Israel Bans Arab Parties
One of the most hopeful and impressive aspects of Israeli society, in my view, has long been the relatively cordial relations between the country’s Jewish majority and the “Israeli Arab” minority group of non-Jewish Arab Israeli citizens who live on the Israeli side of the 1948 ceasefire line. The relationship hasn’t been without its problems and allegations of discrimination, but by the standards of multiethnic polities Israel has done pretty well, and Israel’s friends could plausibly claim that Arabs with Israeli citizenship enjoyed more civil and political rights than did Arab citizens of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or the rest. Now there seems to be trouble in paradise:
The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month’s parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country’s Supreme Court.
The ruling, made by the body that oversees the elections, reflected the heightened tensions between Israel’s Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.
This doesn’t effect Arab Israelis who are members of Zionist parties or the Communist Party. Among other things, this seems like a poorly timed PR move.
113 Responses to “Israel Bans Arab Parties”
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January 12th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Which parties are going to pick up the Israeli Arab votes? I’m guessing it’s not the parties supporting the Gaza attacks. Thank goodness for democracy.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Well, yes, “among other things.”
January 12th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
You know, I’ve always defended Israel’s right to a secure existence even though an ethno/religiously based state sits very uneasily with my fundamental principles. But year by year, their governments seem to take pleasure in making it harder and harder for people like me to go on supporting them. It’s really pretty tragic- it can’t lead to a good end in the long run. You always need friends outside your inner core of supporters.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I know you are not offering a full description here, and ‘by the standards of multiethnic polities’ may be a low low bar, but in fact there was a fair amount of blatant ethnic cleansing of arabs in Israel even after 1948, and to some extent the whole settlement enterprise is directed against the Israeli arabs with the aim of expelling them from Israel under the guise of ‘compensation’ for keeping 100,000s of jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. To which we could add that the entire jewish public discourse in Israel is shot through with infinite varieties of schemes of further expulsion and dispossession, not to mention self-congratulation on the number of arabs they have already expelled. So I think its fair to say that there are more than ‘allegations’ of discrimination: the whole population lives under permanent threat of expulsion, which is not at all true of many other multiethnic polities.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
And another step towards apartheid, the logical extension of settler-colonialism policy (as expressed very well by Juan Cole in his recent posts). The next step is establishing separate political structures for Israeli Arabs.
Thanks, Matt, by the way. You, Roger Cohen, Ezra Klein… you guys can say things that a lot of us can’t say. Cohen’s column today almost brought tears to my eyes, and you can’t really say that about any of his columns before. Arab and Iranian-Americans, and other Americans of Islamic descent have been marginalized in political discussions about Middle East policy, and sadly we need to make common cause with Jewish Americans who can speak for us. At least being called a self-hating Jew isn’t as devastating as being called an anti-semite when you criticize racist and unjust decisions like this. (And that’s not even considering the political ramifications…)
January 12th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Wow. That’s a really poor rollout.
Dear Israeli Arabs,
Pissed about Gaza? Well, we’re going to choke off your one legitimate avenue of expressing that discontent. Surely, this will end well for everyone involved.
XO,
The Israeli Central Elections Committee
January 12th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Could’ve done worse I suppose, maybe told all the Arabs they had to start sewing some sort of distinguishing patch on their clothes. Maybe that’ll come later, after Israeli youth rampage through Arab business districts breaking windows or something……..
January 12th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Bwaaaah, don’t you know that Jews have won more Nobel Prizes than Muslims? !?!? !?
January 12th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
And is it not correct that Israeli law prevents Israeli arabs from marrying West Bank arabs?
“Allegations of discrimination” indeed.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Israel has already focused–excuse me, concentrated–most of its Arabs into settlements that are little better than camps.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
My guess here is that the bigger parties agreed to this because they’re all angling for support from the 15-20 nutjob ultranationalists who are likely to end up in the Knesset after the elections.
So this is a raise-the-stakes version of the usual payoffs that Israeli coalition-building entails. Usually it’s legalised bribery in the form of benefits that just happen to target, say, Haredi families or particular groups of immigrants. And, of course, it also raises the prospect of a boycott by Israeli Arabs, which would result in more seats being available to the nutjobs (and the big parties) thanks to the idiotic PR system in Israel.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Horrible, horrible decision, even from a strictly Zionist viewpoint, not to mention from a Democratic one. One would note that the same thing happened in 2003, but the Supreme Court decision overturned the same decision by the electoral commission, and the same thing could happen if those parties choose to appeal.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
The politics of this are interesting. At the first level it is kowtowing to the racists. And it does wind up removing that often repeated argument about how Israel treats their Arab population fairly. Now the Russian immigrant jews have their own party, but the arabs can’t.
But in reality the arab parties were never part of majority governments because they weren’t really equal to start with. And the arabs who voted for them have not lost their vote (although many will likely boycott the exclusion of their party). If these voters instead throw their support to the peace parties in Israel then you suddenly have more pro-peace legislators who could be part of a majority government. This could actually be a clever move by Labor/Kadima to hold power while making the right look racist.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
What’s worse is how lopsided the vote was. It wasn’t even close enough that you could try to blame it on hardliners.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I can no longer support the state of Israel. Whenever one complains about right wing US supporters of Israel, one is told that there is more dissent in Israel than in the US about Israeli policy.
Soooo, I’d like to see those Israeli Jews who disagree with this decision to ban Arab parties speak out and demand both democracy and justice for all citizens of the state.
Can we expect to hear Hillary speak out about this???? I think not.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
one is told that there is more dissent in Israel than in the US about Israeli policy
This is true even though there isn’t that much dissent in Israel about Israeli policy towards the palestinians, as this decision shows. The pervasive element of Israeli politics consists of competing and similar chauvinisms with arabs as their targets. But still, there is more dissent in Israel than in the US.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
The relationship are not that cordial: There are Arab refugees from 1948 inside Israel with a citizenship, but whose pre-1948 property has been taken from them; about half of the land owned by Arabs with Israeli citizenship has been nationalized since 1948 and according to law, until 1995 nationalized land could be sold only to Jews; practical ban on constructing new buildings in Arab and Bedouin communities and large scale destruction of both post-1948 and pre-1948 buildings which because of this have not been given “permission” to be constructed or exist; Israel has put arms factories in Arab towns and denied shelters and warning sirens from being constructed; something of a minor purge of Bedouin officers from the army in recent years, with the same accusation usually, that they had given information for Hezbollah in exchange for drugs; the recent attacks against Arabs who drive cars on Jewish holy days etc.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
This is awful. They tried this stunt a few years ago and the Israeli Supreme Court beat it back. Of course the same court ruled that journalists should be allowed into Gaza and the IDF has simply ignored them. Once you’re into the realm of ignoring high court decisions and outlawing political parties, you’re not much of a democracy. Please tell me that the various hard-line pro-Israeli fanatics will drop their bs about Israel being a wonderful democracy and Arabs being culturally incapable of democracy.
