When Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi recently referred to his fellow Knesset Member Avigdor Lieberman as a “fascist immigrant” (on Rino Tzror’s Show on Army Radio,) the word “fascist was perceived to be the more serious insult of the two.
However, in fact it is the word “immigrant” that should be worrying us more.
By characterizing Lieberman as an immigrant, MK Tibi in fact says that he is a native of this land, while the Jews, and certainly those of them who immigrated to this country, are merely a bunch of immigrants.
So who is an immigrant in the eyes of Knesset Member Tibi? Somebody who moved from one country to another country, which is not even his country – a sort of semi-squatter who is here today but may well be somewhere else the next day.
When Tibi refers to an Israeli Jew who arrived here from the former Soviet Union as an immigrant, he means to say in fact that all the Jews here are immigrants, while the Arabs are the original masters of the house.
If he would just make do with the term “fascist” that would have been insulting enough, but at least it would have been perceived as an insulted directed personally at Lieberman, in the framework of the usual round of clashes between them.
However, the term “immigrant” is intended for all of us – for all the Jews; because all of us here, either we or our parents, are immigrants in the view of Knesset Member Tibi. We are not new olim and nothing else of this sort. Just immigrants.
MK Tibi repeated the insult two or three times, and eventually Rino Tzror took him off the air. What can I tell you, it was really not ok for some immigrant to shut up the master of the house.
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