In the hot summer nights, the Palestinians are still dreaming that Israel will be annihilated by an intifada, Hezbollah, Iran, the Hamas and Palestinian Authority terrorist organizations, the “marches of millions” and the “marches of return,” and infiltrators who enter Israel as “visitors who don’t return.”
The combination of terrorism and waves of incomers—combined with international action against Israel—is designed to wear us down. The gambit is supposed to be carried out on the back of a civilian uprising that will lead to Israel being defined as a racist, apartheid disaster area that requires multinational forces to protect the persecuted Palestinian people. The attempt to demand that the United Nations set up an international force to “protect” the Palestinians in Gaza failed, despite the U.N. Security Council’s hypocritical condemnation, which included not a single word of criticism towards Hamas.
Arab MKs’ speeches in the Knesset, the “vision documents” from the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, the Islamic movement’s agenda—all of these make it clear that we are talking about an initiative that supports terrorism, incites “riots of civilian uprising,” calls for a demographic attack and prompts a demand for international protection for the Palestinians.
In the meantime, elected officials representing the Arab minority have the audacity to demand that the country’s definition as a Jewish state be revoked. At the same time, they are demanding a Palestinian state, as well as that Israel recognize their Palestinian-separatist national identity. This meaning is clear: They “deserve” nationality, but Jews (in their Islamist view) are nothing more than a religion without national rights.
This is the vision behind the violent protests of October 2000 that took place “inside” (a term that allows Palestinians to avoid using the word “Israel”), as well as in Judea and Samaria. This was the spirit behind the Arab MKs, the Monitoring Committee and others’ orchestration of the recent riots in Haifa in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza’s “marches of return” to “Palestine” en route to seize the Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza.
This is a Palestinian plan to wipe us out—to cause Israel to be isolated like a leper, as South Africa used to be. It takes advantage of the hypocritical, self-righteous Israeli left; weak law enforcement; the detached-from-reality Supreme Court; and European and international pressure that is fed by hatred of Jews.
After the Supreme Court rejected attempts to pass bills on “family reunification,” the subject has returned to the Knesset, and the absurdity is exposed. While the Joint Arab List is demanding that Palestinians married to Arab Israelis be granted Israeli citizenship and permitted to live in Israel, rather than in the “liberated” Palestinian territories, they are also claiming that Israel is a “racist, apartheid state.” And they rejected the suggestion that the area known as the “Triangle,” which comprises three Palestinian cities, be transferred to the control of the P.A. and “liberated” as part of an exchange of territories.
The motive behind their stubborn insistence on remaining under a “racist Zionist regime” is clear.
The catch is that while the Supreme Court convicts terrorists despite their “right to protest and work,” when it comes to its stance on legislation that protects us against demographic threats, it falls into the trap of oversensitivity to “universality” and “[Palestinian] human dignity and freedom.” It does not identify “family reunification” as part of the attempt to destroy us (Knesset member Avi Dichter recently pointed out the connection between family reunification and the rise in terrorist attacks).
The Supreme Court thereby hurts Jewish human dignity, liberty and right to life.
Dr. Reuven Berko was the adviser on Arab affairs to the Jerusalem district police and a writer for Israel Hayom.