(Wait, wait, I need to catch my breath because I was laughing so hard at my joke just now.)
Also, there’s nothing alleged about Israeli discrimination against its Arabs. From day one in 1948, Israel rejoiced at finally creating a Zionist haven where Jewish culture and religion and language and everything else could survive and thrive. However there were hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in Israel that didn’t fit with the narrative, and the Jews never really knew what to do with them. They lived under a military dictatorship until 1966, then were granted some rights but denied several others. Today there are separate (unequal) schools for Arabs and Jews, towns and neighborhoods where Arabs aren’t allowed to live, entire sectors of the economy where you can’t find a single Arab in any kind of supervisory position, major differences in how much state support Jews get vs. Arabs, and constant statements by the highest government officials referring to Arabs as disloyal, a fifth column, potential terrorists, cancer, and so forth. It’s not quite Jim Crow (Arabs can vote after all) but discrimination is institutional, officially endorsed, and practiced throughout society.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
No, of course the relations are not that cordial. This is just another layer of congratulatory discourse about Israel popular in the US which Yglesias has yet to abandon, although he has abandoned many others. Give it to Matt, he appears to learn over time.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Bbbbbuuuut… Syria and Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Jordan and pretty much everybody else bans parties many of them arabs, this is such a egregious case of double standars, once you start demanding from the Saudis to stop banning arab parties you should not expect it from Israel.
And its just banning a few parties, it’s not like throwing them into a dungeon an torture them to death like Assad would have done.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Well yea, but no more so than bombing a school to kill a few Hamas fighters, along with 40 or so civilians. Israel needs a strong minded US Presnit to shake them out of dumb decisions when conducting a war as emotionally charged as this one. I hope Obama measures up to that need. Right now it’s hard to say whether he will or won’t.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
What’s worse is how lopsided the vote was.
When you have a 2% threshold in a single-district PR list system, every voter for the other parties who doesn’t show up is a boon, because it lowers the number of votes required to meet that threshold, and means you need fewer votes per seat.
Perhaps everyone planning to vote for the two banned parties will migrate to Hadash. What’s more likely is a boycott, and that makes all the other parties happy.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
You know, I’ve always defended Israel’s right to a secure existence even though an ethno/religiously based state sits very uneasily with my fundamental principles.
I can see the point about religion (although plenty of very liberal European countries maintain state religions) but aren’t the vast majority of countries in reality “ethnically” based? How is Israel in this instance any different from just about any place else? I have a feeling that, if there existed a large diaspora of Australians living hither and thither, Australia would very likely grant automatic citizenship to any Aussie who wanted to return home to Australia. Where Israel differs from other democratic states is in denying civil rights to half the population. But objections to the ethnicity-based nature of its society have always seemed to me to be something of a red-herring.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
To put it another way, what exactly is the nation state except the legal manifestation of ethnicity?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Repugnant. And dumb. This is the country we’re supposed to cede our national self-interest to?
I often wonder how Israel fits into a theocratic model. It’s not one, exactly, but if you have to be Jewish to be elected or, in this case, to have a political party, isn’t it getting somewhat close?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
And its just banning a few parties, it’s not like throwing them into a dungeon an torture them to death like Assad would have done.
Get your talking points straight. Saddam would have tortured them to death in a dungeon. Assad would have blown them to fragments with massed artillery.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Would the EU and its Court of Human Rights allow any of its members to engage nowadays- whatever they may have done in the past- in the kind of ethnically preferential / exclusionary policies on which Israel has its very foundation?
Speaking of Australia, how many people around the world would applaud the White Australia policy, if it still existed?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Banning parties? But, but, isn’t Israel a “Western liberal democracy”???
January 12th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
What a committee of dumb sh*ts.
BTW, have they finished working on that breed of pure, red hair cattle, and training the new acolytes who will never set foot outside the Temple?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
>But, but, isn’t Israel a “Western liberal democracy”???
No. Its Middle Eastern, illiberal, and apparently not much interested in democracy.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Here’s a question that I’m sincerely curious about. After the 1948 war, how did Israel decide which Arabs were to become citizens of Israel, and which Arabs were to be consigned to permanent refugee status or residency in West Bank/Gaza? Is it simply the case that if you stayed within the borders of Israel during the 1948 war and didn’t flee, then when the post-war census taker came around to find you, you received citizenship?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
“This doesn’t effect Arab Israelis who are members of Zionist parties or the Communist Party.”
Sigh. I can’t wait to see the House Arabs they trot out to support this outrage.
It reminds me of presentation in college when the Young Conservatives of Texas had a “night about South Africa,” which included running three movies of all the happy blacks under the Apartheid Regime. I’m recommend casting Counsel-General Mansour to play the “happy Israeli Arab [Druze]“.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I have a feeling that, if there existed a large diaspora of Australians living hither and thither, Australia would very likely grant automatic citizenship to any Aussie who wanted to return home to Australia.
Well, the “White Australia” policy was in effect for several decades, premised on the idea that letting in Brits and Greeks and Italians and Serbs and Croats and suchlike was good, and letting in people from SE Asia wasn’t. If you’re prepared to look behind the issue of Jewish identity, there are close practical parallels between White Australia and the settlement-based implementation of the Law of Return, particularly towards Russian olim.
Israel is clearly both a late emanation of a 19th-century nation state and something beyond that. That’s to say, the textbook late-unifiers (Germany, Italy) had their try at popular nationalism in 1848, then were brought together mostly through state-sponsored conquest, with a splash of bottom-up revolt. In those cases, you can argue that there’s still not really a unified ethnic identity.
