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ADL Head Slams Loyalty Oath For Arab Israelis
The loyalty oath bill drafted by the party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, above, fulfills proposal he made during election campaign. by Joshua Mitnick A panel of government ministers is scheduled on Sunday to vote on introducing a bill to institute a loyalty oath as a precondition for citizenship, a proposal that helped Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party to an unprecedented third place finish in recent elections. The second bill is slated for a full cabinet vote and would outlaw public expressions of grief over the Palestinian displacement in 1948 — known as Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic — on Israel’s Independence Day holiday. Entitled “Loyalty Oath – A Condition for Citizenship,” the draft legislation proposes requiring 
“I have a lot of problems with the proposed language because by including a pledge to Zionism it smacks of discrimination,” said Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “It’s odious. Zionism is something you should aspire to, but it shouldn’t be something that you get punished for if you don’t.” Foxman noted that the oath would also create problems for fervently Orthodox Jews who don’t recognize Israel’s Zionist character. “Americans are not comfortable with loyalty oaths — this goes back to our experience with McCarthy,” he said. Foxman said a loyalty oath is acceptable if it’s inclusive. Arab civil rights leaders say the laws threaten to disenfranchise Israel’s one-fifth minority, and have appealed for an international campaign to lobby against passage, including diaspora Jewry. The bills are the latest development in a deterioration of ties reflected in a recent Haifa University survey that indicated both a growth in refusal among the Arab minority to accept Israel as a Jewish state and a rise in Holocaust denial. Yisrael Beitenu officials portrayed Arabs who mark the Palestinian Nakba as disloyal and likened them to Hamas’ leadership in Gaza. “Both of them are calling for the immediate destruction of the State of Israel,” said Tsach Saar, a spokesman for Knesset Member Alex Miller, who sponsored the bill. “I don’t know any democratic country that would allow the existence of such an absurdity,” Saar said. “We are raising the issue of how the people in Israel are grappling with the phenomenon of a lack of loyalty to the state alongside the enjoyment of equal rights.” The spokesman predicted that the Nakba law, which was floated in the past but never came to a Knesset vote, would pass a cabinet vote on Sunday by a small margin and move to the parliament. The legislation, which proposes a three-year jail term for public expressions of mourning on Independence Day, was approved this week by a cabinet subcommittee on legislation, but the ruling is being appealed by members of the Labor Party to the full cabinet. “[The Nakba law] is totally contrary to the spirit of democracy that Israel represents,” Foxman said. “It limits freedom of speech and freedom of expression.” The Association for Civil Rights in Israel condemned the initial approval given to the Nakba bill by the cabinet. “Marking the Nakba does not threaten the safety of the State of Israel, but is rather a legitimate and fundamental human right of any person, group or people, expressing grief at the face of a disaster they experienced,” said ACRI President Sami Michael in a statement. The bill, the statement continued, reflects disturbing trends in Israel, which “extend far beyond the issue of the legitimate rights of the Arab minority. It crushes the moral boundaries we have set for ourselves and points to the surest way to brutal oppression of everyone’s freedom of speech.” Arab civil rights leaders in Israel said the proposals are fanning domestic nationalist turmoil that could spark violence like the riots between Arab and Jewish residents of Acre on Yom Kippur last year. Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center, an advocacy group for Arab citizens of Israel, said his organization has embarked on a campaign to enlist international support, including American Jews, to lobby against the two laws. “There is anger in the Palestinian Arab community in Israel. We will not accept our marginalization. The definition of Israel as a Jewish state excludes us,” he said. “Every other day there is anti-Arab legislation proposed. They will ask us to dance on one leg, but we will not dance. We will remember the Nakba. If someone wants to complicate the Middle East by confronting the Arab community, we will protect our rights peacefully. “ Mohamad Darawshe, the co-chairman of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a group that promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence and equality, said there’s a sense of escalation in the Arab community and that their status as citizens is under fire. “There’s a sense that Arab citizens are on shaky ground. The possibility of maintaining status as citizens and residents in what we consider our homeland is being challenged. That is creating a great sense of uneasiness in the Arab community,” he said. Yisrael Beitenu’s recent election slogan — “without loyalty there is no citizenship” — appealed to Israeli Jews upset by expressions of solidarity by Arab citizens with Palestinians in Gaza during a three-week war with Hamas. Arabs complain that national symbols like the Israeli flag, with its Star of David, and the “Hatikvah” anthem don’t represent them. The rift between Arab and Jewish Israelis has been growing in recent years, according to the Haifa University public opinion survey, which found a surge in Arab Israeli rejection of some of the main narratives of the Jewish state. According to the poll, which was overseen by Professor Sammy Smoohah, the head of the university’s social sciences faculty, 40.5 percent of participants said they don’t believe the Holocaust occurred, up from 28 percent. Meanwhile, 41 percent recognized Israel’s right to be a Jewish and democratic state compared to 66 percent in 2003. Even more troubling: some 13 percent of Israeli Arabs said they support the use of violence to improve their lives, almost triple the percentage from 2003. Yisrael Beitenu Knesset Member David Rotem, the sponsor of the loyalty oath law and the chair of the parliament’s constitution and law committee, told Israel’s Arutz Sheva news service the poll is evidence of the “bottomless hatred toward the Jewish people of a large part of Arab Israelis. .... We must wake up and smell the coffee and take action immediately.” Smoohah warned against an alarmist response. While the rise in Holocaust denial is disturbing, he said, it does not necessarily point to a radicalization among Arab Israelis. “I think it’s something to be condemned. It has to be corrected, but it shouldn’t be overplayed,” he said. He said that relations between the Jewish establishment and the country’s one-fifth minority have experienced ups and downs over three decades and that the survey’s findings regarding support of violence don’t necessarily point to a meltdown. Smoohah added that Holocaust denial among Arab Israelis is not driven by ideology, but rather by rising political tensions. “This means that the Arabs are very much embittered, they are under stress and they have strong grievances that the state has to take care of,” he said. “It’s a political statement. It’s a way to protest and say that, ‘We are in very bad condition. ...The Shoah gives the Jewish people the license to victimhood, and if you are the victim, you deny us the status of the victim. We are also the victim.”
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