If you want to put your figure on a big part of the problem of Israel’s more than a million Arab citizens, you only have to put it on the behavior of their political leaders in the wake of the firecracker incident in Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation last Friday.

This incident itself was distressing but trivial. A mentally disturbed trio, a Jewish man, his Christian wife, and their eldest daughter, threw firecrackers into the church during a Lent mass. No one was injured and only slight damage was done to the church in the stampede to get out of it. The couple, apparently seeking to protest their other children being placed in foster homes by a court order, surrendered peacefully to the police. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called it a sad event and asked Israel’s Arab politicians to react with restraint.

Here is some of the restraint they reacted with:

* An angry march was organized in Nazareth in which thousands of demonstrators carried signs saying things like “Israel Breeds Hate” and “They Accuse Us Of Terrorism But They Do Terrorism.”

* The High Arab Israeli Monitoring Committee, a roof organization of Arab leaders, called on the Israeli government to take responsibility for an act “that developed against a backdrop of hatred toward the Arab people.”

* Nazareth’s mayor Ramzeh Jeraiseh attributed the incident to the “swamp of [Jewish] racism” and refused to accept the government’s expression of regret.

* Mohammed Barakeh, head of the Democratic List For Peace, one of Israel’s three major Arab parties, accused Mr. Olmert of having “a mind sick with racism” for stating that the Nazareth demonstration was politically motivated.

* Ahmed Tibi, co-leader of the United Arab List-Taal Party declared that the reason for what happened was the “anti-Arab atmosphere in Israel.”

* Azmi Bishara, head of the Balad Party, blamed “government mismanagement, slander, and incitement.”

Et cetera.

It’s pathetic. A mentally unbalanced Jew and Christian throw firecrackers into a church because of a purely personal grievance and all of Israel is to blame.

It goes without saying that, had the Israeli government stationed security guards at the Church of the Annunciation’s entrance to inspect all visitors, it would have been accused by the Israeli Arab leadership of harrassing Christian worshipers. It also goes without saying that there was nothing to prevent the church from stationing guards itself, as is done at private expense at shopping malls, restaurants, cafes, and other public places all over Israel. And it is a fact as well, as Ehud Olmert pointed out, that the same Muslim leaders and demonstrators – none of the politicians quoted from is a Christian, nor were most of the marchers in Nazareth – have disdained defending Christian interests vis-a-vis Islam. It was indeed the Israeli government that had to step in to thwart the provocative construction of an unneeded mosque right next-door to the Church of the Annunciation several years ago.

Yet this is beside the point. Security guards would probably have failed to detect the firecrackers anyway. The point is that the same combination of paranoia, hypocrisy, and demagoguery that characterizes the Arab and Muslim worlds, and that dictated their response to the Muhammad cartoons, has again manifested itself here, too – and with typically deleterious effects for Israel’s Arab citizens.

No fair-minded person would deny that Israeli Arabs, despite the equality granted them by law, have been discriminated against in various ways. And yet what has generally gone unacknowledged over the years, both by these Arabs themselves and by the Israeli left that is sympathetic to their plight, is that much of the responsibility for this rests on men of the ilk of Messrs. Jeraiseh, Barakeh, Tibi, and Bishara.

Potentially, Israeli Arabs have great political power. They comprise 20% of Israel’s population, and though their percentage of eligible voters is somewhat lower because of (due to a higher birthrate) a high proportion of under-18s, they could still influence national policies enormously. In reality, however, they exert almost no influence at all – for which they have only their own politicians to blame.

On the one hand, this is because these politicians have consistently preferred Israel-bashing to constructive political action. There is nothing the Barakehs, Tibis, and Bisharas have liked better than accusing Israel of every crime against humanity, preferably from a place of honor at the side of such great humanitarians as Yasser Arafat and Bashar el-Asad. There is nothing they have liked – or done – less than the hard work of getting their voters better schools, better environments, improved infrastructure, equal employment and housing laws, and other such things that are needed more than politicians’ photographs in the newspapers.

Moreover, even if they were to devote themselves to such tasks, Israel’s Arab politicians would not get very far, having totally marginalized themselves on the Israeli political scene. It is not enough, after all, to have a large Arab bloc in the Knesset; this bloc must also be able to work and make alliances with Israel’s Jewish parties if it is to bring home tangible benefits for its constituents.

Yet because of their extreme anti-Israel stance, these politicians have turned themselves into parliamentary untouchables in Jewish eyes. Not even the Jewish left, or at least that greater portion of it that has some measure of Jewish self-respect, will have anything to do with them – and without Jewish allies, one-fifth of Israel’s population finds itself out of the political game.

For many years, all that Israel’s Arab politicians have done is throw firecrackers themselves. It’s time for those who elected them to throw them out.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.