Key Likud MP Yariv Levin, the chairman of the coalition government, has come up with a puzzling new bill which aims to officially remove the term “Arab” from the ID cards of Palestinian Christians, on the grounds that the Christians ‘aren’t really Arabs.’
The bill is an apparent attempt to split Israel’s Arab minority into different official categories, and Levin argued that providing special privileges, or in this case simply persecuting them less than other Arabs, would be a way to “connect us and the Christians.”
“Out of ignorance, the government has been lumping all of the minorities – Druse, Christians and others – under the category of ‘Arab’ since the establishment of the state,” Levin argued.
Israel’s Arab minority is about 1.6 million citizens, of which about 10% are Christians. Levin says that 10% “see this country as their home with open arms,” while the other 90% simply “take advantage of our democracy to destroy us.”
