and Raphael Israeli’s message, delivered alternately through clenched teeth and then with a wry smile, is riveting. It’s like having a long dinner conversation with someone extremely knowledgeable and passionate about his subject. You come away a little shaken, but wiser for it. Many of his arguments, though meant for Israel, have a much wider application because he is dealing with essentials and he does so with moral clarity and intellectual consistency.

Israel is seemingly always on trial, but America is joining her in the docks. Antisemitism and anti-Americanism are becoming one in the ever-evolving narrative of the Muslim propaganda attack. And even as America’s Jews continue to be a focus of that attack, both literally and figuratively, America as a whole needs to learn the basics of Israel’s case – the better to defend herself from the lies and machinations of the Muslim world. Raphael Israeli’s book is an excellent place to start. Let us hope it will soon be more widely available in the U. S.

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