(Many of the states that either came together late by European standards, or were carved out after WWI, ended up on the wrong side in WW2.)
Israel still has a fractured polity: beyond the main parties, which are themselves unstable entities, you have little parties for all manner of self-identified ethnic and religious groups. Now, you can ask whether Israeli identity is as coherent as, say, Italian identity in 1922 or German identity in 1933 or Iraqi identity now, but you’re still dealing with something that’s distinct from Jewish identity, notwithstanding the Law of Return.
In that sense, Israel is and is not a nation-state by the standard definition. It has characteristics of both nation-statehood and colonialism wrapped up in the narrative of a historical claim, and generally isn’t regarded on the same ethno-religious terms as other nation-states of a modern foundation.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Is not the basic problem with a “one state” solution the fact that if it were to happen, the Jewish Majority would quickly become the Jewish minority and promptly lose political power? Leading ultimately to the “destruction” (as in dismantling, not dismembering) of the Jewish state of Israel?
It doesn’t seem a reach to believe that many in political power in Israel would prefer not to see even Arab minority gain political power and would take whatever steps, soft or hard, to disenfranchise them? Keeping the Theocracy in place under the guise of democracy would seem the order of the day. Its not who votes but who counts the votes etc…
January 12th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Would the EU and its Court of Human Rights allow any of its members to engage nowadays- whatever they may have done in the past- in the kind of ethnically preferential / exclusionary policies on which Israel has its very foundation?
Well, we’re talking about 2009 not 1948. IIRC Germany has a pretty generous policy with respect to the immigration of ethnic Germans from Russia. I doubt I — a non-ethnic German — would be similarly afforded this privilege - so to that extent Germany’s policy is exclusionary. Again, the religion aspect to Israeli immigration policy strikes me as a significant departure from the practices of contemporary liberal democracies — but as far as I know a secular Jew can gain admittance to Israel, so the policy is really ethnicity-based. And ethnicity-based immigration policies are either practiced by other nations (so you can’t say Israel is exclusive in this regard), or simply aren’t relevant because of the non-existence of diasporas.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
That’s true. A nation-state is bound together by a common ethnic identity. A state-nation is bound together by an identification and loyalty from their citizens by consensual use of numerous social practices.
The US, India, Spain, and Israel are state-nations. Whether Israel will continue to be a successful case is still to be determined.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Re: You know, I’ve always defended Israel’s right to a secure existence even though an ethno/religiously based state sits very uneasily with my fundamental principles.
Steve LaBonne,
I don’t particularly care what offends your fundamental principles, since I think those fundamental principles are fundamentally wrong. Since when are you the arbiter of what states may choose to do within their borders? Or do you suddenly want to impose your cosmopolitan hipster values on every country in the world? It’s hard to think of anything more blatantly imperialistic than that.
Personally, I’d be happy to see cosmopolitan hipster liberalism go by the wayside, and every country in the world be either ethnically, religiously, or ideologically based. We need to be part of collective identity, and the collective identity of ‘hipster liberal’ just doesn’t cut it. Let the Muslims have Muslim states, let the Hindus have Hindu states, let the Orthodox Christians have Orthodox states, let the Zoroastrians have Zoroastrian states, let the Marxists have Marxist states….and yes, let the Jews have a Jewish state. Honestly, I don’t see why not. If Fareed and his Jew-hater cronies manage to get their way, perhaps the Jews will pack up and move to Somalia. And let me tell you, three thousand years from now Somalia will be a pure Jewish state, and it will be a thriving place where they have made the desert bloom. And hipster liberalism, Deo volente, will have gone the way of the do-do bird.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Re: No. Its Middle Eastern, illiberal, and apparently not much interested in democracy.
Good for them.
Spike, last I checked Argentina and Lebanon constitutions both required that the president be a Catholic (Latin or Maronite rites respectively). Neither of those countries is a theocracy, or anything close. (I have heard rumors that Argentina may have recently changed the law, but the point stands).
January 12th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Jasper (@23) writes quoting Steve LaBonne (@3)
You know, I’ve always defended Israel’s right to a secure existence even though an ethno/religiously based state sits very uneasily with my fundamental principles.
[Jasper begins here] I can see the point about religion (although plenty of very liberal European countries maintain state religions) but aren’t the vast majority of countries in reality “ethnically” based? How is Israel in this instance any different from just about any place else? I have a feeling that, if there existed a large diaspora of Australians living hither and thither, Australia would very likely grant automatic citizenship to any Aussie who wanted to return home to Australia. Where Israel differs from other democratic states is in denying civil rights to half the population. But objections to the ethnicity-based nature of its society have always seemed to me to be something of a red-herring.
Actually, no, most states are not ethnically based. Most, though not all, countries have significant minority populations. Australia has, for example, aboriginal and now increasing large pacific island poluations and greeks in Melbourne. The much more usual circumstance is for people to live in multi-ethnic or multi-cultural countries. Even Japan has minority populations: Koreans, Ainu and a quasi-Japanese underclass defined by employment in jobs such as tanning. The vast majority of the earth’s people live in such multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Aaaand there goes what’s left of my support for Israel. Do I support their right to exist? Sure. Do I believe they have the right to self defense? Of course. But I could say the same things about Uzbekistan, and they boil people alive there.
Our Best Friends Forever status with Israel is quickly becoming morally indefensible. It’s not there yet, but it’s moving in that direction. I have no doubt that in ten years Israel will be a full fledged Apartheid regime.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Personally, I’d be happy to see cosmopolitan hipster liberalism go by the wayside, and every country in the world be either ethnically, religiously, or ideologically based.
This from the south Asian kid who likes to pretend that he’s Richard Coeur de Lion. Where would you end up, then? LARPistan? With a persecuted minority of people who use wooden swords instead of plastic ones?
Where Sir Hector the Dull sees ‘hipster liberalism’, I tend to see, oh yeah, the Enlightenment. And the collective identity of “people” cuts it just fine as a starting point.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This shameful ban reflects the narrowmindedness of the politicians in the Central Elections Committee.
However, the Prosecutor General has already stated that he won’t defend this decision in the High Court of Justice, which is widely expected to reverse it. This sad ritual of a political ban followed by its reversal by the courts has happened before.
