Yesterday was a bad day for Israel-haters

Yesterday, the head of Israel's Islamist Ra'am party shook the Palestinian street with an interview that is getting wide coverage in Arabic:

The head of the first major Arab party to enter a government coalition said Tuesday that Israel’s status as a Jewish state could not be changed, advising the Arab community to follow his pragmatic approach rather than trying to challenge the country’s identity.

“Israel was born as a Jewish state. And that was the decision of the Jewish people, to establish a Jewish state. The question is not ‘what is the identity of the state?’ That’s how the state was born, and so it will remain,” said [Mansour] Abbas, the head of the Islamist Ra’am party.

“This is the reality. The question is not the about the state’s identity — but what the status of Arab citizens will be in it,” Abbas said.

Arab antiemites are angry. One Israeli Arab newspaper derogatorily calls Abbas a "Shabbos goy."

There was another momentous revelation. 

A Jordanian businessman and regular columnist who lives in the UAE, Hasan Ismaik, wrote an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post about the six biggest Arab mistakes. It is one of the most clear-eyed and honest self-analyses I've ever seen from an Arab who writes in Arabic language media. Excerpts:

Legendary Israeli diplomat Abba Eban observed after the failed 1973 Geneva peace conference, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Eban’s wry assessment rings true almost 50 years later. Missing an opportunity is a mistake; never failing to miss an opportunity is a sin against oneself. Endlessly repeated, mistakes become fatal sins when used by a clever opponent to their advantage. Let us count the ways.

The first sin is not accepting the Jewish people as a valued and ancient component of the Middle East. ...

The second sin is choosing the wrong alliances to further the Palestinian cause. From the alliance with Nazism and fascism to the dependence on the Soviets and Arab leaders for whom the Palestinian cause is nothing but a tool to achieve their own purposes, Palestinian leaders have almost always chosen the most harmful allies for their cause.

The third sin is the Yasser Arafat paradigm. Many may be surprised to find the former head of the Palestinian Liberation Army and the Palestinian Authority on this list. Yet he is the man who established the principle of violent resistance that armed non-state organizations follow today: If the price is the blood of Arab Palestinians, then there is no harm in paying it to defeat the occupation.

The fourth sin is the Palestinian people suffering more from the decisions of their leaders and allies than from the actions of Israel. Like Arafat, Hamas’s allies of political Islamic leaders are all too eager to fight Israel until the last Palestinian falls dead. 

 The fifth sin is viewing the conflict with Israel as an “all-or-nothing” war to the death. Standing between the Palestinians obtaining any of their legal and moral rights is their battle cry to satisfy all historical grievances, reclaim the entire land, expel all Israelis, and eliminate the State of Israel. What has the all-or-nothing approach succeeded in gaining? Very little, if anything at all.

The sixth sin is exploiting the Palestinian cause for political gain. Not all, thank God, but some Arab political leaders in the region and even some governments use the Arab-Israel conflict as a smokescreen to hide their own deficiencies, failures, and hidden agenda. No peace in the Middle East? No state of Palestine? No economic security or prosperity for all citizens? Unrest and uprisings? Don’t blame us, blame Israel. If Israel didn’t exist, we would have no social or economic problems, the Palestinians would have their own state, and the region would be a paradise on earth.

These are all issues I've written about myself over the years, and it is nice to see that some Arabs can see how counterproductive their hate has been. Again, the Abraham Accords are a huge factor in making it possible for Arabs to publicly say things like these with less fear than before.

Until recently, the only thing Arabs agreed on was hating Israel. Without that consensus, assumptions that were accepted as readily as gravity have been crumbling. It is a step in the right direction.

The Israel haters, faced with these Arab turncoats, try to demonize Arabs who want peace with Israel - and that is not a good look, especially for organizations with the word "peace" in their titles.

There are cracks in the dam, and the haters can't patch them up.

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