This article was originally published by Palestine Chronicle and is republished with permission.

A Palestinian woman looks over a newly established Israeli settlement from her balcony in the West Bank city of Hebron. (Maan Images)

Just before Independence Day, a newspaper reported that an Arab child had refused to stand up while the national anthem was sung. The paper was furious. I was not. In fact, it raised a childhood experience from the depths of my memory.

It was in Hanover, Germany, some months after Adolf Hitler had come to power. I was a pupil in the first class of a high school that bore the name of the last German Empress, Auguste Victoria.

The rise of the Nazis to power did not, in general, cause immediate and dramatic changes. Life went on. But in school, there was a marked change: every few weeks, there was a celebration for one or another of the many military victories with which German history is richly endowed. On such days, all the pupils congregated in the great hall, the aula, the principal made a speech full of pathos, and the pupils sang patriotic songs.

On one of these occasions - I think it was in celebration of the taking of Belgrade from the Turks by Prince Eugen in 1717 - we assembled again in the aula and, at the end of the ceremony, two anthems were sung: the national anthem, "Das Lied der Deutschen," (The Song of the Germans) and the Nazi anthem, "Die Fahne hoch" (The Flag on High). The hundreds of pupils rose to their feet, raised their right hands in the Nazi salute, and sung devotedly.

I was 9 years old, a pupil of the most junior class, and the youngest child in the class. I was also the only Jew in school. I had no time to think. I rose to my feet, but I did not raise my hand and did not sing. One little boy in a sea of raised hands. I was trembling with excitement.

Nothing awful happened. But afterwards, some of my classmates threatened that if I did that again, they would break my bones. I was saved from this test. A few weeks later, my family fled Germany and went to Palestine, the land of my dreams.

Hundreds of thousands of Arab children are now facing a similar test. They are expected to sing an anthem that ignores their very existence and reminds them of the defeat of their people. This week, the publisher of Ha'aretz, Amos Schoken, the son of an immigrant from Germany, proposed changing the anthem.

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"Hatikva" (The Hope) was written more than a hundred years ago. At the time, a small Zionist community already existed in this country, but the song reflected the point of view of the Diaspora. "As long as deep in the heart / A Jewish soul is yearning, / And toward the edge of the East, the Orient, / An eye is looking out toward Zion ... " (My own, literal translation.)

Since then, the situation of the Jews and of this country, have changed radically. In the state, a large, strong Hebrew society has emerged. Why should we sing about the "edge of the East" when we are living in Zion?

True, the fact that a song has become obsolete - even ridiculous - does not make it unfit to serve as a national anthem. The French anthem calls on the sons of the fatherland to stand up against the bloody tyrants (meaning Germans and others) and soak the fields with their impure blood. The Dutch anthem speaks of the injustices committed by Spain some 400 years ago. The British anthem prays to God to frustrate the knavish tricks of the enemies of the monarch. So, we, Israelis may be allowed to keep our hopes of being "a free people in our land," as if we were under occupation - although, it isn't exactly clear which occupation is being alluded to: Jewish, British, Turkish. Incidentally, in the song's original text, the hope was: "To return to the land of our fathers, / The town where David camped." Later, it was changed.

No, the problem with "Hatikva" is neither the text of the song, nor the melody, which was swiped from Eastern Europe. The problem is that it excludes Israel's Arab citizens, who now constitute more than 20 percent of Israel's population.

I don't want start another discussion of whether or not Israel is a "Jewish state." (What does that mean? That it belongs to the Jewish religion? That the majority is Jewish?) Even those who wish it to be Jewish must ask themselves: is it wise to make every Arab citizen feel that he or she does not belong? That this is a foreign and hostile state to them?

"Hatikva" can well remain the anthem of the Zionist movement, and Jews can sing it in Los Angeles or Kiryiat Malachy (both "cities of the angels"). But it should not be the anthem of Israel.

In World War II, Stalin decided that the then national anthem, "The Internationale," did not serve his purposes anymore. He wanted to arouse patriotism and needed the cooperation of his capitalist allies. So, he announced a competition for the writing of a new anthem. A rousing song was chosen, which struck such deep roots that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians preferred it to the old anthem of the Czars (familiar to us from Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture").

The time has come to discuss changing our anthem, not only for the sake of the Arab citizens, but also for our own sake - to have an anthem that reflects our reality. In this spirit, 38 years ago, I first submitted a bill in the Knesset toward this end. It was soundly defeated. Now, it is time to revive the idea.

The same issues are also true of the Israeli flag.

