Mira Awad and the Arab boycott

Mira Awad, an Israeli Arab female, is the most recent victim of boycotts by Arabs. We must understand the real intent of the campaign to boycott Israeli goods “produced in the territories.” These boycotts are  a staged separation of Israel’s Jewish population from Israel’s Arab and other nonJewish citizens. The separate development demanded by Arabs, mostly Muslims in Israel, for Palestinians, is in essence avoluntary separation and apartheid. The Arabs demand separate administrative control, separate educational institutions, and  partition between different ethnic and religious groups in Israel. Then, in a show of ultimate chutzpah, they accuse Israel (and the Jews, of course) of committing apartheid.

There have been three stages of the war waged between Israel and her enemies. The first is the failed attempt to  physically annihilate “the Jewish entity.” After five wars, we entered the second stage. This stage was a war of attrition on all fronts; a war of terror. Thousands died, but this also failed to force “the Jews” to flee the State of Israel en masse; it failed to break the morale of the people. The third phase is what we are now experiencing on a global scale. This is the international campaign to delegitimize the state and  dehumanize its Jewish citizens. The  war of attrition waged against the Jewish people in the decades and centuries that preceded Jewish self-determination in Palestine in 1948 is the denial of our history and the creation of a narrative that divorces us from our past. This is anongoing process that has been waged against us since the Roman occupation.

Actress and singer Mira Awad is being boycotted by Arab pro-apartheid activists living in Nazareth,Israel). The culture and values of the Arab world  practiced today are deception, dissimulation, and bigotry. Their fellow travelers, residing in Israel, cannot accept that a Jewish entity, the nation state of Israel, can control their lives. In their eternal hatred rooted in historical superiority, they are incapable of declaring their allegiance to a non-Islamic flag. Their alleged pan-Arab identity prohibits them from subsuming their ethnic prejudice within an Israeli identity even when it grants them liberty, equality, and fraternity (the national motto of France).

This isn’t about politics nor is it about “natural justice.” The theology of Palestine is hatred backed by religious scripture. The PLO is considered to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian (i.e. non-Jewish) people. While it is committed on paper to a secular state, its Islamic identity negates the difference between politics and religion. The genius of Arafat was that he was able to exploit sentiment in both religious and secular believers. His ambiguity of revolutionary rhetoric allowed the European, and subsequently the American left, to sell its soul to the Islamic cause.

Israel must marginalize the bigots and show up the haters for the damaged goods they bring to any debate. It must attack the problem even as it fights for its survival. Israel’s most urgent task is to integrate  all of its citizens into the national mosaic. It cannot do so while Arab bigots in Nazareth boycott their own kind for associating with Jews.