A Zionist Youth Movement That Wants to Shape Israeli Arab Minds? Sounds Legit

An Atidna visit to a death camp in Poland. The trips have brought praise from Jews, threats from some Arabs.Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

It looked like a wonderful initiative: A group of Arab and Jewish leaders band together in order to establish a new organization intended to serve the country’s Arab population with the aim of integrating members of its youth into Israeli society as equal partners. They found a youth movement, distribute scholarships to college-age students, organize outings and tours for teens, run workshops and courses in various subjects, work to get talented young people hired by high-tech firms, and groom a core of young leaders. They’re called Atidna (Arabic for “our future”), and according to their website – in Arabic – the movement’s founders are a “coalition of educators and leaders from among Israel’s Arab citizens, together with Jewish partners.”

Who are those Jewish partners? The answer to that question also appears on the website – but only in the Hebrew and English versions. There, the description is couched in slightly different terms: “Atidna is a coalition of educators and social entrepreneurs, Arab citizens of Israel together with Jews from the State-Zionist camp in Israel.” A coalition between Arab society and the “State-Zionist camp”? That’s a bit of a jaw-dropping formulation. It’s not hard to guess why it was omitted from the Arabic text.

Yet even that description conceals more than it reveals – because the folks behind Atidna are not from the Zionist left nor are they centrists. They come from the deep right. Social Equality and Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli (Likud) – who in the past called for the “transfer” of the residents of Wadi Ara, Taibeh, Kafr Qasem and Baka al-Garbiyeh to the Palestinian Authority – was one of the movement’s founders and was instrumental in articulating its vision. The chairman, Erez Eshel, who lives in the settlement of Kfar Adumim and was the creator of the premilitary academies project, wields strategic influence in the Israeli right. He was responsible for the political pairing of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, he’s behind the formation of Hashomer Hahadash, a civilian defense organization meant to protect Jewish settlements in the Negev and the Galilee, and he’s also behind visits of Jewish high-school students to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

One of Atidna’s “partner CEOs,” as the website puts it, is Amit Deri, a co-founder of the “Reservists on Duty” organization, which operates both in Israel and abroad to counter the BDS movement and led the assault on the anti-occupation NGO Breaking the Silence. In charge of content is Hanan Amior, a right-wing journalist who advocates the “transfer” of the Arab population from Israel and has a rich record of vitriolic comments about Arabs (“the most barbaric nation in the world”). Another key figure is Yifat Sela, the chairwoman of Emunah, the religious Zionist women’s organization, and the daughter of Natan Eshel, a close adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Knowing who the movement’s leaders are makes it easier to assess what its true goals may be. Thus, without fanfare, with patient grassroots work and funding from American Jews, an Arab-Zionist movement has come into being that aspires to transform Israel’s Arab society. The movement espouses right wing-style Zionist values, sends delegations to visit the death camps in Poland and, without saying so explicitly, also strives to get Arabs drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. For Atidna, it’s a long-distance run, whose aim is the creation of a new generation of Arab Zionists. “Good Arabs.”

The National Committee of the Heads of Arab Localities understands what is at stake and is doing battle against the movement. In the meantime, though, 15 Arab towns, from the north to the Negev, have already opened their doors to Atidna. That’s understandable, because the movement comes with plenty of money in hand, which it distributes in the form of generous scholarships and subsidized outings and trips. That’s an offer that’s hard to refuse, certainly in the case of disadvantaged communities.

Now the critical moment seems to be at hand, when the movement will be able to tap into the largesse of the government and thus expand both its budget and its influence. Social Equality Minister Chikli, whose ministry oversees billions of shekels that are earmarked for Arab society, aspires to divert funds from established social organizations that work on behalf of Arab youth – groups he brands as “instigators” and “isolationists” – for the benefit of organizations like Atidna.

Chikli is doing more than talking. Haaretz has learned that in recent weeks the Social Equality Ministry has discussed initial proposals to revise the eligibility requirements for outside program operators to bid on government contracts, possibly by setting minimal conditions such as “encouragement of national service,” “promoting Zionist values,” “organizing trips to Poland” – missions that only Atidna carries out today in Arab society. For the moment, these ideas have been blocked by the ministry’s legal adviser.