Historically, the only party that has ever been actually banned from running was Meir Kahane’s, an Orthodox Jew, on grounds of racism.
nbt: Israeli Arabs who were physically in Israel at the end of the Independence War in 1948 became citizens of Israel. Several thousands of Arabs are naturalized every year to unite them with their families in Israel. Arabs have been subject to a military rule that limited some civic rights until the 60’s. Until the seventies, the Arab vote traditionally went to Arab parties that were satellites of Jewish parties, and to some left of center parties, including the Communist Party. Today most Arabs vote for Arab parties, which capture around 10% of the seats in the Knesset.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
How many countries are the poor Kurds scattered across?
January 12th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Four, though they’ll probably be getting a country of their own if the Iraqi Kurdistan issue is properly handled. Good luck with that one.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Okay, found out from other media and forums that this will likely be overturned. Not too big a deal, yet.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Hector,
I don’t know anything about the system in Argentina, but the fact that Lebanon saves particular positions for people of particular religions is part of what makes them not taken seriously as a democracy. It would not be good for Israel if its democracy was considered just comparable to the one in Lebanon.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
It’s a democracy, except there’s no seperation of synagogue and state and therefore the jews must always control everythng that takes place there. Other than that, its a democracy.
If someone arrived from Mars and looked at the situation in Israel, the only conclusion would be that Israel has been intentionally colonizing the West Bank for decades and will continue to do so.
Even if one is not from Mars, its painfully apparent that the settlement trend will be very very very difficult to reverse at this point to create a viable Palestinian state.
So accepting that fact, what are the possible outcomes:
1) Continuation of the current situation forever (physical, economic and military domination of millions of people in permenant subclass);
2)Ethnic cleansing of those people through forced displacement into neighboring countries, most likely with some concurrent genocide;
3)The “One State” solution which includes everyone in the democracy and thus creating a jewish minority.
Those are some ugly choices. Anyone see any others?
January 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
(”Ugly choices” for Israel I mean. I don’t think the idea of One State is that ugly. Impossible to make workable, but not ugly.)
January 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Deeds,
There is plenty of separation between synagogue and state. The division here is an ethnic one. Israeli jews have a much higher percentage of atheists than one finds among American citizens. The religious minority gets to make some rules in return for supporting the less religious people in power. But it is not a religious dominated society.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Notorious P.A.T., I never said that multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies were paradise, just that most folks live in such places, including the Kurds who live in three, no four (Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria), such states, save for those Kurds in a wider diasphora. This assumes that you actually wanted an answer.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Lon: Ooooh, so its just a “Jewish State” based on ethnicity, not on religion. That makes me feel much better about it.
*cough* South Africa! *cough*
January 12th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I’m well aware of that- you’ve made it obvious that you’re no friend of liberal democracy.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Actually, no, most states are not ethnically based.
Well, anybody can make assertions. Got any proof? It seems to me much of the new world is made up of what we might define as non-ethnically based states, true. But most of the others are in practice if not in theory. Think of Britain. The very name of its largest constituent part — England — is named after a Germanic tribe. Most of Europe is structured along these lines. Indeed, so is much of the old world. The only difference between them and Israel is that most of them need not worry about coming up with a policy with respect to their diaspora — because they mostly don’t have any.
The much more usual circumstance is for people to live in multi-ethnic or multi-cultural countries.
Well, yes, nearly all countries, Israel included, are home to ethic or cultural minorities. I’m talking about the legitimacy of Israel’s raison d’etre (as a home for the Jews). It seems to me the Italians have a homeland. And the Norwegians. And the Koreans. And the Uzbeks. Why can’t the Jews?
The vast majority of the earth’s people live in such multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies.
Not just the vast majority — nearly 100% of the earths’s people live in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies like China, England and Israel.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
You haven’t been to London in a very long time, I take it. Book a flight, walk down the street, and look around you.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
every country in the world be either ethnically, religiously, or ideologically based.
Hector, it was this group of demands that made the 20th century should a huge, destructive mess of a century.
You can’t condemn the excesses and destruction wrought by two world wars and any number of nationalist bloodbaths over the past 100 years (which, in the past, you have) and simultaneously describe your ideal world as being one in which it was the dream of all people to have such a country of their own.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
“It seems to me the Italians have a homeland. And the Norwegians. And the Koreans. And the Uzbeks. Why can’t the Jews?”
Because people were living there.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Israel had to do this. What kind of democracy allows there to be political parties which don’t agree with the policies supported by other political parties? Now that’s a real democracy, not those wimpy Western things that make sure to attain policy uniformity by much more sophisticated, slower acting techniques.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
No problem with having a Jewish homeland. What will become more distateful will be the efforts necessary to maintain it as a Jewish state. Preferential immigration policies are one thing, but once you get past them, you start looking at some ugly discriminatory policies. disenfranchisement, housing laws, ’seperate but equal’ public works and services.
If the nature of a country is dependent on a specific demographic mix (in this case a Jewish majority), then the two main choices are to maintain the demographics or start descriminating.
And so it goes.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Because people were living there.
The argument that Israel is not a legitimate state because it was founded on an immoral/illegal conquest is a different argument from the one that says Israel is not a legitimate state because of its ethnic basis. It is the second argument I think is hypocritical — not the first . I think a plausible (though hardly conclusive) argument can be made that Israel is an illegitimate state because of the conquest issue you raise. I just think it’s a bit rich for non-Israelis to question Israel’s right to exist as an ethnic haven when so many of them live in countries that are de facto ethnic havens.
You haven’t been to London in a very long time, I take it. Book a flight, walk down the street, and look around you.
Britain is still an overwhelmingly British/English country; indeed the UK is still something like 90% Caucasian (admittedly this is not identical to “English” or “British” — but it’s a pretty good proxy). And British immigration law has gotten much stricter of late. So my point is, rightly or wrongly, the British do what they have to to maintain the essential Britishness (or indeed Englishness) of their country. Just like Israel does what it has to do to maintain its essential Jewishness. Now, I think there’s a certain appeal to the libertarian ideal of a laissez-faire immigration policy. Unlike Hector, in other words, I think such a policy would be a good thing if it could be implemented (and indeed I advocate a robust and generous immigration policy here in the US). I’m not a big fan of nationalism. But it seems to me there’s very little in the way of demographics-blind immigration or citizenship policy on display anywhere in the world. Somehow, though, it is Israel that seems to merit especially harsh criticism on this score.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
The Central Elections Committee was hijacked by some political appointees (this is the heritage of the Sharon days).
