When I was born here on one of the farms in Israel, my childhood, I never thought for one day that we will not be living together with Arabs.
I hear from non-Afghan immigrants – Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France – all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.
If Catholics and Jews can today come together regularly for talks after so many tears and so much blood have been shed, than Jews and Arabs must be able to do the same.
It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.
In Egypt, on the eve of Tahrir Square, there was a major poll which found that overwhelmingly – 80-90%, numbers like that – Egyptians regarded the main threats they face as the U.S. and Israel. They don’t like Iran – Arabs generally don’t like Iran – but they didn’t consider it a threat.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
As a rule, whenever I hear about a demographic threat, it comes first of all from a type of thinking that says the Arabs are a threat. And this leads to thinking of transfer or that they should be killed. I am appalled by this kind of talk.
I have no doubt that given a real choice, the vast majority of Muslims and Arabs, like everyone else will choose a free society over a fear society.
With what’s happened in the world the last three years, it’s easier to see why it’s become popular again to diminish and revile Arabs and Muslims in American popular culture.
Jordan is Palestine. The capital of Palestine is Amman. If Palestinian Arabs want to find their political expression, they will have to do it in Amman.
Many Israelis are educating their kids in a very nationalist, powerful identity, since kindergarten – and the Arabs as well.
It wasn’t just Shia that would go to Tehran and see the commander of the Quds Force and others and the legitimate government leaders. It was also Kurdish leaders and Sunni Arabs who would even link up with Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force – maybe not in Tehran but in Turkey or somewhere else.
Bahrainis are better off than many other Arabs. We have a welfare state, everybody gets a salary whether they have a job or not. Electricity and food are subsidized; school and healthcare are free. And we don’t differentiate between Bahrainis and foreigners. We are very proud of that.
The whole Land of Israel is a single bloc. There are those who say we can build inside the settlement blocs, and others who say we may not be able to hold onto the towns outside the blocs. I have come to tell you what the Arabs already know – that the Land of Israel is one bloc.
The fact is that we created 10 to 20,000 jobs for Arabs and Jews and Druze, which has made the Galilee a very positive place.
There is a feeling among the Arabs – encouraging terrorist activity is part of the broad new Arab strategy – that sooner or later, Israel will be forced to withdraw from Samaria, Judea and Gaza.
I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn’t know the poems would travel. I didn’t go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.
As a nation, Kuwait has been, arguably, free of freedom itself. Claimed in turn by Constantinople, Riyadh, and Baghdad, Kuwait has survived by playing Turks off Persians, Arabs off one another, and the English off everyone.
We do not ask Israeli Arabs to share in the Zionist dream. We are asking them to accept that Israel is a Jewish state – the only one in the world.
Certain Gulf Arabs support proxy jihadist Sunni groups such as al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, while Iran supports Shia militant forces such as Hezbollah.
My publication, ‘The Post,’ has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West.
If there is something that I respect about the Arabs, it’s the fact that they never change their position.
Israeli Arabs are equal citizens.
From before I was born, we Arabs have been caught between two forces that, seemingly, cannot be defeated: our ruthless dictators, who oppress and humiliate us, and the cynical western powers, who would rather see us ruled by criminals loyal to them than have democratically elected leaders accountable to us.
When the Jewish state is established – it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs.
I wanted the Israeli mainstream audience to meet different kinds of Arabs – not just terrorists or politicians – and to listen to their language and their stories.
We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.
The Knesset members – Jews and Arabs – don’t represent the state of Israel. The government is the one that represents the state of Israel officially.
Arabs don’t have to be the victims of the Jewish war between Lieberman and Netanyahu.
Like with all the Arabs, they use the ‘suspect procedure’ on me. I arrive four hours before the flight. They do a body search in a back room behind the curtain and then escort me onto the plane because they’re afraid that on the way I might pick up a bomb from someone.
The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.
By the reduction of the Arabs on the one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.
Look, the hard-line Jewish position is based, to this day, on the idea that the Palestinian Arabs somehow or other will either accept third-class status, or they will pick up and go away. Now, this isn’t happening.
What you have in the Middle East is tension not between Jews and Arabs, not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between the radical wing and the moderate people.
Israeli Arabs don’t have to go. But if they stay, they have to take an oath of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish Zionist state.
When I was 26, I founded Peaceworks as a food company that brought together Israelis, Arabs, Turks, and others in conflict regions to make and sell various food products from the Middle East. That economic cooperation helped bridge divides and cultivate mutual understanding among neighbors.
Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.
The tension between Jews and Arabs tears us apart.
I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.
The nice thing with the Arabs is that with age comes respect.
Arabs have the right to visit everywhere in the Land of Israel, and Jews have the right to visit every place in the Land of Israel.
In the last 1,000 years, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.
People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day.
My father was a Foreign Service officer, a diplomat and an Arabist who spent virtually all his career in the Near East, as it was called in the State Department. So I spent most of my childhood among the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Do we have to give Mr Sarkozy a history lesson? Yes, there are Gauls among our ancestors. But there are also Romans, Normans, Celts, Nicois, Corsicans, Arabs, Italians, Spanish. That’s France.
For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
I believe however that peace is attainable regardless of the Arabs mentality, society or government.
All Israelis think Arabs steal cars.
Sikh is a 500 year old community and they have been living in U.S. for the past 114 years. Yet the Sikhs were mistaken to be Arabs in the post 9/11 scenario and beaten up. Doesn’t this sound bizarre? I mean Sikhs and Arabs are as different as chalk and cheese.
Certain Arabs love Dubai because it’s not at all like where they live. Certain others hate it for the same reason. When you hear an Osama bin Laden sympathizer rant about the decadence and hypocrisy of the Arab ruling class, you can be certain he’s picturing a nightclub in Dubai.
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.
The Arabs are looking forward to developing their region, which the long years of war had prevented from finding its true place in today’s world, in an atmosphere of democracy, pluralism, and prosperity.
A first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point.
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