THEY MUST GO Page 204
Chapter 9: Time Runs Out
 
 
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204 THEY MUST GO

bA similar warning was given by Knesset member Amnon Linn bon December 9, 1975, when he charged that elements among the bIsraeli Arabs planned to revolt and demand annexation of areas bof Israel to any new Palestinian state.

bOf course, Israel will not agree, and bloody will be the bat- btles and terrible the bombs and bullets. Rebellion will raise its bhead in the midst of Israel, and the nightly television news will bshow pictures of Israeli soldiers shooting Arabs in the Galilee. It bwill be dangerous to travel through the area, let alone live there, band all the while the Arab population growth will mean more bArab legislators in the Knesset and another step toward a “dem- bocratically” created “Palestine.”

bToo late, the Israeli government realizes the danger and bfrantically attempts to prevent the Arabization of the Galilee by b“Judaizing” it, filling it with Jews to offset Arab population bgrowth. Of course, even at this late critical stage of national bemergency, there are Jews whose liberal instinct clashes with btheir Jewishness and their sense of national self-preservation. bAnd so President Yitzhak Navon absurdly tells Galilee settlers bthat the term “Jewish settlement” is preferable to “Judaizing,” blest the latter be seen as either racist or implying driving the bArabs out. But whether one calls the child by its real name, b“Judaizing,” or plays games of self-deception and conjures up b“Jewish settlement” or even the innocuous “development of the bGalilee,” the fact remains that the Israelis are desperately at- btempting to raise the Jewish population in the area that is the bfocus of Arab nationalism and irredentism. It is a policy that is bfar too little and far too late.

bWhen Moshe Rivlin, head of the Israeli Jewish National Fund band a longtime Labor Party official, cries: “If we fail, G-d for- bbid, to . . . change the Jewish-Arab population ratio in the bGalilee to a minimum of fifty-fifty, Israel will soon face a grave bdanger,” one can understand his fears. But in reality, the danger bof the Arabs does not end even if we can somehow manage to bkeep a precarious equality of population in the Galilee. The fact bthat the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland are a minority in bno way prevents them from demanding annexation to Eire, the bIrish Republic. A huge, growing, hostile Arab population of 40 bto 50 percent is enough to turn the Galilee into a perpetual bbloody scene of confrontation. Furthermore, there is no possible b 

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Chapter 9: Time Runs Out