On Jan. 10, the Israeli Cabinet approved a 2 billion shekel ($500 million) multiyear plan “to develop and strengthen the Druze and Circassian communities.” The announcement stated, “The plan touches on many areas of life including education, construction, infrastructures, social welfare and employment.” Less than two weeks before, on Dec. 30, the government had decided to allocate 15 billion shekels ($3.75 billion) for economic development of minority communities in general from 2016 to 2020. The decision applies to “all Arab, Druze and Circassian communities.” This five-year plan, according to official statements, is also designed to “reduce gaps” in the areas of welfare, policing, infrastructure and transportation.

Why did the government deem it appropriate to discriminate in favor of the small Druze and Circassian communities? Why trouble ministers with reducing gaps specifically among these communities less than two weeks after they had adopted a five-year plan designed to reduce gaps in all minority communities in Israel, which inherently included the Druze and Circassians? The answers can be found in Netanyahu's explanatory remarks on the more recent decision. As the prime minister explained, “The plan … will help to reduce disparities and promote the population that serves in the IDF and sees itself as part of the State of Israel.”

In other words, military service in the Israel Defense Forces is the winning ticket for access to the state's coffers. It doesn’t always work that way, however. Would Netanyahu have dared offer a special budget for development for the Jewish population serving in the military, while abandoning infrastructure, education and welfare in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods because the young men and women who live there refuse to perform military service and do not regard themselves as part of the State of Israel? In a speech he delivered Jan. 2 at the site of a terror attack on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street, the prime minister went even further, declaring, “One cannot say ‘I am Israeli in my rights and Palestinian in my responsibilities.’ Whoever wants to be Israeli must be Israeli all the way.” 

One cannot but recall the racist slogan of the radical right-wing parties, and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beitenu: “Without loyalty, there is no citizenship.” The approach according to which inalienable civil rights are conditioned on the performance of one’s duties had come in for sharp criticism by Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, who has never been accused of left-wing tendencies. As head of the election committee for the 19th Knesset, Rubinstein was asked to rule on the admissibility of the campaign slogan “There cannot be rights without obligations,” used by Otzma LeYisrael. Rubinstein wrote in 2013, “Parts of this campaign might, with a high degree of certainty, hurt the feelings of the Arab population, as well as those of Jews who were, and still are, targets of racist persecution all over the world.” The judge went on to state that the slogan “labels an entire population, in an all-encompassing manner, as opposed to legitimate criticism of certain individuals within it. I cannot accept this.”