A few days ago the news reported that an Arab from the Galilee snatched a pistol from one of two security guards in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Arab managed to wound one of the guards before the other one shot him dead. In the exchange of fire, a number of passers-by were also injured. According to the security guard, it was the Arab who was firing wildly as he ran away, and it was his shots that injured by-standers.
According to members of the Arab's family. It could not have happened that way. The man was law-abiding, a husband and father of a small child. He was set up by the Jews. Then he was murdered by one of the security guards when he lay injured and helpless on the ground.
Israeli investigators do not buy that version. And they have considerable backing from the security cameras that operate in much of the Old City. We have seen the film on TV news. It shows the Arab stalking the two security guards as they walk along the street, then taking the pistol of one from the holster on his belt, running away and firing several times in the direction of the uninjured guard who was pursuing him. The last picture shows the Arab wounded and falling to the pavement. There is no picture relevant to the claim that the guard fired a fatal shot into the injured Arab.
The man's family says that all the pictures were fabricated. Their boy could not have done it.
Today I received e-mail from the Arab Association for Human Rights. These come periodically, one version in Hebrew and another in English. This issue concerns last year's Lebanon War. It notes the incidence of Arab civilian casualties in the north of Israel. Guess who is to blame? Israel, for putting its soldiers close to Arab communities, and thus exposing them to the rocket attacks. Moreover, it is Israel's fault that Arab communities had few if any warning sirens or bomb shelters. All of this amounts to a violation of international law. Next we will hear from the United Nations General Assembly.
Implicit here is the defense scheme that would be permitted by the Arab Association for Human Rights. Israel should position its army only around the high concentration of Jewish settlements in the center of the country. Hizbollah and its friends can do what they want in the Galilee, heavily populated by Arabs who should not be endangered by Israeli soldiers. The Jewish country should defend itself only where Jewish civilians might be hurt by the military operations.
It is true that Arab towns are not well protected by sirens or air raid shelters. However, that is at least partly the responsibility of the Arab elected officials of those towns, who choose not to spend money on such things, or to enforce Israeli laws requiring shelters to be part of any residential construction.
One of Israel's political parties (Israel Our Home), with 11 seats in the 120 member Knesset, heavily supported by Russian immigrants, and currently with a place in the government coalition, proposes trading areas of Israel heavily populated by Arabs for areas of the West Bank where there are substantial Jewish settlements. The Israeli Arabs would go along with their land and dwellings to Palestine.
There is no indication that sizable numbers of Israeli Jews currently accept this idea. The scheme is opposed intensely by Israeli Arab politicians, who cite their own loyalty and that of their constituents to Israel. Most of those politicians also demand the right to express their support for various actions of Palestinians and Arabs who are not friends of Israel.
Among my students who have been the best academically and the most congenial on a personal level have been Arabs from Israel or Palestine. Also, I have no complaints about the Arab families and young singles moving into my neighborhood of French Hill. None of which leads me to accept everything I hear from the other Arabs of Israel and nearby countries.
My American friends and relatives can expect lots of new Arab neighbors. The current frenzy against immigration may delay the flood, but the better sentiments embedded in American culture will open the gates for the refugees produced by American actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and maybe elsewhere. I hope that the vast majority will be good neighbors, not only in the initial years but in subsequent generations. And insofar as America is likely to be important to Israel as far toward the end of days as we can see, I also hope that for myself and mine.