Still, we may be at a tipping point. If we wake up in a few years and discover that a rightist-Zionist youth movement is flourishing among the country’s Arab population and is gradually shunting aside more veteran groups, we won’t be able to say that we didn’t know. One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist in order to identify the long-term vision. It’s the realization of the dream of Netanyahu and his cohorts in the deep right: the emergence of a significant right-wing Arab political camp in Israeli society.

Indeed, Atidna itself admits that this is the plan. “In the long run, we also hope that the social movement will turn into a political movement and will be part of the coalition and part of the government,” Dr. Dalia Fadila, partner-CEO of Atidna, told The Jerusalem Post in September 2020. The impression of a former leading member of Atidna, who left the movement in a huff, is that its goals are more focused. “They were talking about a Jewish-Arab party that will sideline the existing leadership of the Arab public in the Knesset, a party that will weaken the left,” the source said.

“An effort is underway on the right whose strategic goal is to bring about a deep ideological shift among the Arab public in Israel, by means of dispossessing citizens and youth of their identity and their national history,” says Ran Cohen, the founder of the Democratic Bloc (not to be confused with the former Knesset member), a nonprofit that seeks to expose antidemocratic trends in Israel, and which has been monitoring Atidna’s activity in the past few months.

“The Atidna project is a sophisticated layer in this effort,” he notes. “Below the surface, and while playing down their underlying agenda, Atidna is working to shape a new identity among Israel’s Arab citizens – an identity that will match the fantasy of the Arab persona the right longs for and will prepare the ground for electoral cooperation between a right-wing coalition in the spirit of Netanyahu, and the Arabs.”

The people behind Atidna, from left: CEO Dalia Fadila, content director Hanan Amior, co-CEO Amit Deri, Chairman Erez Eshel, Social Equality Minister Chikli, an architect of the movement's vision.Credit: Nimrod Glickman / Marc Israel Sellem / Kobi Gideon, Baubau / Tomer Appelbaum

The secret of Atidna’s drawing power lies in the attractive – and subsidized – activities it offers young people. A few months ago, the movement distributed a flyer offering teens a three-day trip to Eilat (including travel, lodgings, outings and popular attractions in the Red Sea resort city) for the incredibly low price of 300 shekels (about $83) for members and 320 shekels for newcomers. Later this month, Atidna will hold a three-day training seminar for eighth- and ninth-grade students in the Mount Carmel woods; cost: just 200 shekels.

“Very quickly, we saw the power they have to attract young people,” says Nidal Bishara, who was active in preventing the movement from entering a school in the town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the Upper Galilee, several years ago. According to Bishara, who was the head of the parents’ committee in the school at the time, “They approach children from families of a low socioeconomic status, and tell them, ‘Come and be part of social activity, and in return you will receive a scholarship [for future studies].’”

Bishara emphasizes that he has nothing against the people working for Atidna in Tarshiha, still less against the parents who send their children to the movement. “Some of them are my friends,” he says, “but I’m not sure they know what Atidna is and who the people are that run it. We have a lack of activities for youth, and Atidna entered the vacuum. The children who go to them have no political awareness; they arrive out of a state of naivete.”

Jamal Tiyun, from the town of Sha’ab in the Lower Galilee, concurs: “Atidna is entering fertile ground, because our youth have hardly any leisure-time options. Even my cousin wants to register with them, and we are actually from the Communist Party. He saw that they were offering all kinds of activities and outings, and that attracted him.”

Below the surface, Atidna is working to shape a new identity among Israel’s Arab citizens – one that will match the fantasy of the Arab persona the right longs for and prepare the ground for electoral cooperation between a right-wing coalition in the spirit of Netanyahu, and the Arabs.

Ran Cohen

Indeed, options of this kind constitute a threat to youth organizations that are active today in Arab society. “We can’t compete with what Atidna is offering directors of youth departments in local governments: trips to Eilat, academic scholarships for students, tours, jobs for youth workers,” a source in one of the organizations relates. “But it goes well beyond money. Atidna comes in with a political infrastructure that includes plenty of strong connections within the government.”

