Is there a fifth column in Israel? Evidence points both ways.
Beware those who would view the latest round of Palestinian terrorism against Israel as quotidian, just part of the expected landscape of the Jewish state. Certainly terrorism — tragically — has long been part of Israel’s reality. Countless families have been impacted by Palestinian terrorists’ random acts of cruelty.
Yes, in the past, these outbreaks of violence have happened around the month of Ramadan, but this time — this Ramadam — the Palestinian violence is different.
Both the perpetrators and the victims are different.
Behind this latest surge of violence in Israel are, primarily, Israeli Arabs, that is, Israeli citizens — Israelis who vote, who pay taxes, who have a representative on Israel’s Supreme Court, who sit in the current government coalition, who receive Israeli services from both the federal and the municipal governments.
Are these new terrorists a fifth column?
Taking “credit” for one of the recent terror attacks, the March 27 murders in Hadera, Israel, was ISIS.
Whether this is true or not, it is worth noting that one of the perpetrators was charged in 2016 with attempting to join ISIS. Most experts say that it is unlikely the Hadera attack was carried out by ISIS, but again, we must ask:Is Israel in danger of harboring a fifth column? Are Arab terrorists or groups outside Israel infiltrating Israel, or Israeli minds?
Israel’s Arabs are in an existential crisis. On the one hand, they have leaders like Jamal Zahalka, a former Knesset member. According to TPS, he told Palestine, a Hamas-affiliated publication:
“The struggle of the internal Arabs as part of the Palestinian people is not for the attainment of civil rights [in Israel] but is a national matter and a struggle whose purpose is to protect the country as Arab and Palestinian.”
Here, a former MK, an Israeli citizen, clearly states that the civil rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs are not the goal. The goal is a nationalist, exclusionary one. The vision is emptying the Middle East of its one Jewish state. Here is an Israeli Arab who is not opposed to “apartheid,” which presumes two societal segements; rather, he wants a society with only one segment. All Arab. Nothing Jewish.
On the other side is the mayor of Umm al-Fahm, from where the two Hadera attackers originated. Following the attack, the mayor repudiated the city’s Facebook posting expressing condolences to the families of the two terrorists. The mayor, Dr. Samir Sobhi Mahamed, told Israel’s Channel 12 that the Facebook post did not express his personal opinion, that it was a serious mistake made by Umm al-Fahm’s spokesperson.
What a tragic irony: Many of the fatalities of the latest surge of violence in Israel were members of Israeli minority groups — specifically, Christians and Druze. Israel’s diverse ethnic fabric — often overlooked — was tragically reflected in the victims of the Palestinian terrorism.
For the Palestinian perpetrators, it is probably immaterial whether they murder Jews, Christians, Druze or Arabs. Their goal is to sow chaos, to undermine Israel and Zionism. As reflected by Jamal Zahalka, there is no desire for belonging to a diverse state, only to an all Arab, all Palestinian one (and, increasingingly, an all Muslim one).
We believe that the majority of Israeli Arabs do not share Zahalka’s anti-Israel worldview, but it is foolish to deny his sentiment. It has been growing in Israeli Arab circles since 2000.
Israel’s government must make it a top priority to counteract this dangerous trend, primarily through continued outreach and inclusion in the economic and educational spheres. But it must also make sure that its security services — whose personnel come from all corners of Israeli society — root out this fifth column before it finds a stronger foothold.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
