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bically to create a Jewish state in which Arab-Jewish mixing will blead to Jewish disappearance in a joint “Israeli” identity. Black bhumor aside, they are people who are faced with a Jewish value bversus a universal one; being essentially gentilized Hebrews, bthey opt for universalism. bJewishness versus universalism. A Jewish state versus a Western, bliberal, equal one. Zionism or open democracy. Ultimately Israel will bhave to choose. bIn an offhand remark in June 1976, Prime Minister Rabin bwondered how much longer “will we be able to prevent Naz- bareth Arabs from settling in [Jewish] Upper Nazareth?” Im- bmediately, angry residents of the Jewish town signed a petition bthat stated: “We came here to provide our children with a Jew- bish education and to raise them in a Jewish—not Arab—at- bmosphere.” The Jewish residents, all immigrants, were making bthe eminently logical point: to live next to Arabs in a mixed batmosphere, they could have remained in Morocco. bVeteran Yediot Aharonot writer Shlomo Shamgar found his bliberal instincts repelled by the Jewish reaction. On June 27, b1976, he angrily wrote: “I cannot understand how Jews who bknow what happened to our people because of such reactionary bviews can so arrogantly reject neighbors of this or that nationali- bty or religion. . . . The Arab is tolerated at best, as a neighbor in bthe country but not in the neighborhood.” bShamgar, of course, revels, in his self-righteousness. Will he btell us what he thinks of a state that by law is Jewish and what bhe thinks of European states that call themselves Christian? What bwould Shamgar say to a state whose law of immigration applies bonly to non-Jews? Will Shamgar agree to a democratically belected Palestinian state in place of Israel? Shamgar is one of bthose whose terror of thinking about the contradiction between bdemocracy and Zionism forces his feelings of guilt to erupt on bbehalf of Arabs in Upper Nazareth housing projects. bThe Arab-Jewish problem in Israel has nothing to do with black of integration, jobs, education, or toilets. It has nothing to bdo with stomachs or heads. It is the desire of a minority (once a bmajority) that was humiliatingly defeated to be sovereign in bwhat it considers its own land. It is the problem of a Jewish state bthat says nothing emotionally, spiritually, nationally, or cul- bturally to the non-Jewish Arabs. It is a question of a state with b
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