The movement also invests heavily in making a pitch to young people who have completed high school. It runs a training and placement program in high-tech and offers scholarships to undergraduate students. The scholarships consist of 5,000 shekels ($1,350) for tuition, in return for which the students are requested to participate in civics seminars and do volunteer work in their respective communities.

S., 24, who lives in the north, learned about the movement from an online advertisement. “A friend showed me a course of theirs for professional training in high-tech, and we decided to register together,” she relates. “I received at no cost a course that in the private market costs something like 25,000 shekels [about $7,000], in return for 50 hours of volunteering anywhere I wanted. I chose to volunteer with children of primary-school age.”

The first lesson, recounted S., opened with remarks by a well-known strategic consultant from the Arab community, who is a leading figure in Atidna. “He told about the nonprofit’s agenda and talked a great deal about promoting the Zionist vision. My friend and I looked at each other in astonishment. At our age you can’t brainwash us anymore. But I believe that it’s possible to influence the young generation more.”

The delegations to Poland have received sympathetic coverage from such journalists as Ben Dror Yamini (an opinion columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth) and Lilach Sigan (Maariv). However, some of the teens who talked openly about their visits to the former death camps paid a price for it within Arab society. Because of threats they received, especially in the social networks, Atidna beefed up security for the latest delegation. The movement also added to the group 17 public figures from Arab society, among them five heads of local governments and school principals.

Atidna is trying hard to appeal to key players in local politics – in fact, the Arab local authorities find it as difficult to resist the tempting offers as members of the younger generation. “They came to us very prepared,” says a member of the education department in a local council in the north. “They knew in advance what we were lacking, and showed us data [for example, demographic statistics] that even the authority has trouble obtaining.”

The knowledge of details was translated into an offer. “In the realm of informal education we have one person who works half-time,” the source says. “Atidna offered financial support that would have enabled us to set up a whole youth unit in the municipality. For a council like ours, it’s a matter of astronomical sums, hundreds of thousands of shekels. It was an offer that was very hard to refuse.” Nevertheless, the local authority decided not to join Atidna, mainly due to political pressures.

Additional local councils have had to face a similar dilemma. In fact, the issue is dividing Arab society: for example, between communities that are snapping up the opportunity to upgrade the meager supply of social services for youth, as opposed to communities that are rebuffing Atidna, because they believe its goal is to inculcate alien values among the young.

An Atidna activity. Young Arabs have hardly any leisure-time options.Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

The High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel discerned the movement’s efforts to penetrate communities back in May 2020. “They were present in seven towns, and already then there were basic suspicions about them,” notes Daoud Afaan, a representative of the United Arab List on the committee, which is the national umbrella organization for Arab citizens. The subject was discussed in a meeting of the committee, and the conclusions were biting. “The High Follow-Up Committee warns against the attempts by the Atidna nonprofit to ensnare Arab youth,” stated a communiqué the committee issued. “It turns out that Atidna is determined to penetrate the young Arab public by means of slogans like ‘leadership development’ and ‘support for students,’ but in fact they are intent on entrenching and perpetuating a concept of Jewish supremacy.”

Many heads of local authorities find themselves walking a thin line, as exemplified by the city of Tamra, in the Lower Galilee. Initially, Atidna’s chances there looked excellent, because the director of its youth movement at the time, Mohammed Abu Alhiga, was former head of the municipality’s youth department. But not everyone was enthusiastic about the idea of establishing a branch of the movement in the city. “We started to look into who was behind the initiative,” says Nidal Othman, the deputy mayor. “It turned out that their principal motivation was not to work for equality and for the Arabs’ integration into society, but to bring about a substantive change in the makeup of our identity.” The municipality refused the group’s offer, but finally Abu Alhiga was able to persuade an official at one of the local schools to allocate space for the movement there.

