Permissive Sedition

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

On November 15, 1999, I summarized an article published by the Israeli daily Ma’ariv about the creation of an Israeli Arab autonomy inside Israel and the government’s failure to do anything about it.

The Ma’ariv article describes the transformation of Israel’s Arab citizens—more than one million—into a nationalistic “Palestinian” entity intended to undermine what remains of Israel.

The Israeli Arabs, it was reported, are building for themselves a whole infrastructure of autonomous institutions much like the Jewish Yishuv had built during the reign of the British mandate. They are preparing for the day in which they will declare independence or petition the world to recognize their aspiration for “self determination.”

The article reveals that the Israeli Arabs are in fact acting for the creation of their own Parliament after the creation of the “Palestinian” state.

The article also details a long list of Israeli Arab institutions, including those whose aims are to “redeem” “Palestinian” lands from Jewish control through acquisition, and other institutions whose aim is to “force” Israel to absorb all the “Palestinian” refugees.

Although this Israeli Arab movement was reported by Ma’ariv eight years ago, I have yet to hear of any reaction by the government. Not because the Ma’ariv article was a fabrication. It would be far more realistic to believe that the government’s inaction simply reflects its long-standing and well-established policy of “permissive sedition.”

Permissive sedition is to be expected in Israel, if only because its ruling elites are more concerned about preserving their democratic credentials than preserving the one and only homeland of the Jewish people. They dare not suppress Arab sedition lest they jeopardize their democratic reputation, especially in the United States.

Probing deeper, the policy of permissive sedition is nothing more than the corollary of the government’s policy of self-restraint against Palestinian Arab terrorism. The two policies can thus be reduced to the policy of Jewish self-destruction—a policy deliberately pursued by Israel’s secular elites (to say nothing of the short-sighted collaboration of Israel’s religious parties!).

One can readily illustrate the policy of Jewish self-destruction by citing the government’s obviously deliberate emasculation of the Jewish content of the public school curriculum, as well as the government’s deletion of the words “Judaism” and “Eretz Israel” from the Soldier’s Code of Ethics. But no less revealing are various decisions of Israel’s Supreme Court, especially when its president was Judge Aharon Barak. Three of countless examples tell the story:

● The Court ruled that land purchased by the Jewish National Fund for the purpose of Jewish settlement must be sold to Arabs on an equal footing.

● The Court ruled that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza constitute “belligerent occupied territory”—a decision that legalized the government’s expulsion of 8,000 law-abiding Jews from their homes in Gaza, the destruction of their schools and synagogues, their farms and factories, causing unrelieved physical and psychological damage to the victims—mostly religious.

● The Court quashed the Attorney-General’s decision to disqualify the Balad Party for violating Basic Law: The Knesset, which prohibits any party that negates the Jewish character of the State.

Here I want to stress the point that Jewish self-destruction is the deliberate policy of Israel’s government. It is trivial to call this policy a consequence of “Jewish self-hatred” or the manifestation of a “Jewish death wish.” This language misleadingly reduces an objective political state of affairs to psychological or subjective terms.

The reality is this: the policy of “Jewish self-destruction” means that the government is willfully pursuing a variety of measures designed to eradicate Judaism from the Land of Israel, hence to destroy the Jewish state. This is the goal of Israel’s ruling elites, who proudly regard themselves as “multiculturalists.”

The High Priest of these multiculturalists is former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak.

Following in his footsteps—but without his judicial legerdemain—let us mention Israel’s President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Education Minister Yuli Tamir.

These democratically elected enemies of a Jewish state are not about to suppress the above mentioned seditious activities of Israel’s Arab citizens. It is not mere cowardice that deters Israel’s ruling elites. They cannot suppress Arab sedition without losing their multicultural credentials.