Strange days are upon us. Through the use of technology from the future, and with everything transpiring in the virtual arena, Israelis are witnessing a repeat eruption. They watch, yet they do not understand what it is they see. They gaze at the lava erupting from the volcano and fail to comprehend what exactly is burning their feet.
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The recent attack on police officers in Kafr Qasim can be dismissed as an anecdote. There are those who would go so far as to call it unusual, and as such, something that requires a particularly assertive response. Quite a few commentators would go so far as to refer to this and similar recent incidents as a "phenomenon." Despite the professionalism of the TV channels and the integrity they are so famous far, I am searching for the context no one in the media is willing to discuss. We live in strange times, in which the truth is hidden from sight, and that truth is that the State of Israel is in a state of civil war.
For anyone born before the year 2000, the word "war" immediately conjures up images of a tank against the background of Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill, but this is a mistake as that image is representative of yesterday's war. In 2021, wars are fought on social media. The wounded are not soldiers stationed at the front but our national consciousness, which is battered and defeated time and again. Gaze into your souls, and take a look at what is going on there, at a time when our children are used as punching bags in the services of a government no one voted for. This is how we lose.
The faulty perception of the term "war" blinds us from discerning what is taking place, and that is: Vast swathes of the State of Israel's territory are a kind of no man's land where no government representative dares enter and hope to emerge alive. These territories, from the Galil in the north to the Negev in the south, are in effect outside of the State of Israel. While you may be able to send a car full of Jews into these cities, no one would wager they would make it out in one piece. All this is happening as the Israeli government is willingly and wholeheartedly handing over everything that separates a community from a state and asking nothing in return.
Israel's Arab citizens, history has determined for us, share a common home with the Jews. As long as this is the case, the State of Israel must ensure their status as citizens with equal rights. And if we're already on the subject, equal obligations would also be a welcome change. These two communities are engaged in a religious and cultural war. An unequivocal defeat is the only thing that will allow us to live together. Residents of Kafr Qasim have come to this elementary political understanding a long time ago.
From this perspective, Arab Israelis are ahead of their Jewish counterparts by some 20 years. Arab Israelis are a faithful, principled, and determined sector. They have never done anything they did not warn they would do in advance, and they are willing to pay for their sacred values in money and in blood. They face a confused, leaderless public that has lost its way. Just watch the video from Kafr Qasim: As a local thug throws punches at a representative of the state, the police officer's friend stands with his weapon on his back and captures the incident on camera. Could anyone fail to discern who the clear winner is?
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