What Is It Like to Be A (Zionist) Bat?

In a debate in the RSA's blogora, I argued that the reason an interlocutor thought it self-evident that the hatred of Arabs in Israel is not as pervasive as anti-Semitism in Arab countries was because he (the interlocutor) was not reading Israeli newspapers. So I clicked on Haaretz and this was the lead story:


"MK Effi Eitam of the rightist National Union - National Religious Party said in remarks broadcast on Monday that the great majority of Palestinians in the West Bank should be expelled, and that Arabs should be ousted from Israeli politics as a fifth column and "a league of traitors." Eitam made the statements during a Sunday speech at a memorial service for a soldier killed in Lebanon in the recent war. "We will have to expel the great majority of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria," Eitam urged, referring to the whole of the West Bank.


According to Eitam, experience showed that Israel cannot give up the area ofthe West Bank. "It is impossible with all of these Arabs, and it is impossible to give up the territory. We've already seen what they're doing there."Turning to Israeli Arabs, Eitam said "We will have to take another decision, and that is to sweep the Israeli Arabs from the political system. Here, too, the issues are clear and simple. "We've raised a fifth column, a league of traitors of the first rank. Therefore, we cannot continue to enable so large and so hostile a presense within the political system of Israel."

(Haaretz Service, "Eitam: Expel Arabs from West Bank, Israeli politics," Haaretz.com 11/09/2006).