No one loves Israel's national anthem more than I do.

I know that it's kitsch, I know that the melody of Hatikvah was stolen from the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, I know the stories about its author Naftali Herz Imber, ejected drunk and defiant from the Zionist Congress.

Still, I adore Hatikvah. Its melody and its words move me profoundly. I become tremendously emotional when I hear it performed by an orchestra, when I hear it sung by an Israeli child, or a Holocaust survivor, or by Jews abroad.

I adore Hatikva. But it's time it was changed. It's time its words were changed. It's time it was replaced by an anthem that all Israelis can sing in good conscience, non-Jews as well as Jews. An anthem in which more than a million Arab citizens can join in full voice.

On Sunday, the nation's first Muslim Arab cabinet minister Raleb Majadele was raked over the coals following a report that Majadele refused to sing Hatikvah, whose lyrics read:

As long as within his heart
A Jew's soul yearns
And forward to the edges of the East
His eye looks to Zion

Our hope is not lost
A hope of two thousand years
To be a free people in our own land
The land of Zion and Jerusalem

"Hatikva speaks to Jews - 'a Jews soul yearns," he told news anchor Liat Regev, when asked if he would sing the anthem. "You want an Arab to sing something like that?"

Regev: "You know, there's perhaps some sort of expectation that a person who is appointed to a cabinet minister in Israel will identity with all the symbols of the state, including the national anthem."

"Majadele: Where is it written that a person appointed to be a cabinet minister in Israel must stop being an Arab, and turn into a member of a different religion and ethnicity?

"Is this the enlightened, free democratic state that we wanted to see in Israel? Tell me, please - the Jewish cabinet ministers who were in Arab governments in Morocco and elsewhere, were they told that from the moment they were sworn in, that they had become Muslims?"

Majadele said that he was a citizen of Israel who abided by and respected the law, but that the anthem "doesn't speak to me."

Regev: Why not? Why not? Give me a few sentences, so that I can understand why you can't connect to this? What is it that you can't connect to? Let's go over the words together...

I suppose we can take a certain perverse pride in the knowledge that Israel has become a nation like all nations, one in which the majority is blindly insensitive to the feelings of minorities.

For generations in the United States, the non-denominational, non-sectarian land of the ostensibly free, public school children were expected to sing Christmas carols with rapt respect, even if they were Jews or Muslims who might have had difficulty connecting with the concept of the baby Jesus being the King of Israel.

Of late, Israeli politicians and security officials have strafed the public with warnings of the disloyalty of Israeli Arabs, accusing them of serving as a fifth column for Palestinian militants, accusing them of Holocaust denial, accusing them of being non-Zionists.

Perhaps it's time the accusers took as second look at the accused. In fact, perhaps it's time they took a first look.

Beyond the stereotypes and the rhetoric, are people who, asked by pollsters whether they would opt to live in a future Palestinian state or remain in Israel, choose Israel by a factor of 90 percent.

On public occasions, Majadele rises to his feet during the singing of Hatikvah, but does not join in, he said.

Majadele conceded that he belonged to a Zionist party, Labor, "but I have not turned into a Zionist." He described himself as a "a proud Arab in a Zionist party," in which he found more issues in common than issues that separated Arabs and Jews.

He said he recognized Israel's flag, with its star of David. He said that his office had an Israeli flag, alongside verses from the Koran on the wall.

"I have remained a proud Muslim Arab," Majadele said. "If the government of Israel cannot accept me as such, I cannot serve as a cabinet minister."

Right-wing legislator Zvi Hendel, who had initially welcomed Majadele's appointment to the cabinet, said "There's no Jewish cabinet minister in the world, not in the U.S. or in Europe, who would refuse to sing the national anthem. What can you do - this is a Jewish state."

According to Hendel, singing the anthem is a Jewish Zionist act, an act of the only Jewish state in the world. "He is in the minority. If he does not recognize us as a Zionist state, he certainly cannot be a cabinet minister."

"I don't yet propose throwing him out," Hendel continued. "However, if he sticks to this principle, he cannot be a cabinet minister. He's determined this by himself. I suggest that he think again."

Maybe we all should. Maybe it's time to rethink the idea of democracy, and to remember that the ill treatment of Jews as minorities abroad was the reason this country came into being in the first place.