THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions (from Israel\u2019s Declaration of Independence, May 14, 1948).<\/p>\n
\u00a0Is Israel still a democracy? Do all citizens of Israel have equal rights? And equal opportunities?\u00a0 And, do Israeli Arabs (21% of the population) fully participate in the political processes in Israel?\n<\/p>\n
These questions are very much on my mind these days since Naphtali Bennet and Yair Lapid in the announcement of their new political party (Yachad-Together) last week announced that they will not include Israeli Arab political parties in their \u201cZionist\u201d coalition! Avigdor Lieberman (Israel is our Home) and Gadi Eisenkot (Yashar, ) have foolishly said the same thing. Only Yair Golan, the head of my preferred party, The Democrats, has denounced this and said that he would of course include an Arab political party in the coalition.\n<\/p>\n
This should be obvious, since they are citizens of Israel, but unfortunately it is not clear to these other \u201copposition\u201d leaders that Israeli Arabs should be full citizens of Israel. For me, this is shocking. It is simply wrong and unconscionable in our supposedly democratic state.\n<\/p>\n
What is wrong with Bennett, Lapid, Lieberman and Eisenkot? Why does their view of who belongs in an Israel government coalition exclude Israeli Arab political parties? Is their view of Zionism such that they think that Israel is only for Jews? Have they ever been to a hospital in Israel where almost half of the medical staff are Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship? Or to a hotel, or a national park, or to a pharmacy??? And, have they read Israel\u2019s Declaration of Independence (see above).\n<\/p>\n
There are currently 4 Arab political parties in Israel.\n<\/p>\n
Ra\u2019am (United Arab List): An Islamist party which used to represent the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement, but has become independent of them, focusing on social conservatism and pragmatism, known for being the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition\n<\/p>\n
Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality): A non-Zionist, left-wing party that is technically Arab and Jewish, supporting communist ideology, Arab-Jewish cooperation, and advocating for a two-state solution.\n<\/p>\n
Ta\u2019al (Arab Movement for Renewal): Led by Ahmad Tibi, it is a moderate Arab nationalist party.\n<\/p>\n
Hadash and Ta\u2019al are running together in this upcoming election.\n<\/p>\n
Balad (National Democratic Assembly): A secular party focused on Palestinian nationalism, advocating for a \u201cstate of all its citizens\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
In most recent polls, these four parties are projected to win 10-11 seats altogether in the next Knesset out of 120. The \u201cOpposition\u201d parties (opposed to Bibi, Ben Gvir, Smotrich and the ultra-orthodox parties which have formed the most extremist and dangerously irresponsible government in the history of Israel) are polling at around 58 seats on a good day. They need 61 to form a government. In practice, this will mean that they will need to include at least one Arab political party in the government.\n<\/p>\n
In the last \u201cgovernment of change\u201d, led by Bennet and Lapid, Monsour Abbas\u2019s party known as Ra\u2019am was a member of the governing coalition. This was historic and very consequential. It showed what was possible in a government of change and healing.\n<\/p>\n
Abbas and his party should certainly be invited to join the government again. Not only has he recognized Israel as a Jewish state, but he has stated many times that he is willing to cooperate with this kind of government. And he is an excellent politician and parliamentarian. There is absolutely no reason that he and his party should be excluded from the government (other than pandering to populist sentiments or outright racism).\n<\/p>\n
Besides being the pragmatic thing to do\u2013 to make sure that Bibi and his devilish political partners can no longer rule us with impunity and authoritarianism\u2013 it is the moral and the democratic thing to do. Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship should be included in the government, and given full respect and dignity, since they are citizens of this state. This would be the Jewish, democratic and Zionist thing to do.\n<\/p>\n
The commandment to care for \u201cthe stranger\u201d (the minority) is mentioned more times than\u00a0any\u00a0other commandment in the Torah.\n<\/p>\n
According to the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer the Great noted that \u201cthe Torah warns 36 times, and some say 46 times, not to oppress the stranger\u201d (Babylonian Talmud,\u00a0Bava M\u2019tzia\u00a059b).\n<\/p>\n
It must be done in this coming election in Israel, not only to save us from the fanatical and irresponsible government that has ruled us for the last 3 \u00bd years but also to ensure a better future for all of Israel\u2019s citizens.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tRabbi Dr Ron Kronish is the Founding Director the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), which he directed for 25 years. Now retired, he is an independent educator, author, lecturer, writer, speaker, blogger and consultant. He is the editor of 5 books, including Coexistence and Reconciliation in Israel–Voices for Interreligious Dialogue (Paulist Press, 2015). His new book, The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, a View from Jerusalem, was published by Hamilton Books, an imprint of Rowman and LIttelfield, in September 2017. He recently (September 2022) published a new book about peacebuilders in Israel and Palestine entitled Profiles in Peace: Voices of Peacebuilders in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which is available on Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble and the Book Depository websites,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[9860,10679,21234,37],"class_list":{"0":"post-96615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-arab-israelis","9":"tag-democracy-in-israel","10":"tag-elections-in-israel","11":"tag-israel"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116514702159882714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}