Last Shabbat, Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni went into her local Tel Aviv Super- Pharm to fill a prescription. The Arab clerk behind the counter identified the Foreign Minister and refused to serve her. The clerk was so incensed by Tzippy Livni’s statement that “a Palestinian state is not only the solution for the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, but also for those Arabs who live among us,” that he was unwilling to serve her, even at the price of his job. 

As long as the rebellion of Israel’s Arabs was “just” a matter of arson, car theft, robbery, rape, tax evasion, illegal building, forest burning, theft of road signs and monuments, wild driving and vandalism, Foreign Minister Livni and her friends preferred to turn a blind eye -- leaving Israel’s citizens to fend for themselves against the fifth column threatening them from within the borders of the State of Israel. Even after we discovered the deep level of cooperation between Israel’s Arabs and the terror organizations, Israel’s leaders continued to close their eyes.  

But now, Israel’s Arabs are overtly attacking the definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state. Tzippy Livni doesn’t understand. Her irrelevant attempt to deal with the threat hanging over the Jewish identity of the State by re-channeling Arab nationalist ambitions to the Palestinian state that she is working so hard to establish in Jerusalem and Yesha is precisely what angered the Arab clerk. 

Over the millennia, there have always been Jews who have remained faithful to the Divine directive to settle the Land of Israel. 120 years ago, these Jews began to return to the land and even established a state. But the Jewish nationalist movement chose to re-establish the state by disengaging from its original Jewish identity and replacing it with superficial “Israeli” identity. 

The Arabs are on the other side of the historical stage. They never had a significant bond to the Land of Israel. From the time that Abraham expelled Ishmael to the desert, there was never a nationalist Arab movement that aimed to build its national home in the Land of Israel. For thousands of years, the Land of Israel was open to the Arabs. As long as the Jews were not here, the land did not interest them. But when the Jews began to make the deserted land flourish, foreign workers from the Arabian desert came to find work. That is how the “Palestinian nation” was created. 

Today, the ancient Jews who attempted to establish a state without Judaism are on the defensive. Currently, they are pitifully trying to save the last remnants of their vacuous “Israeli” identity by giving Jerusalem and Israel’s heartland to the Arabs. The new “Palestinians,” though, are proudly on the offensive and a young and scornful Arab clerk happily dispenses with his Super Pharm job just so that he can express his national pride. 

To understand this complex phenomenon, we have to look at its beginning. Israel’s Foreign Minister – the woman who represents Israel to the world -- does not hesitate to publicly desecrate the Jewish holy day, the Shabbat. But the Arab clerk would not let her get away with her denial of her Jewish identity. “No problem,” he said to her with his actions, “if you do not honor your Jewish identity, there is no reason for me to take the Jewish state that you have established on my land seriously.” 

And just to emphasize how erratic Livni’s Jewish identity really is, she hurried to announce at Annapolis that “The sides in the conflict have changed. There are no longer Arabs against Jews, but extremists against moderates.” She really is no match for the Arab Super-Pharm clerk.

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