Between the party of "all its citizens" and the slogan "a state of all its citizens" is the leader's dream

Written by: Jawad Boulos

Some Israeli websites and social media have published an invitation to attend the first founding conference of a party that will bear the name "All Its Citizens". The text of the invitation featured the central slogan of the new party and said, “Partnership now.” It was followed by a list of the names of some of the central participants in the celebration, where the name of the head of the National Democratic Assembly, Sami Abu Shehadeh, was mentioned among them, along with well-known Jewish Zionist personalities such as Abraham Burg (former speaker of the Israeli Knesset). The Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization), Musa Raz and Gabi Lasky (two former representatives of the Meretz party in the Knesset) and General Reserve in the Israeli army Amiram Levin, and with them also well-known Arab public figures such as Professor Faisal Azaiza, journalist and writer Odeh Bisharat and Omaima Hamed (Meretz). It is clear that the political contents adopted by the initiators as the basis for establishing the "all its citizens" party will represent only those who choose to join its ranks.
The participation of former caucus representative Sami Abu Shehadeh in this conference, which is being held in Tel Aviv, is supposed to attract the interest of those working in political affairs among Arab citizens and partisans, and among intellectuals and leaders of civil society organizations, especially those working in the fields of studies, research and knowledge production. political and social of all kinds. However, it seems that not all of them are "interested" in addressing this issue, not even in a professional and objective manner. And if we ask them about their reluctance, we will find that each faction has its pretexts, and each segment has its own motives.
What we are witnessing today confirms that we, the Arab citizens of Israel, are suffering from the spread of a chronic phenomenon that we can correctly call the scourge of "the silence of political leaders and social elites." This phenomenon has been spreading among us for a long time, and it is worth dealing with it more deeply in the future. Its dangers to us were grave because, in some of its remarkable transformations, it prompted those infected with it to play roles of contagious social hypocrisy or stuttering in front of the phenomena of rampant violence, or regression in front of practices of religious coercion and the power of tyrannical traditions against women and vulnerable groups, while it made them in pivotal political stations harassing With more than one measure and acting with unfortunate flattery that sometimes reached the point of complicity with extraordinary events that took place within several institutions and parties, including stations in the history of the Tagammu’ party itself.
Despite the common case of overlooking described above, we found that a small group went out of the ordinary and wrote about the event and its possible repercussions on the Tagammu Party in particular and within political spaces in general. Most of those who wrote about this call were supporters and activists of the Democratic Gathering Party and supporters, from vein to vein, of the leadership of their president, Sami Abu Shehadeh. They confronted him with their criticisms, after they were surprised that his name was included, without prior warning, in the aforementioned invitation, and they demanded that he not participate in the conference. and the need to give them the justifications that prompted him to take a step that categorically contradicts their political beliefs and the historical position of their party that prohibits meetings and alliances with political bodies and personalities known for their Zionist and military history and present; Some of them demanded that he apologize for what he had done and noted, of course, as a matter of denunciation, in the event that the conference was held in his presence, that the Democratic Front for Peace and other political movements and parties should apologize to them, which called for the need to work with progressive Jewish parties, and if the need arises in some places with left-wing Zionist parties. .
I read the available comments that were published following the spread of the invitation formula, and I understand the anger of a few of the party's supporters who, after boycotting the elections in the previous rounds, returned, in the form of tribal panic, to vote for the Tagammu Party because they believed in the distinction of Sami Abu Shehadeh's national personality, his political honesty, his party honesty, and his social warmth. his natural stardom; The shock of this group is justified and their astonishment at Abu Shehadeh’s step is understood, especially since they do not see any new political reason that calls for the participation of the leader of their national party in a prominent Israeli partisan political activity, even if he was invited to it under the banner of senior guests only.
I am not a voter of the Tagammu Party, and I have always objected to the outbids of some of its activists regarding the issue of patriotism and their monopoly on it; This was before the announcement of Sami Abu Shehadeh's participation in the conference of the "All of its Citizens" party, and it will remain so after the end of that conference, whether Abu Shehadeh participated in it or boycotted it at the end. I do not know how the institutions of the Tagammu’ Party will react to this embarrassing station at which their leader stopped them, especially after we read on the websites a brief statement from sources in the Tagammu’ Party stating that “participation in this conference represents Sami Abu Shehadeh and does not represent the National Democratic Assembly Party.” We can only deplore this position, if this is indeed the official position of the party, and consider it as one of those mercurial statements characterized by clear demagoguery and evasion of reality and truth; Apart from being, of course, a blatant insult against the leader and star of their party, and the source of spirit in his bones, as we saw in the recent election campaign.
It is clear that Sami Abu Shehadeh's remarkable step raised, on various fronts, many questions, embarrassing not only his party's institutions and activists, and the silence of his intellectuals, but also succeeded, even inadvertently, in showing the fragility of the Democratic Front's position, its weakness, and its absence from the arena of joint struggle with Jewish forces. Despite the passage of time since the end of the electoral battle, the Front has not initiated any serious frontal political action aimed at confronting the dangerous Israeli political reality that is taking shape before our eyes and in our positions. We will hear from them about the need to wait for the front's institutions to come together in order to evaluate them and take appropriate decisions about the future. It's the same claim we've been hearing for over twenty years.
There are still many vague details about what preceded Sami Abu Shehadeh's decision to participate in a conference in which he will announce the establishment of a new Arab Zionist Jewish party. Is it possible that he took his step without consulting the opinion of some of his comrades and arming himself with the approval of at least some of them? And if it has partners in this decision, can we assume that the Tagammu’ party is on the verge of the possibility of division? Or is it possible that some supported Sami's decision to participate in order to "burn" him and lose his position as the unanimous national leader and the shining star in a dark sky.
Some of Sami Abu Shehadeh's friends wished him to wait before continuing with his announced step. This is not the way, according to their opinion, that the wise leader jumps into the ambiguous spheres of politics; Some of his companions announced their unequivocal support for his decision. The two parties spoke in the name of politics and the ways to practice it, and they declared that it prevails in our reality, because we are standing on the crater of a volcano. And against them stood a Rahat who believed that ideological principles should prevail, as they are the mother of all ends and the master of all politics. As for me, I stand where I have always stood and ask where some of these people were when they took silence as a craft and outbidding are paths of comfort and calmness of patriotism.
I am not writing to question Sami Abu Shehadeh about his aforementioned decision, nor to praise him. We are about to take a step that cannot be loaded more than it bears, and things are always measured by their conclusions. However, in spite of all that, we have to feel the boldness of the different leader that Sami Abu Shehadeh's decision implied. I hope that I am right, and that he, along with other leaders, from the assembly and others, will reconsider and check their accounts after the end of a decisive battle. And they evaluate its clear repercussions, hoping that they will be guided to a safe path to save their people and their families from a tyranny that has become within sight and closer to their chests than the sigh of fate. We, as defenseless citizens, will pay, on the one hand, the price of the positions of leaders who believed in politics and did not master its arts, and on the other hand, the positions of leaders who believed in the purity of justice and belief and did not comprehend its futility; Today we all stand at the door of hell and hear the hiss of the jinn.