“From the age of zero I was told that Israel stole Palestine from us, but when I was 14 I woke up. I discovered that Jews are not bad,” says Ala Wahib, an operations officer at a key IDF training base, and the highest-ranked Muslim officers in the Israeli army.
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It is not every day that a Muslim Arab, hailing from a village whose residents largely do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, comes to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. And he doesn’t only serve: Major Wahib, 32, is currently the highest ranking Muslim officer in the IDF. He is enormously patriotic, a true Zionist. Precisely the kind of person we like to see lighting the torches during the national Independence Day ceremony every year.
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e describes himself as a “Zionist Israeli Arab.” Four years ago he went on a tour of Nazi extermination camps in Poland, together with his fellow officers, as part of the IDF’s Witnesses in Uniform program. “As a child,” he says, “I grew up in a society that denies the Holocaust. When I arrived in Poland I was shocked. I cried a lot. It was difficult to contain this thing called genocide. There was something very powerful in the fact that I was standing on Polish soil, holding an Israeli flag and donning the uniform of the Israeli army, but this time from a position of power. It was proof that we can’t be broken.”
When Wahib says “we” he means the Jewish people. “I believe in the Muslim faith, and I will never abandon it, but I think that Zionism is more than a religion. It is something that fully represents my sense of belonging to the State of Israel and to Israeli society, and the immense commitment I have to protecting and guarding the country of which I am part.”
Judge Dan adds: Major Ala Wahib is not the highest ranking Muslim in the IDF. That honour goes to Lieutenant colonel Wahid al-Huzayl, commander of the “Beduin Battalion”. The point conveyed by Israel Hayom is that unlike the Beduins that are enlisting to the IDF, Israeli Arabs, be they Muslim or Christian, are exempt from service automatically.
Update: Here is the reaction of one of the BDSHoles-in-Chief.
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
