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news report
 Tuesday July 09, 2002 13:27 by Blisset
 the new bill took the institutionalized racism even further. TEL AVIV: The right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has approved a bill that sparked wide criticism of social discrimination and racism against Arabs. Israel, often referred to as the Jewish State, has passed many laws in the past that institute racism, but the new bill took the institutionalized racism even further. TEL AVIV: The right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has approved a bill that sparked wide criticism of social discrimination and racism against Arabs. Israel, often referred to as the Jewish State, has passed many laws in the past that institute racism, but the new bill took the institutionalized racism even further. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition government has reportedly backed a proposed law that would bar the Arab citizens of Israel from buying homes on “state-owned land.” Israeli media say the proposal is aimed at allowing Israeli officials to allocate lands for the sole purpose of establishing exclusively Jewish communities. Opponents, including Israeli Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein, say the bill amounts to a form of racial discrimination. Rubinstein issued a statement Monday urging cabinet members to withhold support for the measure, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said his Labor Party will fight the proposal. But the support in the government is any thing but uncertain as the cabinet voted 17-2 Sunday in favor of the bill, which was authored by a member of the ultra-conservative National Religious Party. The bill must pass through three readings in the Israeli parliament and could face a challenge in the High Court before becoming law. Sharon’s government justified the racism law saying that it approved the bill, enabling state land to be reserved for Jews only "for security reasons". The text, sponsored by rabbi Haim Druckman, a deputy for the far-right National Religious Party, to overturn a March 2000 ruling by the Supreme Court, was approved by 17 ministers to two late Sunday, a government official said. Human rights groups, the main opposition party, the government's legal advisor and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres all criticized the move, which Druckman for his part called a "victory for Zionism." The measure, which still has to be approved by the Israeli parliament, stems from a suit brought to the Supreme Court by Adel Kaadan, an Israeli Arab who wished to buy land in the “cooperative village” of Katzir in Galilee, but was rejected because he was an Arab. "This regrettable decision by the Israeli cabinet amounts to apartheid," Kaadan told the Israeli daily Maariv. ACRI, which has been representing the Kaadan family's case, slammed the decision, saying the state was prohibited from discriminating against its citizens in the allotment of public lands. "The Kaadan family's battle ... is a legal struggle over the nature of democracy in Israel, as defined in the Israeli Declaration of Independence," the organization said in a statement. "The treatment of Arab citizens by the state as enemies until proven otherwise has no place in a democracy. This prejudicial attitude must not be given expression in the discrimination against citizens based on their national origin." Attorney general and government legal advisor Elyakim Rubinstein urged ministers not to support the bill when it came before the Knesset, saying it would widen the rift between Jews and Arabs, the daily Haaretz reported. Rubenstein said the bill was unnecessary, adding that the pursuit of equality between Jews and Arabs does not run counter to the realization of Zionism. The Supreme Court ruling in the Katzir case was not the end of Zionism, he added. "No other government in the democratic world would have adopted such a law," fumed Yossi Sarid, head of the opposition Meretz party. Although Israel refers to itself as the “Middle East only democracy“, growing evidence runs counter to such a claim. |
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Comments (13 of 13)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13As reprehensible as this proposal is, the broad opposition to it from within the Israeli political mainstream (Peres, Labour) suggests that 1) it is unlikely to pass into law and 2) democracy is working exactly as it should in Israel. Indeed, Israel's constitution forbids this type of thing, so even if the bill became law, in all probability it would be struck down by the courts. This kind of separation of powers is essential for democracy to function properly - it's what is probably going to save Israel's Arabs from the right's misguided attempt to turn all of Israel into a West Bank.
Dear Mr. Healy,
you say that 'democracy is working exactly as it should in Israel' - is this some twisted new form of political satire, or are you really so mis-informed as to believe that statement?
Let me propose to you that this statement is in actual fact a travesty of the reality in Israel today. I suggest you either go down there and see for yourself how 'democratic' it is, or stop relying on the mainstream-media to mis-inform you - otherwise, soon you'll probably be regaleing us with fantastic fables about how well 'democracy' worked in N.I. during the last century.
yours etc., BlackPope
Sorry. I should have said that in the case of this bill, democracy is working as it should. This isn't to say that the proposal itself is democratic, only that the political reaction to it is. If, say, the Knesset approves the bill and it is signed into law, and then the courts uphold it as constitutional, then we can say that Israel has not acted democratically in this case, for the country will have enacted a law that runs contrary to democratic principles.
