"An axe-blow to the trunk of Zionism"

Of course the appointment of a Muslim Arab to the Israeli Cabinet is "an axe-blow to the trunk of Zionism". Thank God for that! The notion that anyone living in Israel, the Occupied Territories, or even various other places (Lebanon south of the Litani River, possibly even the whole of Jordan) could in principle be cleared to who-knows-where at any time, just because Askenazim from all over Europe or the New World felt like moving there at that time, richly deserves as many axe-blows as possible to its trunk.

Israel seems to facing up to what she actually is, namely a country over half of whose Jewish majority is Arab, as is a further twenty per cent of the population. In other words, she is a classic Levantine Arab country of Jewish Arabs, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Druze Arabs, and various non-Arab minorities (including, in the Israeli case, Ashkenazi Jews). Her distinguishing feature is that the majority of her Arab population is Jewish, just as Lebanon's is that forty per cent of her Arab population is Christian. But no one suggests that Lebanon is not an Arab country, and nor should anyone suggest that Israel is not an Arab country. Indeed, that very suggestion is one of neoconservatism's many alliances with Wahhabism and with comparable strands within Shi'ism.

Contrary to all those tendencies, Israel is at last acting like the Levantine Arab country that she is, with non-Jewish Arabs in her government. I say again, thank God for that.