Public security minister calls on Israeli-Arabs to participate in Israel's 60th Independence Day.
By JPOST.COM STAFFavi dichter 224.88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
"Whoever cries of the Nakba year after year, shouldn't be surprised if they actually have a Nakba eventually," Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Sunday evening.
Dichter comments came in response to a decision by the Israeli-Arab sector not to participate in the 60th anniversary celebrations of Israel's independence. The term Nakba means "catastrophe," and is often used by Israel-Arabs to describe the creation of the Jewish state.
The public security minister called on Israeli-Arab leaders to rethink their decision and take part in the celebrations. "If they don't celebrate the 60th Independence Day then they'll celebrate the 70th and 80th, because we, and the Muslim, Druze, Circassian and Christian citizens of Israel don't have any other place to go to. This is our country, and theirs."
In November, The Knesset Education Committee voted against Education Minister Yuli Tamir's proposal to include discussion of the "Nakba" (catastrophe), the Palestinian version of the events of 1948, in the school curriculum.
The committee voted six to one against, with one abstention.
"The Education Committee rejects presenting two perspectives in textbooks of the events of the War of Independence and the creation of the state and the reasons for the creation of the refugee problem," the committee said in a statement. "The inclusion in the curriculum that the Arabs view the creation of the state as a disaster is serious and leads to a process of alienation of the Arab community from the state and damages coexistence."
