Former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, who resigned after the failure of Israel against Hezbollah in the Israeli war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, recently stated that Israeli Arabs pose a threat to the state of Israel due to their refusal to accept the Jewish character of Israel.

Mr. Yaalon is joining Israeli politics and will be a candidate for the right-wing Likud party in the presumptive February national election.

Mr. Yaalon stated that Israeli Arabs consider all Jewish Israelis “in Tel Aviv, in Holon, all of us” to be nothing more than settlers in their country of Palestine.

“Israeli Arabs, with four documents that they wrote over the past two years, are actually rejecting our right to an independent Jewish state. We are settlers, as far as they are concerned,” Mr. Yaalon added with identifying the four referenced documents.

He then issued a strategy for dealing with this new threat to Israel: “we have the power to deal with this phenomenon. Both military and economic power.”

Israeli Arabs do not oppose the presence of Jews in Palestine (I know personally from my Israeli Arab classmate), but what they do oppose is the apartheid policy of Israel being a Jewish state and making all non-Jews second class citizens.

What kind of nation threatens military power and economic power against its own citizens because they seek a political change in society? What does he mean by military power? Killing? What does he mean by economic power? Is Israel going to enforce a economic blockade against Israeli Arab towns and starve them like it is doing to the Palestinians of Gaza?

I am sure that the U.S. media and U.S. Congress will not notice this threat to actual citizens of Israel whom are treated with threats and disdain for not sharing the majority faith.