Editor of Israeli Arab Newspaper: The Conflict Between the Arabs and Israel Is a Religious War

"It is as if they are saying that everything that has happened since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate and the release of the Balfour Declaration does not constitute a religious war. As if the 1948 war against the entire [Muslim] nation was not a religious war, and the 1967 occupation of the territories and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] were not [part of] a religious war, and all the [other] wars and plans for Judaization were not [part of] a religious war. As if the war against Gaza was not a religious war, and what is going on today in Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem is not linked to a religious war. As if global Jewry and its leaders did not declare a religious war from the very first moment at the Basel Congress, when they announced that [the goal of] their enterprise was to realize the dream of returning to the land of [their] forefathers...

"The State Committee of Arab Local Authority Heads was in error when it withdrew its call for a strike [of the Arab local authorities] [...],[3] and [its] chairman, engineer Ramez Jaraisy, was doubly in error: [first] when he agreed to cancel the strike – though he is among those familiar with the pitfalls, ills, and intrigues of the [Israeli] Interior Ministry – and again when he requested a meeting with [Interior] Minister [Eli] Yishai [...]

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"It would have been preferable, or [more] appropriate, that the Committee insist on holding the strike, since its purpose was to bring things to some kind of solution, and not [to achieve] a meeting with a minister – especially [considering] that the committee, [its] chairman, and [its] members know all too well that the governments' policy (which is to say the policy of the Israeli establishment) towards our society is based on the [following] principle: '[The Arabs are] a strategic threat... But we won't get rid of [this threat] in one fell swoop, but instead starve it slowly, so that it is neither dead nor alive.' Our much-exalted leaders know this, and say so both openly and behind closed doors. [So] why did they agree to cancel the strike? They owe the people an answer.

"It is true enough that the strike would not have been terribly effective, especially [since it was to be] a one-day strike. And what is more, many of our local authorities exist in a perpetual state of 'strike.' But a meeting with a minister does not achieve anything.

"One of the best ways to exert pressure on the establishment – in this case, the Interior Ministry – is to declare an open strike or a prolonged strike (lasting two weeks or a month), during which the local Arab authorities would be [completely] paralyzed. (They are in various states of paralysis to begin with.) Maybe such a prolonged strike would rouse the [Arab] public, which doesn't see this matter as pertinent to it...

"Changing the terms we use [is one of] the means for altering the current situation [...] [One's] terms and words reflect [one's] education. Seeing that our education draws on our culture, and seeing that our culture is Islamic, [our] terminology must be fitting. One of our errors is the use of the term 'the Middle East' to describe our region. It is more proper to call it 'the Islamic East' or 'the Muslim Lands.' 'The Middle East' is a Western term that was favored by imperialism and by its Orientalists when referring to our region, in order to distinguish it from other regions in the East, such as 'the Near East' and 'the Far East.'"