The Supreme Court will either overturn this or provide an avenue for the same parties to participate.
==
BTW, some of the comments above are beyond ignorant.
There is not a single country in the Middle East that does not deal a bad hand to some of its minorities: Coptic Christians in Egypt, Jews in Syria, Kurds in Turkey, Kabiles in Algeria, Shias in Lebanon, some guys in the Sudan IIRC. But it seems only the Jews are to be held to a high standard, and should they fail, never mind the context be excoriated day and night.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Actually I was agreeing with/augmenting your statement. Sorry!
January 12th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
The only difference between them and Israel is that most of them need not worry about coming up with a policy with respect to their diaspora — because they mostly don’t have any.
Given that the rest of your analogy is bunk, I’ll focus on this one: there’s a relatively consistent set of rules across a wide range of countries for citizenship by descent, that extends one or two generations. To claim an Irish or Italian passport, you need to have a grandparent who was a citizen at the time of the relevant parent’s birth. If a parent is American by descent but has never lived in the US, you generally don’t get American citizenship.
So my point is, rightly or wrongly, the British do what they have to to maintain the essential Britishness (or indeed Englishness) of their country. Just like Israel does what it has to do to maintain its essential Jewishness.
Once again: “essential Britishness” and “essential Jewishness” are clearly not analogous here. The name of the state is “Israel”, not “Jewland”.
You really aren’t helping yourself with this comparison — as Linda Colley points out, the idea of “Britain” and “Britishness” was an eighteenth century artifice designed to deal with a Protestant monarchy, an expanding empire, and a Catholic Other. Immigration policies have nothing to do with it — if anything, the South Asian, African and Caribbean immigrants of the post-war era can more comfortably self-identify as British than English. So stop digging.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I assume from the outrage shown by the commentors here that they are equally outraged by the banning of the Kach party back in the 1980s.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
SLC,
I assume you’ve spent all day wanking off to photos of your mancrush Avigdor. Just go back to that, would you?
January 12th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Re: I’m well aware of that- you’ve made it obvious that you’re no friend of liberal democracy.
No, Steve LaBonne, you’re right, I am not.
Re: Hector, it was this group of demands that made the 20th century should a huge, destructive mess of a century.
Er, no, Tyro. The major bloodbaths of the twentieth century came about because liberal-capitalism deprived people of _real_ identity, _real_ economic collectivism, and _real_ religious spirituality, and drove them into the hands of the Nazis, the Bolcheviks, and the clerical-fascists (both Christian and Islamic), who offered them perverted and distorted simulacra in place of the real thing.
Liberalism creates a spiritual and moral vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human spirit. If liberalism denies people the things that they truly seek, then they will seek distorted and demonic substitutes. The antidote to Bolshevism is real socialism. The antidote to fascism is true nationalism. And the antidote to false spirituality is real spirituality. Liberalism isn’t an antidote to any of these evils, on the contrary it’s like offering salty food to an alcoholic, it only makes him drink more. Liberalism is, of course, the product of the age of cheap ebergy: when that age fades, as it is beginning to fade, then liberalism will die the death, and bloody good riddance to it.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Lon,
Who gives a f–k if Israel is a democracy or not? The point of Israel is to be a Jewish State, period. If Israel has to become smaller, if Israel has to become poorer, if Israel has to jettison liberalism (thank God), and if Israel even has to pack up and move to Siberia, Somalia, or some godforsaken Pacific Island, is less important than that Israel remain a Jewish state, where the Jews call the tune.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Hector: please, tell us where such an idyll once existed — outside your head, that is? Or, just for point of reference, where it came close? Otherwise, you’re arguing a model of society that is based upon Smurf Village.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Matt,
You really need to read up on the situation of Palestinians living in Israel. The history is pretty awful. A good place to start is a book by Dr. Fouzi Al-Asmar titled “To Be an Arab in Israel”. Written in the early 1970’s it chronicles the period where the Palestinian population in Israel was under military administration (i.e. military occupation).
To demonstrate the depth of how wrong you are, the largest civil society organization representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, including all members of the Israeli Knesset, recently endorsed BDS, (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) against Israel. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10062.shtml
I don’t know about you, but I would say that this is not indicative of a “cordial relationship between the Jewish majority and the “Israel Arab” minority.”
January 12th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Re pseudonymous in nc
Mr. pseudonymous is rather tiresome. As I have previously stated, Avigdor Leiberman, like Bibi is nothing but a big mouth who talks tough but has some chicken feathers where his competitive spirit should be. The real tough guys in Israel, as opposed to the phony tough guys like Bibi and Lieberman, are Uzi Landau and Benjamin Begin who would have no fear in telling President Osama to go fuck himself if he demanded that they do something not in Israels’ interest.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
@Jasper: the British do what they have to to maintain the essential Britishness (or indeed Englishness) of their country
Well, this is the position of some Brits. The most fervent ones are members of the BNP. Progressives in Britain have traditionally opposed them. But, if you’re going to let support for Israel pull you into alliance with nativists and fascists in the West, I suppose you at least get credit for consistency.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Hector, you’re ignoring the role that nationalism played in the destructive force of the 20th century. It wasn’t just pseudo-religions of Communism and Nazism… specifically WWI and all of the subwars that it spawned were a result of the same nationalist impulse you’re advocating.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Give Uzi Landau money and I’ll match you, SLC. I’d love to watch the Israeli PM tell Obama to fuck himself. Uzi Landau would probably do all that and more. I can’t think of a better face to throw on Israel.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Tyro,
Don’t forget libeal capitalism….that is very much a pseudo-religion too.
Kal,
Um, you can call names all you want, but you would be well advised to read what Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, has to say about the danger of creeping Islamization, and why Britain must remain a Christian nation, with an established state religion, and why the Church should attempt to evangelize Muslims in England. Fr. Nazir-Ali is a Pakistani immigrant of Muslim descent, so it would be rather absurd to call him a racist. Islam isn’t a race, last I checked.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Benny Begin if you like him better. We can start the “meanest old Jew in Israel” PAC.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Weren’t you a Hindu until a couple years ago, Hector?
