The Great Arab Hope
Some exciting news: I’m hosting a live online discussion this Tuesday with Jonathan Pollard, the world-famous former spy and outspoken commentator on Israeli and geopolitical affairs.
The last time we spoke in public was on my podcast a few months ago, when he said that Israel ought to expel most Palestinians and wipe out Iran with nuclear bombs in order to avoid mass Israeli casualties and defeat enemies who will not listen to reason.
We’re going to talk about the current war. Both of us — most of us, I imagine — are frustrated by the inconclusive end we appear headed toward. We’ll try to make sense of things. Since neither of us have the habit of pulling our punches, it should be an entertaining and informative conversation. I always enjoy speaking with Jonathan.
Click this link to register. Spaces are limited.
And please send me any questions you’d like us to address!
There have been a few polls showing that Arab Israelis have felt more identified with their country after October 7. This is an encouraging sign. It means that people with supposedly different worldviews have rallied around basic decency and the human institutions that uphold it.
Amal Oraby, the Palestinian Israeli lawyer and human rights activist, told me that there’s another explanation for the rise in support: fear. Arab Israelis are scared that they will be harassed and threatened, just as Amal has been, for expressing a dissenting opinion on the war.
Israeli society won’t accept a minority that is part of an enemy nation, albeit committed to peaceful means of domestic protest, Amal believes. It is this tension that causes the state to treat Arabs worse than its Jewish citizens.
It’s a compelling argument. Why should the country dedicate resources to a potential fifth column? My problem with this thinking, as I told Amal, is that it’s too convenient.
Israel is a democracy, in which every citizen expresses their self-interest through their vote. The country looks as it does because it reflects the will of the voters, more or less.
But the Arabs of Israel have, like many of their brothers and cousins in the region, prejudiced pride over pragmatism, and abstained from taking full advantage of their rights.
Arabs vote in fewer numbers than the Jews. Only once has an Arab party entered into a governing coalition, yet their elected officials continue to collect their taxpayer funded pay-checks for doing essentially nothing to close the education gaps and deal with an unbearable crime wave plaguing Arab towns for years.
In order to get things done, you have to get your hands “dirty” and play the democracy game. The ultra-Orthodox Jews — who ostensibly don’t believe in democracy — have long been part of Israeli governments where they cut deals for the benefit of their constituents. Why can’t the Arabs?
This, in a country where, any citizen of good standing — Jew or non-Jew — can become prime minister. They are full citizens of the country. What good does it pretend to be otherwise?
Amal thought this was too much. “Gaslighting,” he called it. Israel isn’t ready to see an Arab lead the country.
For the moment, he’s right. But I’m old enough to remember Tupac rapping “We ain't ready, to see a black President” ten years before Barack Obama was inaugurated. It was impossible until all of a sudden it wasn’t.
There’s a face that many of us in Israel have gotten used to over the past two months that might one day be the guy to break the barrier.
Yoseph Haddad, a Christian Arab and 38-year old activist, is probably the most effective defender of Israel in the world.
After he recuperated from a grave injury sustained in the 2006 Lebanon war, he has been fighting every anti-Israel argument in college campuses and in major media outlets with evidence and reason.
He has everything you’d want in a political leader except for experience. He’s relentless, fierce, handsome, charismatic and courageous. It’d be very difficult to challenge his loyalty given that he has fought for his country as a Jewish democracy. He knows full well what he is defending, and does it with more vigour and impact than the country’s best diplomats.
If he espoused ideas that promoted security and wealth generation for the majority of the country — why not vote for the guy?
For now, the truth is somewhere between Amal and me. I just happen to think that it’s trending in my favor.