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bly 28 years of independence, we shall be deliberately beclouding bour vision. b“Why, after all, should the Arab nationalists acquiesce in bthe continuation of Israeli sovereignty as an irreversible fact bwhen they have just succeeded in destroying the Lebanese state bas it had been for over 40 years?” bBack in December 1951, Judo L. Teller wrote a perceptive barticle in Commentary in which he pointed out: “It must be re- bmembered that the Arabs in Israel are not just a minority in the busual sense of the word. They are a defeated enemy with all that bthis signifies in mutual fear, resentment and suspicion. . . . b“In Haifa, a Jewish teacher exorted his pupils to be ‘good bcitizens of Israel and loyal sons of the Arab people.’ Michael bAssaf, writing in Hamizrach Hachadash, branded this a doctrine of bincompatibility. In the context of current events, Assaf said, a b‘loyal Arab’ must wish to drive the Jews unto the sea. . . . b“They cannot consider themselves simply Israelis, differing bonly in religion and language from the Jewish majority of their bco-nationals—for that state in its very lineament is the ex- bpression of the desire of that majority to create a land that should be its bown. . . .” bThis is the heart of the problem, and as long as Israelis brefuse to betray the raison d’être of the state, its Jewish charac- bter, there is no solution. Dr. Subhi Abu Ghosh, an Arab official bin the Ministry of Religions, was quoted in an article in Present bTense (Spring 1975): “Israel has to decide whether its Israeli or bits Jewish aspect predominates. I am an Israeli, but I cannot be ba Jew. The problem of the Arab minority is one for the Israeli bestablishment, not one for the Arabs themselves.” bThe anti-Zionist publication Israel and Palestine, published bin Paris, understood all too well the contradictions in general bIsraeli thinking as well as the particular confusion in Prime bMinister Rabin’s statements. In referring to the persistent b“head-and-stomach” declaration as well as Rabin’s insistence bthat Israel is a Jewish-Zionist state, the May 1976 issue stated: b“It was proved once more that a full belly is no substitute for bfreedom. . . . Israel’s Arabs consider themselves now to belong bto the Palestinian people which lives in the occupied territories band in the Arab countries. . . . Rabin’s speech amounts to a bstatement that the present oppression is an attribute of this b
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