January 12th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
To claim an Irish or Italian passport, you need to have a grandparent who was a citizen at the time of the relevant parent’s birth.
Doesn’t sound much different from what the Israelis do. I’m not Jewish, and I suspect that if I wanted to emmigrate to Israel, the Israeli government would likely want to see proof (Jewish parentage, etc) of my Jewishness, rather than just taking my word for it.
If a parent is American by descent but has never lived in the US, you generally don’t get American citizenship.
Right. And what I’m suggesting is that, if there were millions of ethnic Americans (or Britons or Uzbeks or Canadians) living in various corner of the world, the US (or British or Uzbeki or Canadian) government would likely have in place an immigration policy much more closely resembling that of Israel or, say, Armenia.
Once again: “essential Britishness” and “essential Jewishness” are clearly not analogous here. The name of the state is “Israel”, not “Jewland”.
Indeed, I think much of your confusion flows directly from the fact that Israel is not called “Jewland.” But if it were, what difference would it make? Either way it’s a country explicitly founded as a home for the Jews — just as many, many other countries serve as ethnic homelands.
You really aren’t helping yourself with this comparison — as Linda Colley points out, the idea of “Britain” and “Britishness” was an eighteenth century artifice
Fine, let’s leave aside the more complicated example of the UK. Let’s change it to “Italy for the Italians” or “France for the French” or “Germany for the Germans.” My point is not that it’s a good thing that there exist explicit or semi-explicit ethnic states. Rather, my point is that 1) such places exist, 2) Israel (call it “Jewland” for our purposes) is one such place; 3) and as such it’s hypocritical to question Israel/Jewland’s existence as a homeland for the Jews unless you’re prepared to question the existence of Japan or Italy or Armenia. My argument is not meant to defend Israeli policy with respect to the occupied territories, nor to defend US policy in this regard. My argument is meant to oppose the concept of the single state solution — which entails the rest of the world forcing Jewland out of existence.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Given that the rest of your analogy is bunk, I’ll focus on this one: there’s a relatively consistent set of rules across a wide range of countries for citizenship by descent, that extends one or two generations. To claim an Irish or Italian passport, you need to have a grandparent who was a citizen at the time of the relevant parent’s birth. If a parent is American by descent but has never lived in the US, you generally don’t get American citizenship.
I don’t know about this. I never lived in the United States prior to acquiring citizenship, and I’m a citizen only because of my mother. I think all you need is a parent to claim citizenship. Don’t know about a grandparent, though, but I think many countries only require a grandparent.
As for the consistent rules, I don’t know if this is so either. Different states will have different priorities and correspondingly different requirements. But broadly, you have to demonstrate a connection to the state.
Well, what defines a connection to the state? If I have a father from Georgia, USSR could I claim citizenship in the Russian Federation? What if, hypothetically, my only connection to Germany was through Bavaria - before German Unification? What if my grandfather is from the Kingdom of Sardinia? What if I’m born in Taiwan? Can I claim citizenship in the PRC? What if I was born in Formosa? And can someone from the PRC claim citizenship in the ROC? If you’re an Olympic athlete, it can be pretty easy to acquire citizenship in whatever country you want.
As you can guess, depending on how each country views itself, its history, and its diaspora you can get really different notions of citizenship. (I think the Italian Parliament even gives seats in Parliament to diaspora communities.) Israel thinks that all Jews have a connection to the country. Even if you think that connection is tenuous, at best. But compared to everyone else, it doesn’t seem so strange.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
and as such it’s hypocritical to question Israel/Jewland’s existence as a homeland for the Jews unless you’re prepared to question the existence of Japan or Italy or Armenia.
The incredibly obvious difference is that you had to destroy someone else’s homeland to do it. If Japan used to be Japanese and the Tibetans had overran it and ran most of the Japanese into garbage dump in Korea, Thailand, etc.. I don’t think anyone sane would be arguing that it made sense.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Re pseudonymous in nc
As I have stated previously, anybody who can prove a German grandparent can get a German passport and citizenship upon request. That individual need not speak a word of German or have ever stepped foot in Germany.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Ladies and gentleman the natural progression of an apartheid state.
Boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel:
http://www.bdsmovement.net/
January 12th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
The incredibly obvious difference is that you had to destroy someone else’s homeland to do it.
Ed Marshall: As I stated above, I acknowledge a plausible argument can be made against Israel’s legitimacy precisely because of the (violent) circumstances surrounding its founding. But I hear lots of arguments against Israel’s founding and continued existence based on the claim that an ethnic Jewish state is by its very nature immoral or illegitimate — as if plenty of other ethnic homelands do not exist. To put it another way, some would say that the existence of Israel is fine and dandy, but it should have been founded on a bit of unwanted land somewhere else (perhaps Australia could have sold the Jews 8,000 SM of territory on its west coast). I have no beef with such people, because it seems clear to me that the Palestinians did indeed get royally fucked over by history. But some would argue that an Israeli state — even if it were located on non-conquered land on Australia’s west coast — would still be illegitimate, because it’s immoral to base your polity on ties of blood. I think it may well be suboptimal (from a utilitarian perspective) to base your polity on ties of blood — and it’s not my cup of tea — but it’s hardly immoral in the scheme of things.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Well, Ok..
I understand your point. I’m of the opinion that if zionism is such a worthy national goal of the U.S. we should have built a scale model of Palestine complete with a replica Jordan river off the coast of Florida and called it a day and saved some money.
We don’t live in this world, we live in the real world and these things aren’t fine debating points. Would I give a crap how screwed up Jews could make things in an aquarium? Not really. Do I care when the whole project requires overarching U.S. support, and forces us into ridiculous situations on the world stage where we have to pretend it’s normal? Yeah, that’s not a good thing.
Maybe the Muslim world and for that matter, the entire planet is wrong for thinking the whole thing is crazy or at least crazy enough to be worth attention. This is the society I live in and defending the thing is at least as crazy.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Mr SLC is really rather tiresome. If he supports genocide, then let him say it outright, or shut the fuck up. If not, he should refrain from waving his pencil dick about in public.
Richard Blanco: I never lived in the United States prior to acquiring citizenship, and I’m a citizen only because of my mother.
Your mother was born or has lived in the US? Because that’s what I said.