Today, by the way, Abu Alhiga is head of the Arab society unit in the Yesh Atid party. He left Atidna under circumstances he declines to discuss. What he will say to Haaretz is that, “All my life I worked for the advancement of informal education for the young in Arab society, based on a deep belief in a partnership that will benefit all the country’s citizens. Arab-Jewish partnership must strengthen the rights of the minority in the country of the majority, and not turn the minority into subjects in an extremist country. The burden of proof lies with every Jew who supports the present government.”

* * *

In 2018, some time before Atidna struck roots, its leaders met to formulate their vision. The venue – the Tavor Leadership Academy, in Nof Hagalil (at the time called Upper Nazareth) – speaks volumes about the movement’s goals even before one word of the declaration of intentions was written. Thus, when a discussion came up about whether to declare recognition of the “Palestinian identity” of Israel’s Arabs, the idea was instantly dismissed. In fact, it was actually the leaders of the initiative on the Arab side who rejected it out of hand. Their opposition was quite natural. At least four of Atidna’s Arab founders were active in Likud or expressed support for other right-wing parties.

However, the significance of the Tavor gathering went well beyond the ceremonial. Chikli, the founder of the academy, was then a central figure in Atidna. Shortly afterward, he earned a place on Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party slate. In June 2021, the “government of change” was formed, based on a partnership between Zionist parties identified with the “national camp” and an Arab party, the United Arab List, which advocates integration of the Arab population into society. It was the sort of alliance that Atidna should have welcomed, but it was none other than Chikli who immediately set about shooting it down – a move seen as betrayal by some of Atidna’s Arab officials.

One former member, an educator, says that, 'I agree that we need to be proud Israelis, but not at the expense of pride in our Palestinian roots. If I am told, “Memorize and declaim that you are living in a Jewish and democratic state and forget about your Palestinian roots,” then I’m not there.'

“Chikli, who co-authored the vision for establishing a Jewish-Arab partnership together with me, should have been the first person to support a government like that,” says one such figure, who prefers to remain unnamed. “The first time in history that an Arab party enters the coalition, and under a right-wing prime minister, to boot. What more could you ask for? We realized the vision.”

The rest is history, of course. Chikli’s revolt left the government unable to function properly, dooming it to a short life. In return for his role in bringing the government down, Chikli was guaranteed a slot in Likud, and after the election of 2022, was appointed minister of social equality and Diaspora affairs. The Authority for the Economic Development of the Minorities Sector, which controls a budget of billions, is today under his control.

Overall, Chikli is pressing ahead with most of the projects initiated by the previous government, while trying to effect changes in them that reflect his worldview. The group likely to be most affected is the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, aka AJEEC, which seeks to develop leadership among the Arab population’s young generation and is in the forefront of some of the ministry’s flagship programs. Chikli, who has set himself the goal of eliminating every manifestation of Palestinian national sentiment, is making efforts to end his ministry’s collaboration with AJEEC.

Atidna officials met with the previous minister, Meirav Cohen (Yesh Atid), and urged her not to contract with AJEEC to implement one of the projects she initiated for Arab youth. According to sources at the meeting, Atidna said AJEEC was trying to undermine Israel’s legitimacy, and as such was inciting to violence. Cohen asked for proof of these allegations, but the material Atidna supplied was meager, consisting of a pro-Palestinian remark by the daughter of one of AJEEC’s board members. In the perception of Cohen and her staff, the material was irrelevant.

The anti-AJEEC file in the Social Equality Ministry has recently grown thicker. The ministry alleges that, according to the information in its possession, “the organization is systematically promoting Palestinian nationalist indoctrination, such as marking Land Day and Nakba Day, display of [the Palestinian] flag, or engaging in guided viewing of Mohammad Bakri’s [2002] film ‘Jenin, Jenin.’” Haaretz has learned that the “evidence” that was collected includes documentation of a young member of AJEEC hoisting a Palestinian flag in a demonstration and the names of employees of the organization who “liked” a social-media post from the chairman of the Balad political party, Sami Abu Shehadeh.

AJEEC officials declined to be interviewed for this article, fearing negative repercussions. In a statement, however, they explained that their organization “promotes joint positive activity between Jews and Arabs, and assists in integration of young Arabs into academia, in high-quality employment and in Israeli society in general. Any attempt to describe the organization differently is untruthful and borders on slander.”

