"Arabs only understand force"
Orientalist trope with a long paper trail, from colonial administration through Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall' (1923) to present-day commentary.
What it signals
Race-psychology as strategy: an entire people assigned a single comprehension mode, which conveniently prescribes the only policy on offer. A century of applying the doctrine without the promised result never updates it.
How to answer
Historicize it — the phrase is older than the state and has justified every escalation since; ask when, on its own theory, the force is supposed to start working. Also note it's said about, never by, the people it describes.