Jasper: Fine, let’s leave aside the more complicated example of the UK. Let’s change it to “Italy for the Italians” or “France for the French” or “Germany for the Germans.
You think those are less complicated? Read up on European history during the 1860s. I think much of your confusion flows directly from your sketchy knowledge of the history and development of the nation-state.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Do I care when the whole project requires overarching U.S. support…
Well, the thing is, Israel hardly does “require” US support these days — at least not financial. Last time I checked Israel’s per capita GDP was comparable to the European Union’s.
You think those are less complicated?
Yes. It seems to me France, Italy and Germany are clearly defined national homelands for the French, Italy and Germans respectively, in a manner not dissimilar to the way Israel is for the Jews, or in the way England would be for the English were the United Kingdom to break up. The fact that in Italy’s and Germany’s cases the whole had to be cobbled together from disparate parts hardly changes the end result. My position is not that ethnicity is a good thing. My position is that ethnicity is a real thing.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Tell me again how Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East.
“Give it to Matt, he appears to learn over time.”
A loooonnnnnnggg, looooonnnnnnngggggg time…
Well, maybe not - he’s only four or five years out of college…
Look, nobody really cares if Israel wants to give preferential treatment to Jewish immigrants over other immigrants like some other countries might be doing. That’s not the issue here at all.
What is at issue here is that the Israeli state is ILLEGAL because the UN had no legal authority to partition Palestine the way it did, it is ROGUE because of the way it then proceeded to exceed what mandate it had by military conquest, and it is TERRORIST because it engages in state terrorism against the remaining Palestinians and against its neighbors who harbor Palestinians.
Given that set of facts, the Israeli state has NO legitimacy whatsoever to do anything pertaining to immigration or anything else. It beggars any discussions of the “morality” of their immigration policies.
Get your heads on straight. Israel’s immigration policies are IRRELEVANT.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:04 am
It’s a testament to Hector’s exposure to the outside world that what he refers to as “hipster” liberal values is essentially the fucking Enlightenment. I know hipsters like vintage things but this is a little ridiculous! (ba doom crash!)
If anythings going the way of the dodo bird it appears to be Christianity in general. Your preferred brand of Catholic fascism has already experienced it’s death rattle but even milquetoast Christian belief is on the downslope even in relatively devout America (It’s already dead in Europe).
Sorry Hector. You know what’s hot with the kids these days? Secular liberal humanism. You know what’s not hot with the kids these days? Christianity & Catholic Fascism (and getting colder all the time.)
January 13th, 2009 at 1:17 am
This is a poor write-up. How about quoting more of the article including the part that explains the CES’s actions?
The CEC voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motions, accusing the country’s Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
It also does not ban “Arab parties” it banned two particular parties.
Also 1) this ruling must pass the Supreme Court and 2) the last time a party was banned it was the radical Jewish Kahane party.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:42 am
It seems to me that the difference between the jus sanguinis laws of a place like Germany and Israeli immigration is that Germany’s law is based on one’s recent ancestors (parents, grandparents, maybe great-grandparents) having been German citizens. It is neither necessary nor sufficient that they have been ethnic Germans. Israel’s policy, by contrast is based of ethnic group membership rather than one’s (great-)(grand)(parents) having been Israeli citizens.
If Germany were to declare it to be their policy that it was a “German state” (meaning ethnic Germans), existing for the purpose of being a homeland to ethnic Germans, and would enact immigration laws to ensure it stayed that way, I would be bothered by that too.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:51 am
“Bishop of Rochester, has to say about the danger of creeping Islamization, and why Britain must remain a Christian nation, with an established state religion, a”
HECTOR, OUR IN-HOUSE, JESUS FREAK IS OFF LEASH; WATCH OUT FOLKS.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Jasper, I think the issue is that an American Jew that has no interest in Israel or Judaism whatsoever is treated as a first class citizen whose interests must be protected by the state, while an Israeli Arab whose family goes back generations is regularly discriminated against.
It’s not just who gets to immigrate to Israel. It’s that Jews outside of Israel have more standing than Arabs inside of Israel.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:35 am
I’m sure that everyone who thinks Israel is illegitimate because it was the product of conquest doesn’t live anywhere that was also product of conquest. None of you live in the U.S., right?
January 13th, 2009 at 2:36 am
The fact that in Italy’s and Germany’s cases the whole had to be cobbled together from disparate parts hardly changes the end result.
Really? Really?
In the former case: “We have created Italy; now we have to create Italians.” You can still argue today that the only time the people of Italy embrace a national identity is when the Azzuri is playing.
In the latter case, the end result was World War fucking II, which is really pretty relevant given the topic. You could take it up with the Germans of Danzig, Prague, Riga and Königsberg, except that there aren’t any now, just as there aren’t that many Jews there either. Now, nobody has the same sympathy for the Germans kicked out of those areas where Germans had lived for centuries, for good reason, but the the practice of drawing lines and saying ‘Xs to the left, Ys to the right’ pretty much guarantees leaving Xs, Ys and Zs on the wrong side saying “WTF?”
Finally, let’s not go into the question of Alsace-Lorraine. Or the fact that until 1958, France-the-homeland-of-the-French included Algeria.
My position is not that ethnicity is a good thing. My position is that ethnicity is a real thing.
And my position is twofold: first, that you know nothing about the period that gave us the nation-state; second, that you lack understanding of the ill fit between ethnicity, national identity, and the nation-state over the last century. Ethnicity is a real artificial thing. It’s plastic.
(Do Americans generally think that Germany and Italy must have had well-formed, coherent, all-encompassing ethno-national identities because they had ultranationalist dictators in charge during the 1930s? It’s not really that simple.)
January 13th, 2009 at 6:14 am
“None of you live in the U.S., right?”
US was not founded in 1948 you retarded numb nuts.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Re Farid
The fact that the USA was founded in 1776 and Israel was founded in 1948 is irrelevant. Most of the ethnic cleansing of native Americans that occurred in what is now the USA took place long after the founding, mostly during the 19th century.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Jasper (84) writes:
Yes. It seems to me France, Italy and Germany are clearly defined national homelands for the French, Italy and Germans respectively, in a manner not dissimilar to the way Israel is for the Jews, or in the way England would be for the English were the United Kingdom to break up. The fact that in Italy’s and Germany’s cases the whole had to be cobbled together from disparate parts hardly changes the end result. My position is not that ethnicity is a good thing. My position is that ethnicity is a real thing.
