“Equality demands loyalty.” Such is the title of the editorial that appeared in the recent June 16 issue of the JERUSALEM POST. The editorial exemplifies the mental and moral flabbiness that now dominates Israel’s intellectual and political elites.

The editor begins by referring to the current coalition crisis, which has led many to speculate that the Arab parties may serve as an alternative to Shas in the Barak Government. Apparently, this speculation has prompted Shas to call Arab MKs untrustworthy. Bishara, for example, is said by a Shas leader to be “a sworn servant of Hizbullah.” This description of Bishara strikes the JERUSALEM POST editor as “racist hyperbole.” Yet a moment later the editor affirms “Bishara’s frequent public praise for Hisbullah,” as well as Bishara’s “disavowal of the country he is meant to represent”!

Before elaborating on Bishara, the editor daintily refers to seven Arab MKs who attended the funeral of Syrian president Hafez Assad. He notes that Ahmed Tibi, who led the group, “toured the Palestinian refugee camp in Ya’ armuk along with Naif Hawatmeh.” We are not told, however, that Hawatmeh is the head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization, and that contact with the DFLP is prohibited by Israel law. Instead, our tender editor indulgently chides Israel’s Arab MKs saying: “it was wrong of representatives of Israel’s government to identify so openly with a community whose future is one of the major outstanding issues of the peace talks with the Palestinians.”

It is when he elaborates on Bishara, however, that the JERUSALEM POST editor reveals his cerebral vacuity. We learn that, in a recent interview with the London-based AL-QUDS AL-ARABI, Bishara not only advocated a Palestinian state, but “went so far as to recommend Arafat create an ‘evolving state’ beginning on a small area of land, but with total freedom from his obligations under the Oslo agreements.’”

Our complaisant editor comments: “Arab MKs have the right to favor a Palestinian state, and they can even question the Jewish particularism inherent in the State of Israel. These are positions shared by some Israelis Jews, and which should be subject to democratic decision-making.”

I ask: What is one to say about this editor who seems oblivious of the law prohibiting any party that negates the Jewish character of the State? Indeed, what is one to say about the mentality of this JERUSALEM POST editor who regards the existence of the Jewish state as merely a matter for “democratic decision-making”!?

Notice how he trivializes the deadly intentions of Israel’s Arab MKs.. Notice how this democratized editor refuses to take the seditious words and deeds of Israel’s Arab MKs seriously – and he hardly touches the surface of their criminality.

But given the POST editor’s democratism, why should these Arab MKs be loyal to the Jewish state? After all, if the issue of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state depends simply on “democratic decision-making,” then, inasmuch as “democratic decision-making” ultimately depends on the egalitarian principle of one adult/one vote – a principle that renders disloyal Arabs politically equal to loyal Jews – it’s pure nonsense to maintain, as the POST editor maintains, that “equality demands loyalty.” To the contrary, democratic equality demands nothing but a leveling of all moral, political, ethnic, and religious distinctions!

But now we can understand why the POST’S culturally anemic editor does not call upon the Knesset to remove the parliamentary immunity of Israel’s disloyal Arab MKs. He (like so many Jewish MKs) fear the canard of racism. Heaven forbid, therefore, that this milk-and-toast editor should call upon the Attorney General to investigate these disloyal Arabs, who are handsomely paid from the public treasury to subvert the one and only homeland of the Jewish people!

With Israel’s very survival at stake, this is no time for politeness. The JERUSALEM POST editorial of June 16 reflects not only the mindlessness of Israel’s opinion-makers and policy-makers, but their utter lack of testosterone.

Prof. Paul Eidelberg is:

• President, Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East
  
• Columnist, Jewish Press
  
• Member, International Council, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.

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Concept Therapy