Other social organizations operating within Arab society are also apprehensive about speaking out against Atidna in public. “We need to tread carefully,” a senior figure in one such group says. “They have a lobbyist who is a minister in the government.”

Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

Still, Atidna recently experienced a stinging setback, when the Education Ministry decided not to recognize it officially as a youth movement, because it doesn’t meet the threshold conditions. A source who is knowledgeable about the details said that “politicians also tried to intervene on their behalf, but the bottom line is that they did not get recognition.” It wasn’t by chance that Atidna made tremendous efforts to overcome that hurdle. Being part of the small club of youth movements recognized by the state carries significant budgetary perks in the form of generous financial support from the state.

In the meantime, Atidna is relying on donations. Its turnover almost tripled within two years (in 2020, its budget stood at 2.7 million shekels – $750,000 in today’s terms – rising to 7.8 million shekels in 2022). The bulk of the money comes from the U.S.-based PEF Israel Endowment Funds, which serves as a conduit for philanthropists to distribute contributions among nonprofit groups in Israel without having their identities revealed publicly. The Schusterman Family Foundation, which is known for its support for liberal projects, gave Atidna a one-time grant of 700,000 shekels during the period of the coronavirus pandemic.

Atidna presents a dual leadership model, Jewish and Arab, with the co-CEOs being Amit Deri and Dalia Fadila, an educator and entrepreneur who established an engineering college in Baka al-Garbiyeh, as well as a network of schools for English studies. Fadila, who started off as a high-school teacher in Tira and became a successful businesswoman, is a well-liked and much esteemed figure in Arab society and in Israel generally. Among her other activities, she is on the board of Yad B’Yad, a nonprofit group that operates a network of bilingual schools.

In addition to her skills and experience, Fadila also contributes to the public image of Atidna, vesting the movement with a veneer of respectability and nonpartisanism. In a ceremony last December in which he bestowed a presidential citation on Fadila, President Isaac Herzog praised her activity in Atidna, and stated that the movement “promotes a vision of a joint society, dignity and mutual surety between Jews and Arabs for building the future generation of the State of Israel.” Those words, uttered by the country’s president, are very valuable in terms of branding Atidna as an all-Israel movement, one that is not necessarily identified with a particular political camp.

A coalition between Arab society and the ‘State-Zionist camp’? That’s a bit of a jaw-dropping formulation. It’s not hard to guess why it was omitted from the Arabic text on the organization's website.

Yet it is Fadila herself who has noted the organization’s affinity with the right. “What’s different about Atidna is that it’s a coalition between Arab leaders and Jewish leaders from the center-right wing of Israeli politics,” she told The Jerusalem Post in 2020. For his part, Deri was quoted in the same article as saying that he is out to shatter the misconception that Jewish-Arab partnership is inherently left-wing. Fadila even expressed the hope that the new youth movement would eventually turn into a political party and become part of the government.

Atidna also seeks to influence the public agenda and speak out on political issues. In September 2021, following the escape of Palestinian security inmates from Gilboa Prison, Erez Eshel asked in the group: “Does Atidna have the courage to publish an article [stating] that it’s good that murderers are caught and [expressing the hope that] all those who perpetrate terrorism and violence in our society should be behind bars?” The next day, Yedioth Ahronoth published an article by Fadila and the movement’s “youth secretary general,” Tony Nasser, headlined, “We deserve law and order.” The authors expressed “frustration and disappointment in light of the direction that was taken by the social networks and the Arab political leadership” with regard to the prison break.

Atidna is also a consistent advocate of bringing the Shin Bet – which is normally restricted from surveilling civilians if they are not suspected of constituting a security threat – into Arab society in order to fight the surging wave of crime plaguing it – a very highly charged issue. Almost two years ago, Fadila and Nasser published a column in the Israel Hayom newspaper asserting that “the Arabs want governance.” Once more the two sought to distinguish themselves as the mirror image of “the breeze that’s blowing from the Arab political leadership and from extremist elements.”

