Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons (and Daughters)

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bhad distributed literature outlining its program and goals in bwhich they demanded that “the right of national self-determina- btion for the Palestinian people also includes the masses in b[Israel’s] Galilee and the Triangle.” And so in January 1979 bseveral Arab students distributed a pamphlet calling for support bof the PLO and the disappearance of the “Zionist entity.” bMoreover, some Arabs fired off a cable to the Damascus meeting bof the Palestine National Council to voice their support of the bPLO’s struggle against the ever-present “Zionist entity.”

bA furor arose in Israel; more “shock”; more demands for bexpulsion of all PLO-supporting students from the school. The buniversities did nothing, but tough General Avigdor Ben-Gal is- bsued “stay-at-home” orders to six of the students. The orders bkept them limited to their villages and were to be in effect for bthree months—enough time to make them heroes and thus allow bthem to return and continue their incitement.

bThe six came from six different Israeli villages: Tamra, Ar- baba, Kfar Yasif, Musmus, Sandala, and Umm al-Fahm. It is binstructive to look at two of the students so that we may get a bclear picture of the insanity of the Israeli policy, as reported by bYosef Valter in Maariv (February 16, 1979).

bMasoud A’jabria, twenty-four, is completing his M.A. at bHebrew University in international relations while going to law bschool.

bBesides Masoud, there is his brother, Sa’id, learning bchemistry at the Mizrachi-religious-sponsored Bar-Ilan Univer- bsity; a sister, studying at a teacher’s seminar in Hadar Am, and bfive younger brothers and sisters are attending high school. Nat- burally, someday they will go on to a university. Yosef Valter bvisited the family and reported: “From a brief conversation you bfind that all of them think and speak like Masoud, the older bbrother.” That is a starkly frightening sentence when one re- bmembers that the editor of the Hebrew University student pa- bper, Arye Bender, recalls a conversation he once had with bMasoud A’jabria. Said the Arab: “In order to achieve a Palesti- bnian revolution we must shed rivers of blood.”

bJamal Mahajana, twenty-one, comes from Umm al-Fahm. bHis is a small Arab family, with only six children, four of high bschool age, and one a teacher. Mahajana is a product of the bintegration Israeli myopics preach. He studied in the mostly b