Arab Muslim woman attacked for participating in Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations
Posted on May 11, 2008
Filed Under Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Multiculturalism, News, Politics
When we in Israel, just like so many of the Western citizens, are asking where is this peaceful Muslim majority that so much is spoken of, and why is it silent, here is the example that pretty much answers these questions
Bedouin lighter of 60th anniversary torch suffers ironic twist of fate as her car is torched by unknown persons. Celebratory torch and car torching connected, husband says
Sana Elbaz, the daughter of a Bedouin family from Tel Sheva who lit a celebratory torch at Israel’s 60th anniversary ceremony in Jerusalem, saw her car set ablaze by unknown persons outside of her house on Thursday night. A molotov cocktail was also thrown at her door, but her house remained undamaged.
Elbaz was watching TV late on Thursday when she heard the sound of glass breaking outside of her home. She alerted her neighbors, who helped to put out her blazing car, and called the police and her husband.
“The first thing that had crossed my mind when I heard my car being torched was that someone was taking revenge on me for participating in the ceremony,” Elbaz told Ynet. “These are cowards. We are a part of this country and so shall we stay,” she said.
“I knew I would be receiving unsympathetic responses, but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. I guess someone wanted to light a torch of their own,” she added with a smile.
Sana Elbaz heads the first of its kind daycare center in the Bedouin sector, and was responsible for a revolutionary educational program that is said to have brought about great changes in Bedouin society.
Her husband Khalil told Ynet: “I have no doubt that the molotov cocktails thrown at my car and my home were because Sana lit the torch on Independence Day. Even before the event there was denouncing talk about the torch and it looks like today someone has acted upon it.
Khalil Elbaz is a muezzin (a chosen person who calls for prayer) in the local mosque.
Khalil added that despite the torching he and his wife are proud that Sana was asked to light the torch. “We are strong and fear nothing,” he said. “They won’t break us. Sana is a leading woman in education and she deserves the esteem she is receiving from the country.”
The police have launched an investigation into the incident.
I bet the cowards and hypocrites who attacked this family did not even think of giving up their own Israeli passports, which allow them to freely travel to most of the countries in the world and enjoy the social/educational benefits of being an Israeli citizen.
Israel, with its 7.3 million population, is a home to 1.46 Million Arab citizens, vast majority of them are Muslim.
In the years of the latest intifada, many, if the not the most of the Israeli Arabs unsurprisingly took side of their kin in the West Bank in Gaza and thus assisted in, and sometimes directly perpetrated and committed terrorist acts against the Israeli civilians, in which their fellow Israeli Arabs died alongside the Jews.
These acts inevitably created a major rift between the Israeli Jewish and the loyal Druze and Cherkes population, and the Muslim Arabs.
The most awkward situation was created, in which none of those citizens, who openly oppose the very core values and principles of the state of Israel and supports its destruction, gave up the Israeli citizenship, and Israeli authorities took almost no action to question the right of these people to remain the citizens of Israel.
However, there are exceptions, which the Jewish Israeli citizens wish to become a norm. Some Muslim Arabs of Israel as equally loyal to the country as their fellow Jewish, Druze, Cherkes and other citizens are. They serve in the IDF, they are devout teachers, prominent doctors, hardworking farmers, but unfortunately, such loyalty is punishable by those members of their community who see these exceptions as a threat and will do everything they possible can in order to prevent it from becoming a norm.
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