Is Israel an apartheid state? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14932920
Many Israeli neighbourhoods and towns are already effectively segregated, with residents either vastly Jewish or Arab. In many places, it is tough for an Arab to move in, although segregation is not legal.
Writing in the progressive-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Mordechai Kremnitzer, from the faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the bill would “remove the mask so as to reveal the ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance”

Israel is in the throes of political upheaval as the country’s ruling party seeks to pass legislation that could allow for Jewish-only communities, which critics have condemned as the end of a democratic state.
For the past half-decade, politicians have been wrangling over the details of the bill that holds constitution-like status and that Benjamin Netanyahu wants passed this month.
The proposed legislation would allow the state to “authorise a community composed of people having the same faith and nationality to maintain the exclusive character of that community”.
In its current state, the draft would also permit Jewish religious law to be implemented in certain cases and remove Arabic as an official language.
“In the Israeli democracy, we will continue to protect the rights of both the individual and the group, this is guaranteed. But the majority have rights too, and the majority rules,” the Israeli prime minister said this week.
A vote on the bill is expected next week, although a final draft has yet to be agreed on. The legislation has been compared to South African apartheid by Israeli parliamentarians, and several thousand Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
The Middle Eastern country sees itself as both a democratic and a Jewish state, saying its legal system protects the rights of Arabs, who make up more than a fifth of the population, and other minorities. However, the “Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people” bill would enshrine the country’s Jewish national and religious character into law.
“Our main concern is that it is changing the nature of the state and it changes the balance of Israel as a nation state,” said Amir Fuchs, the head of the defending democratic values programme at the Israel Democracy Institute. “You can be a nation state and still be a democracy as long as you don’t discriminate,” said Fuchs. “That the state is allowed to create villages that will separate on the basis of race or religion or nationality – this is outrageous.”
The purpose of the bill, he said, was “to change the balance, to make us more of a nation state, more of a Jewish state, and less of a democracy. There is no other way to put it. And this is the biggest problem.”
Netanyahu has lashed out at domestic and international critics, ordering the foreign ministry to reprimand the EU envoy Emanuele Giaufret after he was reported as saying the bill was discriminatory.
Both Israel’s attorney general and president, who holds a symbolic role, also opposed details of the bill. The president, Reuven Rivlin, said it would harm the Jewish people worldwide and “even be used as a weapon by our enemies”. The segregation clause, he said, could also allow towns that exclude Jews of Middle Eastern origin – who have been historically sidelined – or homosexuals.
Legislator Miki Zohar, from the prime minister’s Likud party, said: “Unfortunately, President Rivlin has lost it” and had “forgotten his DNA”.
Many Israeli neighbourhoods and towns are already effectively segregated, with residents either vastly Jewish or Arab. In many places, it is tough for an Arab to move in, although segregation is not legal.
Writing in the progressive-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Mordechai Kremnitzer, from the faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the bill would “remove the mask so as to reveal the ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance”.
The debate has also opened a rift with the Jewish diaspora, with fears among more liberal American Jewish groups that it would prioritise Orthodox communities over other denominations.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the bill was a grave threat to Israeli democracy and hurt “the delicate balance between the Jewish majority and Arab minority, and it enthrones ultra-Orthodox Judaism at the expense of the majority of a pluralistic world Jewry”.
Daniel Sokatch, the chief executive of New Israel Fund, which supports civil rights groups in Israel, decried the bill as “tribalism at its worst”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... segregated
#14932923
Suntzu wrote:Is the U.K. an apartheid state? Most of the Muslims living in the U.K. live in mostly Muslim neighborhoods. ;)



Most British Muslims are able to healthily integrate being both Muslim and Western, seeing those two identities as compatible and harmonious rather than conflicting.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/pa ... 57766.html
#14932929
Suntzu wrote:I suppose you know this from personal experience? When I visit London there are many mostly Muslim neighborhoods. ;)


Yes. I've lived in the UK for half a century and the majority of them within 50 miles of London. I was born in Manchester, lived in Oxfordshire and now in ESSEX.
Possibly you see what you want to see, it's called prejudice.
#14932935
Suntzu wrote:My experience is mostly as a guest of MOD and tourist. Did you realize that there is a mosque next door to the White Chapel Foundry where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were cast?

What's that got to do with the price of eggs?
#14933489
Is this a joke?

There is no segregation Arabs are free to go everywhere

yes sometimes they arent being welcomed in a Jewish town/city if they want to live there but its also the same the other way around

They also arent allowed to work in anything regarding sensitive information(security) but this is for understandable reasons
you wont see any Muslims in the pentagon for the same reason...

overall Israel have many issues but its definitely not an apartheid I myself work with Arabs every day there isny any segregation
#14933593
But is it not true that Jewish and Arab Israelis almost universally life in different areas that are almost solely one group or the other, attend different schools isnt that some sort of segregation voluntarily or otherwise? While it may not be legislated is not a large degree of segregation just a social fact?

How common is mixing socially?
#14933944
There is no denying it. Israel is an apartheid state which is now enshrined in Israeli law. The law was passed a few hours ago.

