For 30 years, we had the British, who arrived in order to, among other things, help us found our national homeland and encountered Arabs who did not agree that the terrible wrong Europe had done to the Jews should cause them to give us territory to us. The local Arabs, who had been citizens of the Turkish Muslim empire, saw themselves as part of "Greater Syria" and became, mostly because of us, owners of a Palestinian national identity. They were outraged at the Jewish High Commissioner and the British tendency to help the Jews, and used terrorism against the Jewish minority as well as the Mandate authorities.
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Our parents called these clashes "incidents," but in reality they were Arab attacks against Jews and the Jews' use of weapons to defend themselves. At the end of every round of violence, each side would count its dead and try to convince the British that all the blame was on the other.
But that ended in 1948, the moment the state was established and gave citizenship to all those who wanted us far away from here. The moment we became responsible for the education, health, and welfare of Arab Israelis (and it can't be said we did an outstanding job), we could no longer blame the British. The "they started it" story is over. We bear the responsibility – whether the people who initiate the violence come from the fringes of Arab or Jewish society. Phenomena of Jewish beastliness and brutality in the Jewish state should be looked at under a magnifying glass, because they make up part of the ruling majority.
Anyone who accepts the asymmetry in how the public and media treats Arab violence compared to Jewish violence has to remember that we aren't talking about occasional clashes between young people from both sides that is under the nose of a British Mandate, which is supposed to decide who the guilty one is. When Jews became responsible for upholding public order, any violation of it by Jews is a recipe for asymmetry. Unlike the events of October 2000, initiatives by various officials to highlight Jewish-Arab cooperation and the need to continue it and strengthen it for the sake of both sides are worthy of praise. After any non-Zionist Arab (other than Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas) has been labeled a "supporter of terrorism", and any question about the legitimacy of Arabs taking part in the government (and not being satisfied with the large role they play in the healthcare and pharmaceutical fields) has been called into question, it is time to work on the issue of legitimacy. Now that the Religious Zionist party has made it into the Knesset, it proves how quickly radical ethno-religious provocations can succeed and drag us all backward.
The truth is that the situation is fragile. All the connections between Jews and Jews, Jews and Arabs, religious and secular Israelis, are very delicate and every time they unravel, it surprises us and we get ready for a few years of hostility until things go back to the way they were. But the fragility shouldn't surprise us, frustrate us, or cause us to deepen the schism. It should warn us that if we don't water the tree of "togetherness," it could shrivel and die. Anyone to whom this nation is important and for whom it is important that everyone who lives in it feels that they are living in their own home and not a guest must water it consistently, and not depend on life doing the word and always leading to positive places.
In this country, we will build something successful and very special, but it won't be a "melting post," not the American formula (as it was described by Israel Zangwill in his 1908 play of the same name), and not what David Ben-Gurion hoped for in the nation's first years.
Instead, we have a sort of patchwork quilt, and the stitches between the patches must be taken care of. It sometimes unravels, and we need to use a needle and thread to strengthen the patches. It looks like we won't ever manage to achieve perfect integration, but at lead we can hope for integration that will provide us with welcome boredom.
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