The World Forgets that We Also Have Arabs, Druze and Christians in the Israeli Army
Transcript:
I am an Arab. I am a Muslim. And I love my country. In fact, I’m
prepared to die for it. Which is why I serve in its army.
I don’t have to do this. I want to do this. Because my country is a
special place, unlike any other.
Free. Diverse. Vibrant.
Yet, other countries~countries not so free, not so diverse~call for my
country’s complete destruction. The moment my country lets its guard
down, it will be destroyed.
My country is Israel. I grew up and still live in a small village named after my family’s
Bedouin Arab tribe. Our roots in this land run deep.
In 1948, when Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel, my family
thought of leaving our village. Some of them did. But when the Jews’
leaders heard that, they implored us to remain. “This is our country,
for both Arabs and Jews,” they said. “Stay, and we will work together to
build it.” My family stayed. My parents were born here, made their lives here,
started their own family here~in Israel.
In 2002, I was a teenager. It was a violent time. Palestinian suicide
bombers were blowing up Israeli civilians~a danger to Arabs and Jews
alike. Israeli troops entered to the West Bank to stop them at their
source. As a result, many Palestinians were killed.
I was torn. Whose side was I on, I thought: Israel’s or the
Palestinians’? Is it possible to be an Arab and an Israeli? The question
became even more difficult when I saw men from my own village wearing
the uniform of the Israeli army.
Only Jews are required to serve in the
military. No one forced these Arab men to join; they chose to. “Why?” I
asked them.
“Our home is here, in Israel,” they said. “Our home is under attack. Our
neighbors in this home are Jews. They are being attacked. We fight
together.”
Still, I struggled.
I went to high school in Nazareth. There, unlike the village where I
grew up, most of the Arab students identified as Palestinians even
though they are citizens of Israel.
Some of the students~my friends~hated Israel. They couldn’t understand
me. “You’re a Palestinian”, they said, “so you must hate Israel.” When I
said that I didn’t, that we had far more freedom and opportunity than
Arabs anywhere in the Middle East, they called me a traitor.
After high school, I went on to study electrical engineering at
Technion, a leading Israeli university. During my first semester, heavy
rocket fire from Gaza forced Israel to launch a counterattack.
Not long after the war began, I witnessed a group of Arab-Israeli
students expressing their solidarity with Hamas, the Palestinian terror
organization that controls Gaza and is committed to Israel’s violent
destruction.
Did these students not understand that those rockets could just as
easily be aimed at them? Hamas didn’t care who they killed as long as
they landed inside the borders of Israel. Had my fellow Arab students
forgotten that Israel had left Gaza a few years before? That there
wasn’t a single Israeli living there?
That day, I dropped out of school to join the Israeli army, the IDF. A
few months later, I was a soldier in the Israeli Air Force. After months
of training, I was assigned to the Search & Rescue Helicopter Unit. Our job was to save lives. We never concerned ourselves with the
identity of the people who needed our help. We rescued Syrian civilians
wounded in their country’s civil war, Palestinian children from Gaza
requiring urgent medical care, and countless Israelis of every religious
and ethnic background. A life~whether it is Muslim or Jewish,
Palestinian or Israeli~is a life.
On a base of 6,000 soldiers, I was the only Bedouin. But it didn’t
matter. The only thing that mattered was keeping Israel~our home~safe.
We came from all parts of the country and from many parts of the world.
We were every shade of skin color. Our shared goal created a deep bond.
Today, I am a student at Haifa University. Half of the students are
Arab. More than once, I have seen the Palestinian flag being waved at a
rally or protest on campus. In Israel, you can do this because, whether
you are a Jew or an Arab, you are free.
What more do you need to know? I am Mohammad Kabiya for Prager University.
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