The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people. We longed for this place, and we prayed for our return

The Palestinian flags waving in Tel Aviv on Saturday night are the real narrative, which no amount of wording, impersonating or mountains of hypocrisy can conceal.

The protesters at Rabin Square are fighting for the right of return to Sheikh Munis (Ramat Aviv), Khirbet Azoun (Raanana), and the lands of the Abu Kishk tribe in Ramat Hasharon. They want to make Nakba Day their day of independence. Their fight is over the 1948 borders, not the 1967 borders. The protesters in the square, led by the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee in Israel – MKs Ayman Odeh, Hanin Zoabi and Jamal Zahalka – are voicing their truth. We should heed what they are telling us and stop already with the Left's foolish march of naiveté.

The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people. We longed for this place, and we prayed for our return. And to liberate it we fought and sacrificed in the many thousands. We did not confiscate foreign soil; we are not colonialists in our own historic homeland, as claimed by the protest organizers, the leaders of the Arab public.

While the United Nations was deliberating over the partition plan, Jamal al-Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee spokesman at the time, said: "The partition line will be nothing but a line of fire and blood." He was right. 

Immediately after the state was declared, the War for Independence erupted, and the Arabs of Israel who collaborated with hostile Arab states were forced to pay the price for their mistake. The wheels of history cannot be turned back; the Nakba flame can only ignite more hatred and spew more smoke. The Left fringe, together with NGOs funded by Germany and a pro-Palestinian Israeli media mouthpiece unbelievably lent their hands to the demonstration spearheaded by the Arab High Monitoring Committee in Israel, against the essence and character of Israel as a Jewish state.

The purpose of Saturday night's rally in Tel Aviv, unlike other protests against the nation-state law, wasn't to help scrounge up votes or economic benefits. The Arabs of Israel are voicing their one truth and I recommend we refrain from dismissing them or downplaying what they say. As early as 1915, David Ben-Gurion realized the Jewish-Arab conflict was based on an Arab nationalism, incited by the Arab elites; rather than a neighborly quarrel over the seizure of land and water.

For many years now, the Israeli Left has been gripped by a naiveté bordering on a severe inability to assess reality. This naiveté began with the intellectuals of the binationalist Zionist group Brit Shalom and morphed into Peace Now. It is now exhaustingly championed by the Meretz party and inept Zionist Union mouthpieces. 

These groups espouse the delusion that if we just withdrew to the 1967 borders, peace would reign. It is a persistent, dangerous lie that leads people to believe, wrongly, that prior to the Six-Day War we were all sitting around singing "Kumbayah." 

Saturday's demonstration makes it clear to the naive and fatigued among us that we are in the midst of a fight over Israel's essence. It is a fight between the Jewish majority and those who want Israel to be a country of all its nationalities.

Equal rights among citizens is a worthy demand; a shared Jewish-Arab national home will never happen. The nation-state law is crucial for precisely this reason, while the Arab public in Israel undergoes a radical process of Palestinization. 

For anyone who still has any doubt, the next elections will be about Israel's character and essence. We must win these elections for the next generations as well.

Article courtesy of Israel Hayom.