Beware the Fifth Column

Avi Abelow | Meta 

Israel Must Wake Up: The Fifth Column Has Already Shown Itself — And It Will Rise Again

Many people will feel uncomfortable confronting this issue because it challenges the values we were raised with as educated Jews in the West. But discomfort is not an excuse for denial. The truth must be stated clearly if we are to protect ourselves.

There are moments when truth hits with the force of an earthquake.

This week, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas’s founder, a man who grew up inside the enemy’s mind, warned Israel that the most dangerous threat we face in Israel is not beyond our borders, but inside them.

His warning was unfiltered and brutally clear:

“It’s only a matter of time before the Palestinian Authority launches a third intifada. And it’s only a matter of time before the fifth column of Arab Muslims who are Israeli citizens rises up violently. They use Israeli democracy, but in their hearts, they are against Jews, against democracy, and against the State of Israel.”

This is not speculation. This is not fear-mongering. This is a man raised inside Hamas telling us what many Israeli security officials know but are afraid to say publicly.

But here is the real wake-up call:

This uprising has already happened.

In May 2021, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israeli cities, Arab Muslim citizens of Israel launched a coordinated, nationwide uprising in solidarity with Gaza’s terrorists.

This was not “fringe extremists.” This was thousands, in dozens of Israeli locations.

• Synagogues burned in Lod and Acre
• Jewish homes torched
• Jewish families attacked in their own neighborhoods
• Lynch mobs attempted to murder Jews on the streets
• Roads were blocked across the Galilee and the Negev

This was not “coexistence.” This was a preview.

Exactly what Mosab warns is coming, already came.

And Israeli society, desperate to return to “normal,” buried the memory as quickly as possible.

But our enemies did not.

Since 2021, the situation has grown exponentially worse.

Arab Muslim communities inside Israel are now estimated to possess hundreds of thousands of illegal firearms, including:

• M-16s
• AK-47s
• Grenades
• RPGs in certain areas
• Vast quantities of ammunition

These are not for “crime.” These are for the day the order comes, from Hamas, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, or a PA-led uprising in Judea and Samaria.

Mosab’s warning is not about the future.

It is about a fuse that has already been lit.

When Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and butchered 1,200 Jews with medieval barbarism, many Arab Muslim citizens of Israel did not recoil.

They celebrated.

Publicly.

In Umm al-Fahm, Sakhnin, Jerusalem, Rahat, Lod, and universities across the country, they:

• Passed out sweets
• Posted praise for Hamas on social media
• Blamed Israel for its own massacre

The same communities that rioted in 2021 openly signaled where their loyalties lie.

This is what Mosab wants Israel to understand…

A society can survive external enemies. A society cannot survive internal enemies who know its weaknesses, understand its freedoms, and despise the values that sustain it.

Mosab’s message is simple:

Israel must prepare. Israel must unite. Because the most dangerous enemy today is not Hamas in Gaza, but the fifth column living inside the Jewish state.

And he’s right.

Israel can no longer pretend that millions of Arab Muslim Israeli citizens who:

• Reject Israel as a Jewish state
• Identify with Gaza and Hamas
• Support the PA’s terror campaign against Jews
• Believe Sharia is superior to democracy

…are simply a “minority population” with a few extremists.

This is the classic Western mistake, projecting Western values onto a Middle Eastern society.

Westerners do not understand Islam. Whether in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Dearborn, MI or Patterson, NJ, Islam is a tribal culture that does not believe in individual rights or self-fulfillment, as Western culture.

But as I say repeatedly:

Israel is not in Scandinavia.

Israel is in the Middle East.

The rules are different.

And if we do not adopt Middle Eastern clarity of tribalism, we will continue to pay Middle Eastern prices.

To survive the next decade, Israel must:

• Disarm the Israeli Arabs of the hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons — fully
• Enforce loyalty to a Jewish democratic state as a condition for citizenship
• Strengthen Jewish communities across the Galilee, Negev, Lod, and Jerusalem
• Prepare operationally for simultaneous internal and external uprisings

And ultimately, work to strip citizenship and expel every jihadist supporting MK, inciting imam, jihadi educator and all jihadi Muslims in our midst

This is not extremism. This is reality. This is survival.

We survived exile.

We survived pogroms.

We survived the Holocaust.

We survived Arab armies.

And we survived Oct. 7th.

But the lesson of Jewish history is that the greatest danger often comes not from outside armies but from illusions inside our own minds.

Mosab Hassan Yousef has removed the illusion.

Israel must now remove the blindfold.

And let us be clear: this danger is not Israel’s alone. Even Charlie Kirk openly warned, before his assassination, that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization, calling it “the sword the Left is using to slit the throat of America.”

Even though Tucker Carlson is totally going against Charlie by defending jihadi Muslims and turning on Israel, Charlie was right.

The world is finally beginning to recognize what we in Israel have learned the hard way: every Western nation now faces its own fifth column of jihadi Muslim citizens, and unless we all wake up, boldly, unapologetically, the future of the free world will be decided not on foreign battlefields, but from within U.S. and European cities.

We are living in a moment of Biblical clarity.

• The enemies outside seek our destruction.
• The growing jihadi population inside wait for their moment.
• And the Jewish people stand, once again, at a crossroads between strength and delusion.

Our ancestors prayed for the day when the Jewish people would return home, build a sovereign nation, defend ourselves, and live with clarity of purpose.

That day is now.

This is our responsibility. This is our calling. This is our moment of truth.

Am Yisrael Chai — but we must finally stop lying to ourselves about the dangerous fifth column.