It goes without saying that democracy is not in force in the occupied territories: neither Arafat nor the IDF practises it there. But that is entirely different from what goes on in Israel, where there are opposition parties, dissenting media (Ha'aretz) and freedom of conscience - in other words, democracy. How else would there be Arab members of the Knesset, Arab mayors of Israeli towns, an Arab member of the national soccer team, etc.
It's important to parse these issues carefully, otherwise debate and discussion is just so much ignorant bloviating.
Bloviating (sounds like pontificating!):
To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner
Mr Healy,
Opposition parties, a dissenting media and freedom of conscience are not the factors that define democracy. Neither is having a member of an ethnic minority on your internationl football team.
In Western terms, Israel is a parliamentary democracy. However, the country has no Constitution and therefore no defining principles other than the principles of Zionism (which is akin to the North of Ireland being run by the Orange Order).
Also, if Israel had not expelled millions of Arabs from Palestine, then the structure of the Israeli parliament would be different today. In other words, the Arabs were expelled to ensure a Jewish majority - actions which (in my view) are the antithesis of democracy.
Israel is effectively a police state which bombards the world with propaganda describing it as the Middle East's only democracy. (Arafat was elected, too!!!) Its actions border on crimes against humanity, which is contrary to the real definition of democracy as "power to the people". This means what it says and anyone who interprets it to mean "power to the Jews" or "power to some of the people" is not a democrat.
Sorry for the last attempt re making a comment. I was so angry I pressed the wrong key. Does Mr. Healy consider ethnic cleansing an integral part of "democracy", does he consider "genocide" an integral part of "democracy" ?????
The leftist anti jews are at it again.
As a Jew living in Ireland, for some reason I could not gain membership of an Irish golf club. Was it because I was Jewish? Up to the 1960's Jews could not gain employment in Ireland in any major institution. Was it because of their religion? Good old Catholic, democratic Ireland with its child molesting Priests.
Now the Jews have our own country. The Arabs have 21 other countries to live in freedom, if you could call it such. Their own Arab intellectuals have recently critized the pathetic nature of their own countries poverty and lack of freedom.
The only Muslim democracy in the region is Turkey and guess what? It has the best relations with Israel, even in the current climate. Why? Because it sees the Palestinian issue for what it really is BOGUS propaganda. Ironically The Christian/aethiest Europe is the greatest indirect supporter of murderers just as they were at the time of Hitler.
You leftist anti Jews love to point out anything that would show Israel or Jews in a negative light. It is a crime punishable by death to sell land to a Jew by an Arab. Have you the anti jews all forgotten in 1948 700,000 jews were expelled from their homes jobs and businesses by Arab countries, just because they were Jews and got collective.
If the Arabs could find it in the nature to renounce violance and take on some real semblance of a real democracy the Bogus people known by the anti jews as Palestinians would cease to be an issue.
In 1948, .75 million Palestinian people (yes they really existed) were ethnically cleansed from their own country. They were replaced in many cases by the survivors of the nazi genocide in Europe. The "transfer" to use the Zionist term, was made with the assistance of murder, rape and looting. The crimes of the zionists at that time, can be compared in character, if not in scale to those of the nazis. The Palestinian people were not responsible for the nazi crimes yet they have paid the ultimate price, i.e. they were and are still been expelled from their own country to be replaced by Jews from all parts of the world.
I abhor all forms of racism, including anti-semitism but the Sharon regime seems to be following the practices of the very same ideology that murdered millions of Jewish people. There will never be peace in the middle east until the Palestinian people have their own state and all illegal zionist settlements are removed and there is a total withdrawal from all occupied land.
Israel has what is known as an 'operative constitution': a set of ratified laws that, although not contained in a single document, govern the political and legal processes of the country. They are transparent and apply to all citizens of Israel, whether Jewish or Arab.
That body of law, however, does not apply to the occupied territories - and it shouldn't, for those territories are not a part of Israel and the people living in them do not consent to be governed by this body of law. You cannot argue, on the one hand, that Israel doesn't belong in the occupied territories, yet expect Israel to apply its own constitutional law there. International law is another thing, and Israel should be held accountable to it - to the extent that other countries are. Which brings us to the displaced Palestinian populations...
