A friend writes:
UMM AL FAHM, Israel— Gleaming branches of McDonalds's and Pizza Hut greet shoppers at a new mall in this populous Arab town in northern Israel that is usually associated with poverty, overcrowding and conservative Islam.
Ungrateful Arab bastards brought into modernity by a munificient
Israel, but still breed like rats on a staple of conservative Islam.
Israel's
Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population, are torn inside.
Whenever Israel has been in conflict with its neighbors, the
allegiances of its Arab citizens have been tested, and their empathy
has often been with the other side. But this war was worse, they say,
because it was waged against their own people and they were watching it
as it happened.
In the town square, in the shadow of the Basilica of the Annunciation, protesters set up a tent and collected donations for Gaza. Outside the tent Palestinian flags flew and enlarged caricatures depicted Israeli soldiers as storm troopers and butchers.
The animosity was mutual. Last week, Israel's Central Elections Committee voted overwhelmingly to disqualify the two main Arab parties from running in the national elections on Feb. 10.
Israel has had enough and we should understand its reluctance to afford
further rights to this fifth column with divided loyalties.
The
motion was filed by two Jewish nationalist parties, which accused the
Arab politicians of incitement, supporting terrorism against Israel and
refusing to recognize it as a Jewish state. It was supported by the
representative of the center-left Labor Party.
(I presume although I don't know which two 'nationalist' parties)
Jewish fundamentalist political parties wish to put Arabs back in their
place and it's all perfectly understandable even Labor supports these
policies.
For many, if not most of them, the battle rages on inside.
the rage within the Arab mind will take centuries to resolve itself.
Isn't Israel beautiful. It educates, feeds, houses these primitive
people and yet these people rage against a tiny oasis of modernity.
P.S. The Israeli Supreme Court has reinstated the Arab parties for the election.
