"Have you gone mad-" That is what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Arab Knesset members who condemned the decision of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to label Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. No, they haven't gone mad. They have knowingly put themselves on the other side of the fence. Unfortunately, this was no mistake -- it was a deliberate decision that aims to cut off all cooperation, good will and reconciliation attempts between Jews and Arabs along the Green Line. The really wretched participants in this incident are the few Jews who still belong to the Joint Arab List. Older people may still recall that in 1964 Jordanian soldiers shot Naim Yermiyahu, who belonged to a Communist Party-affiliated Nahal Brigade unit, while he was working in the fields of Yad Hannah (the only Communist kibbutz). His friend Abraham Juri was killed by a flurry of bullets while trying to save him. The Communist leaders, who received their dictates from the Soviet Union, which supported the Arabs, went out to Yad Hannah. In the car were Moshe Sneh, Yair Tsaban, Efraim Sneh and Meir Vilner. Vilner, a vassal of Russia, spoke as though there might have been no Arab fire, rather "Israeli provocation." The others despised him, but they did not remove him from the car. Within a year, most of the Jews in the Communist Party left. But Vilner and David (Sasha) Khenin -- the father of MK Dov Khenin, currently the only Jew in the Joint Arab List -- remained. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Not so for the Arab MKs. Most of them identify with Israel's enemies and don't want us to have acquaintances in Rahat (a Bedouin town), nor do they want us to accept them as doctors in the hospitals, to admit them to universities or to hire them in the booming high-tech industry. That's because this is the only way they can convince the public in Nazareth, Berlin and Dublin that Israel is an apartheid state. Anything that displays cooperation, restraint and compromise is bad for them. They are the natural heirs to Vladimir Lenin, who is credited with the phrase "the worse, the better" -- that is, the worse things are for the people, the better for the revolution. It's not just the Arab faction that planted these seeds of destruction. There have been legislative initiatives proposed by Likud and Yisrael Beteynu members that haven't improved things, but they are secondary compared to this show of total support from the Arab MKs for a terrorist organization that is despised not only by Israel, but by Arab countries in the region. After all, the Arab MKs don't care how much Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is damaging the pan-Arab cause, as long as he is a sworn enemy of Israel. The announcement made by the Balad and Hadash parties (both of which belong to the Joint Arab List) has taught us that Israel must go over their heads in its efforts to build bridges with the Arab community. That is the best step to take.
