Over the past several weeks the Arab parties and their apologists on the Jewish Left have accused various political parties of being racist for ruling out a government that would partner with Joint Arab List.
That accusation is wrong because the Joint Arab List is simply so far away ideologically from all other parties to the point it cannot serve as the basis for any coalition.
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What is this ideological gulf? First and foremost, it has to do with the Joint Arab List's refusal to accept the two-state solution as the basis for the resolution of this age-old conflict.
It is sad that the party has turned its back on the liberal worldview that has been championed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I. In fact, the self-determination and separation of nations to prevent oppression was the goal of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin and this is what led the Soviet Union to support the UN Partition Plan.
Israel represents the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their land. That is a better definition than calling it a Jewish state. If the Palestinians say they want a country that would represent their unique national identity, why would they want to deny the Jews the same thing?
And just like they have strong connections with the Arab world, we too have a strong connection to the Jewish Diaspora.
Of course, we cannot ignore the Palestinian minority that lives within the Green Line, but that minority must not reject Israel's character, just like the Hungarians in Romania and the Ukrainians in Poland don't reject the national identity of those countries. Civil rights should be guaranteed to everyone in Israel, and perhaps be enshrined in a special charter and a basic law.
For now, there is no feasible way of having a government that can join hands with the Arab parties because they won't accept the Law of Return that grants every Jew the right to live in Israel and they reject various state symbols.
Some on the Israeli Left have abandoned the nationalist core of their identity and are now willing to accept without questions the nationalist narrative of the Palestinians, adopting their stance that they are the victims of the conflict.
But we must remember that the Palestinians were the ones that launched war and refused to compromise when the Partition Plan was approved, and they tried to eliminate the Jewish population here with the help of the Arab states.
