Op-ed: Israeli Arabs and Mizrahi Jews, victims of Zionist “conspiracy,” should unite to topple Netanyahu
Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The interest of the Zionist movement’s victims in overthrowing Netanyahu”
“We hope that Tuesday, Sept. 17 [2019], will be a historical day (refers to Israeli election day –Ed.)…
We hope to see an excellent victory for the parties, forces, and figures from the Joint [Arab] List in the Israeli Parliament elections. At the same time, we hope to see expressions that will illustrate the shared interests of the victims of the racist, occupying, and colonialist Zionist movement; expressions of a true covenant between the Arab forces and parties with the leftist forces and the Jewish Arabs (sic., Jews who had lived in Arab lands), who are publicly calling for peace and a political solution based on two states.
The Palestinians and the Jewish Arabs, who are defined as Eastern Jews (Sephardim), were and still are victims of the Zionist movement that has mobilized its material capabilities, its members’ minds, and the oppressed Jews of Europe… and presented itself to the world as an agent of great colonialist projects, and specifically in Palestine – the heart of the Middle East and its cultural center. It began with the Palestinian people, which was the first victim, by uprooting it and taking its land through terror and massacres. Afterwards it imposed its tyranny on the second circle – the Jewish Arabs in the Arab lands. They were victims of a conspiracy that the Jewish Agency started in 1920, and which reached its peak with bombings and massacres against the Jewish Arabs in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen following the establishment of the tiny occupation state, Israel, in 1948 (sic., refers to Arab violence against Jews in Arab states)…
We think that the matter is much deeper than just agreements, covenants, and interests in a pre-election period; we are speaking here about fates – the fate of the Palestinian people, the owner of the land and the historical and natural right, and the fate of the Jews who are Arab citizens who were uprooted from their Arab homelands, their homes, and their interests, but still believe that their future lies where their historical, natural, and cultural roots are. This is after the Zionist movement’s true goals were exposed… and after they definitely understood that the Zionist movement viewed them simply as a pawn and human energy meant to serve the Ashkenazi Jews.
The crime of discrimination and racism against them necessitates a series of special articles, but we can feel this crime’s effects in the Jewish Arabs’ will to return to their lands of origin and their aspirations to revoke laws that are still in force in the Arab states that prevent them from returning…
The Palestinian people’s political interest is to prevent [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu from being prime minister in the occupation state once again, because this is liable to detach a link in the chain of the new colonialist attack.”