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Does the RJC Think Israeli Arabs Are a Fifth Column?

Are Israeli Arabs “a fifth column, a league of traitors”?

According to a blog posted last Thursday by Shari Hillman, the communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, they are.

Hillman was agreeing with statements made on September 11 by Effi Eitam, a leader of the joint Knesset faction aligned with Orthodox Zionists worldwide, that called for Israel “to expel the great majority of the Arabs” from the West Bank and “sweep the Israeli Arabs from the political system.”

Eitam reportedly described Arab Knesset members as “a fifth column, a league of traitors of the first rank.”

UPDATE: Shari Hillman told the Forward yesterday that she did not mean to suggest that she believes all Israeli Arabs are a “fifth column” or should be deported, but rather meant to draw attention to some allegedly illegal behavior by certain Arab-Israeli politicians.

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