1.
In the shadows of the violent twilight that Israel is experiencing, we've once again been exposed to the views of Israeli Arab public officials. Ostensibly citizens of their state, but in their consciousness they live under occupation in a country that kidnapped their land. This isn't fantasy but rather a persistent narrative marketed to their voters. About a decade ago, I interviewed then-Member of Knesset Jamal Zahalka who laid out his worldview for me. From his perspective, the State of Israel was born in sin, which he called "rape." The Jews forced the Arabs of the land to join the Jewish state which they never willingly accepted.
Take the Hadash party, a kind of dinosaur preserving Communist practices that have vanished from the wider world but still exist in this political nature reserve. Archie Brown's comprehensive book "The Rise and Fall of Communism" describes, among other things, the public conduct of party members in Soviet Russia. There was no possibility for spontaneous behavior or free will; only what the party dictate commanded, which was the word of the regime (today we call it "talking points"): The West is the enemy while other murderous regimes around are categorized as the world's oppressed and freedom fighters.
Chairman Ayman Odeh is presented as a moderate person, and each time proves his moderation like his statement this week following the release of three Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity in exchange for hundreds who murdered our children and families: "Happy about the release of the hostages and prisoners. From here we must free both peoples from the yoke of occupation. We were all born free." Indeed, these and those were free to choose good; these chose to live and those – to murder.
2.
A diligent and energetic Member of Knesset tried to convince Odeh of his error. She reminded him of the Maxim Restaurant in his city Haifa, where in October 2003 a terrorist carried out a suicide bombing. Twenty-one murdered. The recruiter of the terrorist is being released in the first phase of the deal. How can you equate the hostages with the terrorist, she wondered, and sent him to apologize there. In vain. From Odeh's perspective, we are occupiers, and occupation also breeds armed resistance. It's not pleasant, but when chopping wood, splinters fly, as Odeh's political fathers taught us.
For my part, one word dimmed the justice in the Member of Knesset's words. When describing the terrorist's journey from her home to the restaurant, she said that she "crossed from the territories to Israel." If our homeland places, the cradle of our historical nationality, the central scene of the Book of Books that we bequeathed to the whole world, is "territories," – and not Samaria, Judea or Benjamin - we have again flattened the existential discussion into merely a territorial one. And we have learned on our flesh through signs and plagues and disasters until the terrible October 7, that they are not fighting us over territory – for this our leaders offered many compromises – but over our very existence in the land of our forefathers' desire.
3.
Worse still, the term "territories" accepts the basic assumption of Odeh and his colleagues, and of our enemies in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and the entire region, that we are occupiers in our land, and that we have no connection to this land, apart from our military power that allows us, for now, to live here. From their perspective, Israel was and remains a "colonialist project" similar to the Boers (Afrikaners) in South Africa, the British in India and the Crusaders in the Land of Israel. Article 20 in the charter of the "moderate" Palestinian Authority's Fatah states that claims about "historical or spiritual connection of Jews to Palestine" "do not align with historical truths." In other words, there is no connection between Jews and the Holy Land, the events described in the Bible apparently took place on the moon. By the way, later in that same article it states that Jews are not a people (and therefore are not entitled to national self-determination and consequently to a state).
It was from this consciousness that the terrorist came to murder us and Hamas battalions invaded our communities and Odeh published his comparison between the murdered and their killers. At the very least, let us not be naive.
4.
And then we were exposed to the words of former Member of Knesset Hanin Zoabi, published by journalist Yishai Friedman on Channel 14: "This is what we choose, to resist. And it's not Hamas who is resisting. It's the Palestinian people. And yes, you cannot differentiate between Hamas and the Palestinian people. Those who entered on October 7 did not enter Israeli border. They entered their own land. This is their land." What apparently emerges from these words is that Hamas carried out the massacre also in her name. She also justified there the ongoing rocket fire from Gaza on Israel, claiming that otherwise the "oppression" and occupation would continue.
Zoabi belongs to the radical nationalist faction in Israeli Arab politics, the Balad party. They talk about equality and democracy but conceal their clear worldview about the armed conflict which they justify, and their opposition to Israel's existence (as a Jewish state. Of course...).
5.
This isn't just about the Samaria and Judea regions where we maintain military control, nor about the Gaza Strip from which we completely withdrew in summer 2005 and even took our graves. We were convinced that the complete withdrawal would grant legitimacy to defend our lives from the barbarians there. In vain. We continued to be called "occupiers," just because we sought to prevent weapons smuggling inside. Today we know the southern border with Egypt was open, and there was never a "siege."
The accusation of "occupation" also refers to Israel's Arab citizens. From the perspective of certain Arab public representatives, any Arab living under Jewish rule is under occupation. The fact that these are citizens with equal rights, who can vote and be elected to the Knesset, doesn't change anything from their perspective. Think about a prison where inmates are entitled to vote for prison management, but will never manage it.
By the way regarding occupation, in the Kingdom of Jordan there exists a huge Palestinian majority living under the bayonets of a Hashemite minority that arrived from Hejaz about a hundred years ago, and with some Bedouin tribes. The claim of occupation disappears when it comes to non-Jewish rule. Which should teach the useful idiots among us that this isn't a conflict over territory but over existence, not just about land but about the Jewish person living on it, whose right to it our enemies deny. When speaking about "human rights" it's worth remembering that their meaning in hypocritical universal discourse is that all human beings have rights, just not Jews.
6.
We find that there are four types of occupation: Samaria and Judea despite the Palestinian Authority; the Gaza Strip despite us not being there for 18 years; the State of Israel, which forced the Arabs who remained after the War of Independence (1948) to accept Israeli citizenship and live against their will in the Jewish state; and the Kingdom of Jordan, where a minority rules over a clear Palestinian majority. They all have a common denominator: where there are Jews, there is occupation. No Jews, no occupation.
Indeed, we do not live and act by the words of our enemies and their accomplices, just as history did not ask them when the Jewish return home to Zion began as our prophets predicted more than a thousand years before Islam came into the world. The real occupation occurred in 638, when Islam invaded our land. We only liberated our land from its occupiers. They oppose and fight us and delude themselves that they can stop our redemption. However, the present of an eternal people is examined in the perspective of eternity. At the end of the historical account, we are strengthening and they are weakening. "Violence (in Hebrew it is written: Hamas…) shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation and destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise" (Isaiah 60:18). Patience we need. And faith.
