In March of last year a group of Beitar Jerusalem
fans attacked Arab janitors in the Malcha Mall. It happened after a soccer game in the nearby Teddy Stadium. Last summer a group of teenagers nearly lynched an Arab youngster in Jerusalem's Zion Square. Since then we have witnessed a series of incidents in which young Jews brutally assaulted Arabs in a manner that is characteristic of societies in the process of dissolution.
Just recently an Arab woman was attacked
at a Jerusalem Light Rail station by Jewish teenage girls. In the same week an Arab worker at a fast food restaurant in north Tel Aviv was attacked and said none of the patrons came to his help. An Arab who works for the Tel Aviv
Municipality was also attacked recently.
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These severe attacks indicate that Israeli society is lacking, in many cases, a shared system of values, and that the weaker groups of society do not feel any human solidarity with those they perceive as enemies. This means that the families of these youngsters, as well as the education system, are completely detached from the system of values on which the Israeli Declaration of Independence is based.
These youngsters feel superior to the Arabs due to the same false perception that characterizes all people who feel superior to others. This perception is characteristic of ignorant and cruel people and can only be dealt with through real education.
The State of Israel
is not a regular state. It is not just the state of the Jewish people's dreams, and it is not just the state of the Jewish nation and the non-Jews who live in it. The State of Israel is a state that is obligated to a sacred legacy, according to which we are forbidden from doing to others what the bitter enemies of the Jewish nation did to our families. This means we will not attack innocent people just because we have the power to do so. We will not humiliate them or abuse them.
The strength of the Jewish nation is to be used only to protect ourselves from the enemy, and Jewish sovereignty cannot allow sadistic attacks against Arabs and other non-Jews, which have gradually increased over the past few years.
Israeli society is beginning to pay the price for its failure to establish a basic value system which all segments of society must adhere to. The study of the core subjects is not a luxury, but an existential necessity. It is also an existential necessity to force the study of core subjects on the sectors of society that reject them.
Bambi Sheleg is an Israeli journalist and founding editor of the magazine Eretz Acheret
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