The population transfer of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians was not an act of ethnic cleansing, but rather the result of a war started and lost by the Arabs after they refused a UN partition plan that the Jews had accepted. Many of these Palestinians left rather than live in a Jewish state; many others were forced or coerced to leave, as they were seen (rightly, I believe) as a hostile presence. There is precedence for such population transfers: the 12 million Germans expelled from East Prussia, Silesia and Bohemia after WWII. The Germans also started and lost a war, consequently losing sovereignty over territory. This is what happens in territorial wars. Do we support the right of return for Germans to what are now parts of Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia? Ask the people of Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) how they feel about that. The Arabs of Palestine forfeited their right of return when they opened up military hostilities against a people who had already agreed to a partition brokered by the international community. The lesson: don't start a war you can't win. Israel is a fact; learn to live with it.
(While we're on the subject, what about all the stolen Jewish property in Europe and throughout the Arab world? There are thousands of Europeans living in stolen Jewish houses. Do the Jews have the right of return? If the Jews have to give up their country to the Palestinians, do they get, say, Switzerland as fair compensation?)
As for the Israel/Nazi analogy: vicious sophistry. It's not just a question of scale, but of intent and intensity - not to mention character. Why does Israel occupy the West Bank and Gaza today? Two reasons: because they conquered the territory in 1967 after Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies had massed there in order to invade Israel; and because Arafat refused to take them back. Israel is not territorially acquisitive. If it were, Israeli armies would have marched into Damascus and Amman long ago. If Israel were a genocidal state, they would have nothing to fear from granting a Palestinian right of return - there wouldn't be enough Palestinians to mount a demographic threat. Asserting that what the IDF is doing in the West Bank is equivalent to what the SS did in Babi Yar is a cheap rhetorical ploy meant not only to inflate Palestinian victimhood and absolve them of any responsibility for the current situation, but also to minimise the significance of the Holocaust as a uniquely evil programme, thereby undercutting the moral arguments for the existence of Israel. Take a look at the Palestinian media someday and tell me which side has more in common with the Nazis.
I am afraid Mr. Healy that your knowledge of the Sharon regime is somewhat limited. I agree that the West Bank and Gaza are beyond the internationally recognised borders of Israel. Unfortunately, Ariel Sharon and his government do not agree with you, why do you think that the “settlements” continue to be built on stolen Palestinian land? The “settlement” policy makes your statement that Israel is not “territorially acquisitive” rather hard to reconcile with reality.
It is a historical fact, which the Zionists would like to forget that .75 million Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed in 1948 or to use your own words “forced to leave”, have you never heard of the crimes committed at Deir Yassin and Tantura, the ethnic cleansing of Jaffa. I am afraid that semantics do not alter historical facts.
To compare the dispossession of the Palestinian people with the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe after World War 2 is absurd, the Palestinian people did not start the second world war.
I would indeed consider crimes such as Deir Yassin, Tantura and in more recent times, Sabra-Shatila, Qana, the murders carried out by the IDF and the Phalange and Haddad allies at the Beirut stadium post Sabra-Shatila to be comparable to similar crimes committed by the Nazis.
The Nazi campaign of genocide directed against the Jewish communities of Europe was a monstrous crime which must never be forgotten. To attempt to utilise the memory of millions of totally innocent people to excuse what is going on, on the West Bank and Gaza, is obscene.
Mr Healy,
Your ignorance and barely disguised racism shows through in this statement:
"The Arabs of Palestine forfeited their right of return when they opened up military hostilities against a people who had already agreed to a partition brokered by the international community."
The so-called Arabs of Palestine - who comprised 90% of the population before the native Zionists began importing foreign Jews - did not agree to partition. It was forced on them, mainly by the British. Democracy usually means that measures will not be imposed without majority consent and the majority of Palestinians (by which I mean the Arabs and Jews of Palestine) did not agree to partition.
In addition, after partition, the Jews proceeded to take control of the Arab sections of what is now Israel, forcing the native Arabs to flee to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were then parts of Jordan and Egypt respectively. The Arab homes left vacant by this ethnic cleansing were then given to foreign Jews who had never been in Palestine before and whose connection to the region was not demographic, but based on a 3,000-year-old biblical tale about a promised land.
Coming back to your statement, do you really believe that the hundreds of thousands of totally innocent Palestinians deserved to be ethnically cleansed and refused their internationally-recognised right to return to their homes simply because their leaders formed armies to fight for a land that was stolen from them? If you do, you are a bigot...