Crossing every line

At a preliminary stage of work on this article, we were in touch with Atidna to propose interviews with the movement’s leaders, and also asked to observe some of its activities in order to learn about its character first-hand. Atidna rejected both requests out of hand and cautioned us about publishing “conspiracy theories” that would associate the movement with a specific political camp.

However, internal correspondence obtained by Haaretz places a question mark over the claim of non-partisanship, at least as far as the views of CEO Eshel are concerned. Against the background of a countrywide wave of fires two years ago, Eshel quoted a poem by Haim Hefer intimating that he attributes the blazes to acts of arson by Israel’s Arabs. “Those who burn the forest sing ‘Biladi, Biladi’ [Palestinian national anthem] and songs of earth and freedom, but the country that the Jews painted in green they color with fire and black,” Eshel wrote.

When another activist wanted Atidna to condemn National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and circulated a petition calling for his ouster from the Knesset, Eshel rebuffed him and wrote, “Before we oust him, let’s oust the MKs in the anti-Israeli parties.” Another of the Arab figures in Atidna, who has since left, describes that incidental correspondence as a breaking point. “It’s the point at which I understood that it’s really not statesman-like right. Anyone who defends Ben-Gvir has crossed every line from my point of view. I couldn’t work with it anymore. People who talk like that can’t be my partners.”

He’s not the only one who found himself outside. Arabs accounted for about half the movement’s founders (five of 11 members of the board). However, according to Atidna’s reports to the Registrar of Associations for 2022, the board of directors consisted of only four individuals, only one of whom is an Arab – Sami Algernawi, a real estate and tourism entrepreneur who is thought to be one of the richest persons in Israel’s Bedouin community. Algernawi lives in Mitzpeh Ramon and is close to the local council head, Roni Marom. He said that in the past that he grew up in a family that supports Likud but that he had also donated to a candidate in the Labor Party’s primary.

Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

Unlike Algernawi, with his deep pockets and access to power centers, social activists and educators in Arab society who joined Atidna dropped out along the way. One of them agreed to talk to Haaretz, but only after being promised that his identity would not be divulged. “I’m afraid of them,” he explained, adding that he felt hurt from his experience. “Erez [Eshel] and Amit [Deri] presented the project to me as one that would work to integrate Jews and Arabs. That looked like a worthy goal, so I joined together with a group of other Arab activists. In practice, they used us and then dumped us. They photographed us so they would have something to show the donors about supposed partnership. And then they gave us the boot.”

What do you mean?

“They broke off contact.”

The source adds that in any event, he felt alienated from Atidna shortly after joining. “There was a large gap between the vision they presented and the reality. In the initial meetings, we were seven or eight Arabs, but there was no serious discussion of our ideas. They fudged us. It wasn’t the good of the Arabs that they were interested in, but their own good. When I read their handouts, I discovered that they were clear-cut right-wingers.”

Couldn’t you have figured that out earlier?

“You’re right. I blame myself. I made a mistake and they took advantage of it.”

An educator who also dropped put of Atidna about two years after its founding describes similar feelings. “At first I believed in what they were doing – after all, I also work for the integration of Israel’s Arabs,” he relates. “I was contacted by Erez Eshel. ‘Come and talk to the right, the right is the majority,’ he told me. I said that I had no problem with the right or with the left, the main thing is to integrate our young people. He said, ‘We’re on it.’ We started to meet and they also raised funds. Jewish-American philanthropists took an interest. But then I discovered that things weren’t proceeding according to what they had told me.”

There were many arguments with Chikli and other Jews who were involved in the project. “They told me, ‘If an Arab like you will stand with the Israeli flag at the Shfaram Junction, the Jews will be attentive to you, they will want to hear what you have to say.’ I agree that we need to be proud Israelis, but not at the expense of pride in our Palestinian roots. If I am told, ‘Memorize and declaim that you are living in a Jewish and democratic state and forget about your Palestinian roots,’ then I’m not there. So, at a certain stage I said: ‘That’s it, I’m out of here.’”

Yet another person who left the movement says that “when we formulated Atidna’s vision we talked about Jewish-Arab partnership, but as time passed it turned out to be colonialism, not partnership.”

