Why
Israel Threatened Military Action to Save An Enemy
By Evelyn Gordon
Commentary Magazine
November 7, 2017
For many, it is assumed that Israel is a racist state that
considers its Arab minority second-class citizens. I wonder, then, how they
explain what happened last Friday?
For the third
time in the last two years, Israel threatened military action to stop
an attack by extremist Syrian rebels on the Syrian Druze village of Khader. It
did so despite the fact that Syrian Druze have sided with the Assad regime in
that war, meaning they’re aligned with Israel’s arch-enemies, Iran and
Hezbollah; despite the fact that Khader itself has been the source of
several anti-Israel terror attacks; and despite the fact that such intervention
risks entangling Israel in Syria’s civil war, something it has hitherto tried
hard to avoid–and all just because it was asked to do so by its own Druze
minority, which was worried about its coreligionists across the border.
To most Israelis, it seems both obvious and unremarkable
that Israel should accede to this request. But in fact, though Israel has always
considered itself obligated as a Jewish state to try to protect Jews anywhere,
it’s not at all obvious that it would consider itself equally obligated to try
to protect Druze beyond its borders. Threatening cross-border military action on
behalf of foreign nationals aligned with your worst enemies, simply because
they’re the coreligionists of one of your own ethnic minorities, isn’t an
obvious step for any country. And it’s especially not obvious for a country
accused of considering said minorities to be second-class citizens.
Thus, the fact that Israel has repeatedly taken action to
protect the Syrian Druze says a lot about the true state of anti-Arab
“racism” in the country. But to understand exactly what it says, it’s
first necessary to understand the difference between Israeli Druze and other
Arab Israelis.
The Druze are ethnically Arab, and their religion is
considered an offshoot of Islam. But in their attitude toward the Jewish state,
Israeli Druze differ markedly from most Muslim and Christian Arabs. All Druze
men serve in the army, whereas Muslim and Christian Arabs generally do not.
Druze politicians can be found in every major political party (except the
explicitly religious ones), and Druze voting patterns aren’t markedly
different from their Jewish counterparts. In contrast, other Arabs generally
support ethnic Arab parties that are openly
hostile to the Jewish state. Druze overwhelmingly identify as Israeli
rather than Palestinian, whereas among other Arabs, the reverse has been true
until very
recently. Finally, given their superior integration, Druze unsurprisingly
feel much
lessdiscriminated against than other Arabs.
The Druze consider themselves to be and act as loyal
Israelis in every respect, so Jewish Israelis consider themselves bound to show
equal loyalty to the Druze. Therefore, when Israeli Druze (some of whom even
have relatives in
Khader) were concerned about what might happen to their Syrian brethren if the
extremist militias succeeded in capturing the town, Israeli Jews–who can
readily understand concern for the fate of one’s coreligionists in another
country–fully agreed that something had to be done. Hence the army, as it has
twice before, warned the extremists that if they didn’t retreat, they would be
attacked by Israeli planes and artillery. And the extremists, as they have twice
before, got the message and abandoned their attack.
In contrast, Israeli Jews feel far less commitment to other
Israeli Arabs because other Israeli Arabs demonstrate far less commitment to
Israel. This is obvious in their refusal not only to do military
service–something most Israeli Jews could reluctantly accept–but even to do
civilian national service in their own communities, because they consider it unacceptable to
do anything that might be construed as identification with the hated Zionist
state. It is equally obvious in their repeated reelection of Arab Knesset
members who, in marked contrast to Druze MKs, routinely refuse to condemn
Palestinian terror and sometimes even actively defend it, hurl calumnies like
“apartheid” and “genocide” at their own government, and side with the
Palestinians against Israel on virtually every issue.
While prejudice and discrimination definitely exist in
Israel, as they do in every society, they do not, for the most part, stem from
“racism.” Rather, they are a response to the objective fact that many
Israeli Arabs demonstrate their contempt for and opposition to the Jewish state
on a daily basis. While Israel can and does ensure equality before the law for
its Arab citizens, it can’t change human nature. And it is human nature to be
less generous and more suspicious toward people who openly side with your
enemies than toward those who side with you, because loyalty is a two-way
street. Indeed, what’s truly remarkable is that Israel has made such great
efforts to integrate its Arab minority despite the barrier posed by
Arab behavior.
As I’ve noted many times before, Israeli Arab attitudes
toward Israel are slowly changing. As they do, anti-Arab prejudice and
discrimination will lessen in the same way that prejudice and discrimination
against the Druze already have. And nothing demonstrates this better than last
Friday’s incident in Khader, when Israel put its army at the service of
non-Jewish enemy nationals across the border just because their Israeli
coreligionists asked it to do so.