Jasper’s position is that ethnicity is a real thing. Indeed, but in France we find Bretons, Normands, Basques and the people of Langue d’oc, german speakers in Alsace (sorry bout the spelling). Its unclear how Sicilians and Piedmontese are ethnically the same until they live outside Italy, where such differences do not matter as much at least to members of the Lombard League. English and British are not synonymous if you are Welsh, Scots, Irish, Cornish and perhaps Geordie. We’ll just note the folks who’ve returned from the far reaches of the empire. I get to be ethnic in New Zealand, i.e. American is an ethnic designation there, but so are Maori, Pakeha, Samoan, Indian, Asian (usually used for Chinese) and so on; here in the US I’m not ethnic, just American (and one set of my ancestors watched while another set arrived at Jamestown, so the place has a long history of immigration and violence). None of this makes ethnicity any less real, or in Ben Anderson’s terms any less imagined, or nationalism any more or less imagined. Yes, Icelanders inhabit Iceland, but empirically most folks on the planet don’t live in states comprised of single national or ethnic groups, and many ostensibly ethnic groups live in several states.
It seems to me that Jasper has citizenship confused with ethnicity. Put another way Isreali Arabs are Isreali, but not Jewish.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:07 am
DRR,
There are so many fallacies in your post it’s hard to know where to start.
1) I’m not Catholic, genius; I’m a high-church Anglican like Fr. Nazir-Ali.
Your hipster cosmopolitan liberal culture is failing to replace itself, because you people would rather build your sexual lives around abortion, swingers’ clubs and anonymous encounters rather than bearing and rearing children.
2) Speaking of the good bishop, have you even addressed his argument? Apparently not.
3) The United States is hardly in any meaningful sense a Christian society. It was founded by a bunch of strongly anti-Christian intellectuals like Jefferson. The heartland of Christian belief today is in Latin America, and I see no sign of secularization there (although I do see signs of the regrettable spread of evangelical Protestantism, which is almost as much of a problem).
4) The fact that the largest and most populous countries in Europe are fairly secular, shouldn’t be taken too far. Smaller countries like Greece, Ireland, and Cyprus are highly religious.
5) Russia, to use the most prominent example, and the rest of the former Soviet block right now is experienceing a Christian revival.
6) In countries such as England, the Christian faith is being revitalized by Christian immigrants from Africa, the West Indies, and other places.
7) Most prominently, it remains to be seen whether hipster secular liberalism will survive the coming collapse of the late-capitalist economy due to natural resource shortages. My bet would be on ‘No’.
Ed Marshall,
Yes, I used to be a Hindu, but more by default than anything else (before that I was an atheist).
January 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Well yea, but no more so than bombing a school to kill a few Hamas fighters, along with 40 or so civilians.
I hope Obama measures up to that need. Right now it’s hard to say whether he will or won’t.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hector,
What does “high-church” mean?
And would you mind sharing what prompted you to make the journey from atheism to Anglicanism?
January 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Fun fact: Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice.
Hector: you people would rather build your sexual lives around abortion, swingers’ clubs and anonymous encounters rather than bearing and rearing children.
The virgin Christian soldier has a very active imagination. And still hasn’t provided an example of his Christian Society, which means I’ll just have to presume it’s Smurf Village.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Regarding the Israeli Governments latest boneheaded move to disenfranchise Arabs living within Israel
Seriously, hasn’t the Israeli gov’t jumped the shark here? Can they possibly expect any credibility as a democracy from anywhere in the world.
The US initiated, um, “regime change” in Iraq for transgressions less hideous than those consistently perpetrated by the Israelis for over half a century.
Oh, yeah, there’s also that nuclear weapon conundrum. Can anyone possibly offer a cogent argument as to why Israeli has the legitimacy to maintain nuclear arsenal when Iran does not? How, precisely do the Jews’ nukes promote stability in the Middle East. [Hint: They do not.]
It is long past the time to start openly discussing withdrawing all economic and military support for Israel unless they promptly mend their ways. What possible justification is there for sanctions against Iran if Israel is literally getting away with murder on an hourly basis?
Yes, the moment has arrived to begin contemplating the dismantling of the Israeli state as it presently exists. There is nothing in their short history of nationhood that indicates an ability to govern decently and fairly. To the contrary, the war crimes become more despicable with each passing decade.
Enough already! The time is overdue for the US Congress to pull the plug on funding Israel’s multiple egregious excesses. Then it will be fascinating indeed to see how that fascist/racist regime behaves without the military where-with-all to further it’s duplicitous and expansionist agenda.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Pseudonymous in NC,
I believe that I mentioned General Velasco’s regime at some point in the past, as an example, but I would rather identify particular characteristics than particular regimes. My ideal regime of the future would have specific characteristics of many past regimes, but not be identical to any.
Fred, ‘high-church’ means an Anglo-Catholic, someone who belongs to the side of Anglicanism closer to the Catholic church. I believe that the blood of Christ is literally present in the sacramental wine, for example, I believe that the Blessed Mother of God ought to be given due reverence, and I believe that one ought to kneel during certain portions of the eucharist.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
It seems to me that Jasper has citizenship confused with ethnicity. Put another way Isreali Arabs are Isreali, but not Jewish.
I’m not confusing anything. I would liken the presence of Israeli Arabs in Israel to, say, ethnic Koreans in Japan.
January 14th, 2009 at 2:19 am
“I’m not confusing anything. I would liken the presence of Israeli Arabs in Israel to, say, ethnic Koreans in Japan.”
Except there is direct proof that a sizable population of Arabs have been living there for hundreds of years. In fact until relatively recently the region had a majority of Arabs. Don’t let facts get in the way of stupid comparisons though.
January 17th, 2009 at 6:48 am
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January 19th, 2009 at 12:37 am
“Enough already! The time is overdue for the US Congress to pull the plug on funding Israel’s multiple egregious excesses.”
I agree, but I think to forestall the obvious response, it is wise to point out that it is *ALSO* overdue for us to stop funding Saudi Arabia’s massive and continuous crimes against humanity — we should stop buying Saudi oil, yesterday.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:38 am
I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…
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