Even Ream Falah, a social entrepreneur in Bedouin society who served in the Israel Defense Forces and ran for the Knesset recently on the slate of Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, did not find his place in Atidna, though he emphasizes that the parting was amicable. “Let’s say that the desire to create a connection with the right-wing camp was stronger than the desire to take sincere action to integrate all the Arab citizens,” he says.

According to Atidna’s website, it is “committed to the challenge of the successful integration of the Arab minority in the State of Israel” – a general goal that few would object to. However, it’s worth asking what “successful integration” Atidna-style would look like.

In a meeting held in Haifa during the movement’s first days with the participation of its top officials, Eshel set forth his vision for Atidna. According to sources, he described it as an “Arab Zionist” movement and noted that his goal was to establish a youth movement that would aim to recruit Arab youth for the IDF within the framework of “Arab elite units.”

Last March, Chikli held a first meeting with the National Committee of the Heads of Arab Localities, in Shfaram, a mixed (Muslim, Christian and Druze) city east of Haifa. He spoke about his past in Atidna and praised it as a movement that works for the integration of Arab society in Israel. Amir Besharat, a member of the committee, who was at the meeting, notes that “when Chikli spoke about partnership, he didn’t mean equality, but equality of the burden [of army service] and hinted at the recruitment of young people from Arab society.”

Visiting Tel Aviv. A long-term goal of Atidna is to have Arabs drafted into the IDF.Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

Chikli makes no bones about it: In response to a request from Haaretz for comment on this point, he said that he “believes that integration in civilian or military service will deepen the connection of young Arabs to the State of Israel,” and that he definitely sees “value in encouraging the trend.”

In Atidna’s previous website, which is no longer available on the internet, the movement included the IDF logo under the rubric of “Our Partners” (the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated that it has no knowledge about cooperation with the organization). In its current material, Atidna makes no mention of army service for Israel’s Arabs, which happens to be a very charged issue for the Arab community, certainly so long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains so far from resolution.

“Atidna talks about developing leadership in Arab society, but actually it is shaping leadership according to the dimensions of the right,” says Daoud Afan from the Follow-up Committee.

Your party, Ra’am – the United Arab List – identifies with the thrust to integrate into Israeli society, at the expense of addressing national questions. So one would have thought that you would support some of Atidna’s objectives.

“People who say that don’t understand Ra’am. It’s true that Ra’am wants the Arabs to integrate, to be an integral part of the labor market, study in academia and be part of the fabric of life in Israel. But according to our values and in our way – and not for people like Amichai Chikli to dictate to us who is a good Arab and who is not a good Arab.”

‘Equal rights and obligations’

A spokesperson for Atidna stated in response to a list of questions from Haaretz: “Atidna is working for the integration of Israel’s Arabs as citizens with equal rights and equal obligations in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. From many research studies we have conducted in recent years, we know that more than 50 percent of Israel’s Arabs are proud and happy to be Israelis living in a Jewish and democratic state, and will never want to live in a different society.

“In the shadow of the crime and violence that are rampant in Arab society, Atidna offers an educational and inclusive framework for youth and is strengthening Arab identity alongside integration into Israeli society. Atidna will continue to strengthen and empower Arab leadership that accepts the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and will continue to work for their integration into high-tech, academia and the economy until the creation of a quality, true, representative leadership as desired by Israel’s Arab citizens who are proud of the country. More than 90 percent of Atidna’s professional staff consists of proud Israeli Arabs. The board of directors consists of a partnership of 50 percent Jews and 50 percent Arabs.”

A spokesperson for Minister Amichai Chikli stated: “Since entering the Knesset, the minister has not held any working meeting relating to the movement. The ministry’s director general held one working meeting with Atidna’s directors for the purpose of getting acquainted. Terms such as delegations to Poland or encouraging Zionist values have not been inserted as threshold conditions for [bidding on contracts to run] projects in Arab society, nor has it been suggested that they be included. He held an open discussion on the issue of encouraging civilian service in programs such as a gap year and programs for youth and additional elements that would strengthen the integration of young Arabs. No decisions have been made on the subject as yet.”