This short op-ed is addressed to Israelis on the Right, the political Center, and the Zionist Left who feel that replacing the current government is a matter of survival, urging them to mobilize immediately to save Arab citizens’ right to vote and to be elected.
Despite political and ideological differences, there is broad consensus among this public that this is a uniquely bad and dangerous government.
It is working aggressively to destroy all the mechanisms protecting the rule of law, as well as the education and higher education systems entrusted with cultivating independent thought. It uses organized and violent incitement to distort the concept of democracy, which means majority rule while limiting it and protecting the minority, and replace it with the deceptive, populist notion of “the will of the people.”
I call this broad public, hundreds of thousands of whom have, over the past four years, spent nights and days fighting against the legislative overhaul, “the life-affirming Israelis.” Although it’s clear to all of us in this public that the upcoming elections are critical, many of us are missing a central point right now: The well-planned move to push Arab citizens out of the Knesset.
This isn’t a matter of a provocative statement or op-ed. This step was in the legislative overhaul playbook from day one, waiting for the right moment. And make no mistake: Alongside the attempt to disqualify elected MKs, there will also be a major assault on Arab citizens’ right and practical ability to vote. We must not miss this.
The demand to strip the legitimacy of Arab public representatives was prepared in advance, as was last Wednesday’s decision by the Central Elections Committee to disqualify the candidacy of Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh and MK Ofer Cassif, who are both running for the Joint List, and to bar the Joint List and Ra’am from running in the election.
Because unlike in 1988, when the Central Elections Committee disqualified Meir Kahane’s candidacy on grounds of racism, the current composition of the committee and the toxic public discourse already reflect the near-total erosion of the protective mechanisms we once had.
And although many of us are now pinning our hopes on the Supreme Court, we should be careful not to deceive ourselves about it either, since after four years of sweeping attacks on the High Court of Justice, it comes to deliberate on the disqualification of parties weaker and with less public legitimacy than ever.
Support for Ben-Gvir's demand for disqualification
It’s reasonable to assume that the shameful support of Zionist Left and Center parties for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s demand to disqualify the Arab parties and Abu Shehadeh is rooted in electoral calculations: the assumption that fewer parties in the opposition will yield them more votes.
If those are indeed the considerations, these parties are making a huge miscalculation. You can’t be cynical all of the time. This is a fundamental democratic issue. In these critical days, the life-affirming forces in Israel must fight to strengthen democracy, not hand it over cheaply to anyone trying to destroy it.
All of us – citizens and Knesset members – must mobilize immediately to defend the citizenship of Arabs, not only because after them they’ll come looking for the Jews of the Left and the Center, but because Arab citizens are the natural partners of all Israelis who want to see a normal state here, or at the very least, of those who want to save Israel from a state of total dictatorship.
For Arab citizens, too, just like the broad public fighting against the judicial overhaul, are first and foremost life-affirming!
The writer is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Haifa.