The blue-white flag is the banner of the Zionist movement. It took the Jewish prayer shawl, the tallith, added the Star of David (an old Jewish symbol, which also appears in other cultures) and created a new national flag. From the design point-of-view, it has one obvious fault: the blue and the white do not stand out against the background of the blue sky, the white clouds, and the grey buildings. It is enough to compare it to the jolly American Stars and Stripes, the solemn British Union Jack, and the refined French Tricolor.

However, the main fault of the Israeli flag lies in the fact that it excludes the Arab community from the family of the state. An Arab who salutes the flag is lying to himself when he tries to identify himself with symbols like the tallith and the Star of David, both of which exclude him and fail to speak to him.

It is particularly exclusionary to the many Arabs who believe that the flag's two blue stripes stand for the Nile and the Euphrates rivers, and that the flag hints at the Zionist ambition to create a Jewish state according to the Biblical promise from Genesis chapter 15, verse 18: "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt into the great river, the river Euphrates." This is an invention, but it makes the flag even more difficult to accept.

The aim of a national flag is to unite. The current Israeli flag divides. It does not touch the heartstrings of members of an important community in the state. It pushes them away. And not only them. As Gideon Levy wrote this week, the flag has been expropriated by the extreme right and is connected, in the eyes of advocates of peace and justice, with the shame of the roadblocks, the settlements, and the occupation.

Not so long ago, the Canadian state was facing a similar problem. The national flag, based on the Union Jack, was pushing away the Francophone minority. In spite of the fact this minority constituted only 10 percent of the population (to which, the offspring of mixed couples, could also be added), the majority decided, wisely, that the unity of the country was more important than their own British sentiments. A new flag was agreed upon, a flag that has, at its center, a symbol with which every Canadian can identify: the maple leaf.

In Israel, the opposition to the changing of the anthem and the flag does not emanate, of course, only from a devotion to existing symbols. It is mainly an opposition to the changing of the Jewish identity of Israel.

The desire to preserve the "Jewish state" is strong and profound. Lately, it has been strengthened even more by the demand of Arab intellectuals, citizens of Israel, to reorder the relationship between the state and the Arab minority.

Almost daily, new proposals pop up. This week, Otniel Shneller, a member of the Knesset and close friend of Ehud Olmert, proposed a new idea: to turn over to the Palestinian state, once it is set up, the Arab villages in the Triangle, an area on the Israeli side of the Green Line, in return for the settlement blocs on the Palestinian side, which would be incorporated into Israel. In this way, the proportion of Arabs in the state would decrease, while the proportion of Jews would rise.

Unlike Avigdor Lieberman, who proposed something similar, this Kadima member of the Knesset does not propose to do it by force. He professes to a desire to achieve an agreement with the inhabitants, so that they would retain some of their social rights in Israel even after becoming citizens of the Palestinian state. What is important for him is only that they - and perhaps also the Arab inhabitants of Galilee - would cease to be citizens, so that Israel would be more "Jewish and democratic," or, rather, "Jewish and demographic."

Shneller and Lieberman, both settlers, both belonging to the extreme right, do not propose to give up East Jerusalem, where almost a quarter-of-a-million Palestinians are living. That does not worry them, because these Arabs have never been given Israeli citizenship anyhow. When they were annexed to Israel in 1967, they were accorded only the status of "permanent residents." Therefore, they are not required to hoist the blue-white flag and to sing the "Hatikva."

Incidentally, such proposals show that these two rightists have lost hope for the Greater Israel, and resigned themselves to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Otherwise, their plans would be meaningless.

So, how do the Arab citizens of Israel react to Shneller's ideas? They simply ignore them. Up to now, not a single Arab voice has been raised in support of this proposal, much as not a single Arab voice has been heard in support of Lieberman's ideas.

This sheds light on a fact that has escaped many: the Arab citizens of Israel are much more connected with the state than it seems. In spite of their suffering discrimination in practically every field of life, they have ties to the political, economic, and social system. They have no desire whatsoever to give up Israeli democracy, social security benefits, and the state's economic advantages. Certainly, they wish to place relations between them and the state on a new basis, but they definitely do not wish to be separated from it.

Many years ago, an Arab member of the Knesset, Abdel Aziz Zuabi, coined the phrase, "my state is at war with my people." That is the dilemma of Arab citizens of Israel. They are a part of this state, and at the same time belong to the Palestinian people.

Every "Israeli Arab" is faced with this reality, and each is looking for an answer of his or her own. The Azmi Bishara affair - which I shall address in the near future - symbolizes this dilemma. As long as there is no Israeli-Palestinian peace, the dilemma will endure.

Embracing a new anthem and a new flag will not solve the problem, but doing so will constitute a significant step toward a solution that both sides can live with.