Image

Israel has approved a controversial law that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people - leading to accusations that it discriminates against Arabs.
The Jewish Nation-State Bill, passed just after the state marked the 70th anniversary of its birth, was hailed as a "defining moment in the annals of Zionism" by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But critics, including many Arabs, however, said it was racist and discriminatory, planting the seeds of an "apartheid state".
The law, backed by the right-wing government, was passed with a 62-55 vote and two abstentions in the 120-member parliament, after months of political argument.
Some Arab MPs shouted and ripped up papers after the vote.
The bill enshrines Hebrew as the only official language of the state, stripping Arabic of that status, and names Jewish settlement as a priority.
Mr Netanyahu said the bill was about defending the Jewish character of the state, which was established in 1948 as a homeland for the Jewish people, "for generations to come".
"We will keep ensuring civil rights in Israel's democracy but the majority also has rights and the majority decides," he said.
About 20% of Israel's population of nine million are Arab, with an additional 2.8m Palestinians living in the Israel-occupied West Bank and about 1.7m in the Gaza strip.
Arabs living in Israel - descendants of those who stayed after many were expelled from historic Palestine in 1948 - have equal legal rights, but they say they are discriminated against in areas such as work, housing and education.
Recent high-profile cases of Arab bedouin villages being demolished to make way for Jewish majority towns, and warnings by the government of a demographic threat have drawn attention to Arab complaints.
Adalah, a legal centre for Arabs living in Israel, called the law "illegitimate" and "colonial".
It said it "seeks to maintain a regime in which one ethnic-national group controls an indigenous-national group living in the same territory while advancing ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies".
Months of debate preceded the law's approval, with previous versions of the bill including sections that instructed courts to rule according to Jewish law when there was no legal precedent and which explicitly allowed establishment of Jewish-only communities.
That was replaced by a vaguer clause which said it would "encourage and promote" Jewish settlement, after Israeli President Reuven Rivlin voiced fears it would lead to "discrimination and exclusion".
Mr Rivlin was one of many Jewish Israelis who objected to the law, and thousands protested the proposed legislation under the banner "this is home for all of us" in Tel Aviv last week

https://news.sky.com/story/israel-appro ... s-11441345
#14933946
Islamic states which are not Islamic monarchies are usually referred to as Islamic republics,[10] such as the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Mauritania, Iran[11] and Afghanistan.[12] Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty. In Iran, the form of government is known as "Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists". Afghanistan was run as an Islamic state ("Islamic State of Afghanistan") in the post-communist era since 1992 but then de facto by the Taliban ("Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan") in areas controlled by them since 1996, and after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban the country is still known as the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_state

Image
Islamic states (dark green), states where Islam is the official religion (light green), secular states (blue) and other (orange), among countries with a Muslim majority.

So it is only called apartheid when the Jews do it ?
Who is the hypocrite racist now ?
#14933948
Ter wrote:So it is only called apartheid when the Jews do it ?
Who is the hypocrite racist now ?


Image

For me it's been a fifty year journey of a personal interest in Israel..
When I was a teenager I was a supporter of the state of Israel but when I saw on TV Israeli troops smashing the hands on rocks with rifle butts of stone throwing Palestinian children when I was nineteen I was horrified. Things have got worse.
Why don't you start a thread about apartheid in those Muslim countries?
#14933956
My earlier post stands as is.
Next to a number of countries that call themselves Islamic Republics, with the practice of Shariah or not, your only problem seems to be if Israel does the same thing.
Even though Israel does not have the death penalty, beheadings or amputations or stoning.
We can draw our own conclusions about that.
Your cartoons do not change that or impress anyone.
Have it your way.
#14933957
I think it is a misuse of the term. Equality of rights is enshrined in the law, unlike us say South Africa of the 80s.

There is discrimination and an occupation of course but that is a completely different thing.

I suspect people want to compare the two because they want an outcome where the Arabs take control as the real “majority”.

This is why people who believe say they believe in both a two state solution and the right of return to Israel are disingenuous. You cannot have both.

@ter

A23 simply holds Israel up To different standards like I do. Such attitudes implicitly accept the backwardness and inferiority of the states you mention.

Same reason trump is protested while erdogan isnt.
#14933962
pugsville wrote:But is it not true that Jewish and Arab Israelis almost universally life in different areas that are almost solely one group or the other, attend different schools isnt that some sort of segregation voluntarily or otherwise? While it may not be legislated is not a large degree of segregation just a social fact?

How common is mixing socially?


This is not segregation

There are Arabs who live in Jewish towns and go to Jewish schools thats not very common but it happens
Most Arabs and Jews go to their own schools is because most live in homogeneous towns
#14934146
Yes, Israel is an apartheid state because it's been practicing apartheid for decades.




I dunno why people are freaking out about this new law, Israel only made it legal to do what it was doing anyway (practicing apartheid).

I'm a little baffled why zionists are complaining about it. :?:

Anti-occupation zionists don't seem to like it:


Oy, some rightwing Jews seem to have a problem with this.
#14934469
Zionist Nationalist wrote:This is not segregation

There are Arabs who live in Jewish towns and go to Jewish schools thats not very common but it happens
Most Arabs and Jews go to their own schools is because most live in homogeneous towns


When population live in different areas by ethnic/religious groups the correct term to describe such arrangements is segregation.

It is segregation just not legally enforced segregation. Arab- Israelis and Jewish-Israelis basically lived segregated. Not all , Not legally required to but the vast majority of populations do live segregated.

Inst there a bill coming to parliament to make it legal to enforce segregation at the moment?

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