Why Israeli Arabs Stand By Their Country

About midway through the newest season of Fauda, the hit Israeli Netflix show, Palestinian terrorists are training for an attack when one of the trainees asks his superiors whether the sleeper cells within Israel will join the fight. The commanding officer looks to his own boss with a flash of doubt; the superior gives him a tentative nod. Yes, the trainees are told, terrorists within Israel will do their part as well.

That flash of doubt is either because the terrorist leader doesn’t actually expect much help from within Israel, or because he isn’t sure whether the trainee has a right to know the answer to that question. But the scene caught my attention because I’d been thinking about a slightly different aspect of the October 7 attacks and their aftermath: not whether terror cells within Israel would (or could) get involved, but how Israel’s Arab population defied Yahya Sinwar’s expectations that they would rise up and join the wanton destruction of their own country, the State of Israel.

Sinwar underestimated Arab Israelis. He also underestimated Israel’s resilience as a nation-state. There is great normalcy in what happened: A state’s citizens did not join a foreign invasion against their country.