Army of the people or army of the empire?

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Enlisting in the IDF is not acceptable in the eyes of the vast majority of Arabs in Israel. But what raised their ire in particular this time was the attempt to drive a wedge between the different communities.
By Oudeh Basharat | Nov.13, 2012 | 6:18 AM | 1

A gathering held recently in Upper Nazareth to encourage Christian youth to join the Israel Defense Forces caused a storm among Israel’s Arab population. The heads of the Christian communities in the country published a statement opposing army service. The council of the Greek Orthodox community in Nazareth even decided to prevent a clergyman who had attended the conference from entering the community’s Church of the Annunciation. In response, police summoned council head Dr. Azmi Hakim for interrogation, later describing it as a “conversation.”

Enlisting in the IDF is not acceptable, to put it mildly, in the eyes of the vast majority of Arabs in Israel. But what raised their ire in particular this time was the attempt to drive a wedge between the different communities. Okay, some people will say, there are good Arabs but why do these good Arabs have to be divided up into good Christians, good Muslims and good Druze? Why should the good camp be fragmented and at the same time tensions inflamed among all the Arabs?

In his book “Army of Shadows,” Hillel Cohen writes that the Balfour Declaration increased the Arabs’ fears and this strengthened national feelings among them that led to the foundation of the Muslim-Christian associations, starting in 1918. He writes that Haim Margaliot Kalvarisky, one of the Zionist settlement activists in Palestine, believed it would be possible to break the alliance between the Muslims and Christians but warned that “a frontal attack will merely strengthen this bond.” To this end, Kalvarisky initiated the establishment of the Muslim national associations which, according to Cohen, were meant to serve as a counter-force to the Muslim-Christian associations, the hard core of the Palestinian national movement.

Some 90 years later, these associations have changed their name but the intention of dividing the forces has remained the same. That Kalvarisky was not aware of the important role the Christians played in crystallizing Arab nationalism can be forgiven. But his successors are aware of history. So why do they come along 90 years later and try to reinvent the wheel? That is already a farce.

Moreover, Kalvarisky believed in indirect methods and ruses while the Kalvariskys of today are trying to crudely cut off one community from its national and social environment through service in an army that represses their people. The star of the conference was none other than Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth who recently declared that if he had been present during the Arab protests of October 2000, many more demonstrators would have been killed.

It is apparently a matter of habit for Israel to forget that it has already been a state for 64 years. And a state in which officials try to create a division among citizens must examine itself from the point of view of both morality and the national interest. What kind of army tries to base its control of the Arabs on a policy of divide and rule, and on joining forces with Gapso the Terrible? Such a policy is suitable for imperialists. So army chief of staff Benny Gantz would do well to examine closely the imperialist tendencies among those under his command. Let him tell us - is this an army of the people or an imperialist army? Or perhaps it is both - a people’s army for the Jews and an imperialist army for the Arabs?

The most absurd part of the entire matter is that many Jewish leaders complain, with pained expressions, that the Palestinians are merely a collection of individuals, and in the best case a collection of communities and families. It would be an improvement if, instead of shedding such tears, they were to ask themselves the enduring question of former MK Shmuel Flatto Sharon (here with a slight variation ): “What have you done for the unity of the Palestinians?” After all, the history of Zionism, from the time of Kalvarisky until today, is an ongoing attempt to fragment them. There is an Arabic proverb that says, loosely translated: “After a bird fell into its clutches, the fox told it: May Allah preserve you. And the bird replied: Let me only survive you, and I will thank Allah a thousand times.”