But these people have had help. Under the guise of human rights protection, organizations such as Mossawa – which is funded by the New Israel Fund – have joined the incitement campaign and have accused the leaders of the Christian-Arab community in Israel who support integration of collaboration with the IDF (often dubbing the IDF “the Zionist Occupation”).
A blacklist of priests and Christian leaders that support integration and cooperation with the State of Israel has been compiled, and pictures of leaders and youth who participated in IDF events have made their way into the Arab press, endangering their lives and encouraging violence.
Mossawa is not alone in trying to deny Christian Arabs the right to integrate into Israeli society. A massive campaign against enlistment of Israeli-Arabs to the IDF was led by other organizations as well.
This campaign included massive pressure on the Israeli and Arab press, including a set of articles published on the +972 website in 2012 denouncing Arab enrollment in the military or national service; school activities that are intended to educate children not to serve the country; or the efforts of Baladna, an NGO that has worked for many years among the Arab youth in Israel, teaching them about the “threats” implicit in serving in national service or the IDF. Adalah is working to prevent military veterans from receiving housing benefits in Arab cities.
Organizations that are participating in the campaign to try to stop the Aramean community from integrating into Israeli society via army/national service include Adalah, Mossawa, Baladna, +972 and others. They are Israeli non-profit organizations – some are composed of Israeli Arabs and other are on the extreme left and are anti-Zionist. These NGOs reject Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. They would like to cancel the law of return and remove the Jewish character of Israel.
They would reject the special status of the Hebrew language, modify the national flag and the national anthem and make Israel a bi-national state. These organizations call on the Arabs of Judea and Samaria and the Arabs living in Israel to come together to fight against Zionism. Because of that, the idea that one group has separated itself from this struggle by identifying itself as Aramean is, for them, an anathema.
All of these organizations claim that they are fighting for the weak, for the minorities who cannot stand up for themselves and demand and fight for their own rights. But ultimately, the actions of these NGOs beg the question of what rights they are really fighting for, whose interests they are protecting, and what their real agenda is.
Clearly, these NGOs have no interest in seeing Christian Arabs become part of Israeli society. Much like the Arab countries that have used Palestinians in various refugee camps as pawns in fighting the State of Israel, these NGOs are content to reduce my community to cannon fodder in their efforts to de-legitimize Israel.
So my community is effectively being told to fight for their continued marginalization by Israeli society, even though it is the Israeli government’s goal to bring them more fully into the mainstream. Doesn’t the Christian community deserve the right to follow our own will and integrate, if it so chooses, into Israeli society? Not according to most of the NGOs that say they are assisting our community.
As a priest, I am distressed by this unwillingness to promote the welfare of individuals in the name of a monolithic group identity, whose goals and objectives can be set by those who might have very little in common with the community they supposedly represent.