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- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack 11
- Exile and the prophetic: No dissenter is an island 1
- Islamophobia is as widespread and acceptable as anti-Semitism used to … 12
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- ‘If I had to choose between the wealth of the … 13
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- ‘The policy of the present Israeli government is likely to … 485
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- Dershowitz calls Hawking an ‘ignoramus,’ a ‘lemming,’ and likely an … 202
- In photos: Gaza marches and rallies mark 65 years of … 148
- Glenn Greenwald brings facts and reason to ‘Real Time’, ruins … 145
- San Francisco bus ads condemn Israeli apartheid: backlash begins 119
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- US Jews are so ‘polarized’ over Israel they can’t talk … 160
- Dershowitz calls Hawking an ‘ignoramus,’ a ‘lemming,’ and likely an … 149
- Glenn Greenwald brings facts and reason to ‘Real Time’, ruins … 88
- Israeli right-wing flys off the deep end following Hawking boycott 78
- International Criminal Court opens preliminary investigation into attack on Mavi … 74
- Israeli airport sorts passengers with ‘Jewish stickers’ and ‘Arab stickers’ 69
- ‘Newseum’ folds under pressure, will not include Gaza cameramen in … 62
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- Exile and the prophetic: No dissenter is an island http://t.co/vnbRO0AgjV, 5 hours ago
- Islamophobia is as widespread and acceptable as anti-Semitism used to be http://t.co/j9GvEIOYqI, 5 hours ago
- Guatemalan genocide got assist from US, Christian Right, and Israel http://t.co/oJT9HsoQcD, 5 hours ago
- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack http://t.co/G5N0uJqOwT, 5 hours ago
- RT @War_Times: Blood on Israel’s Hands from #Palestine to the Mayan Highlands http://t.co/hAHRMXYXMm #Nakba @mondoweiss @jadaliyya #Guatema…, 2013/05/17
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click link to see last 100 comments- Washington Post’s racism map omits Israel (52)
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
It never stood a chance. Not because of Israeli intransigence or the settlements but because of Arab extremism and rejectionism.
If the Palestinian Arabs wanted to get rid of the settlements, if this was really their most urgent priority in terms of terminating Israeli rule, nothing would stop them from going to the negotiating table to negotiate a peace agreement to achieve it.
In reality, they don't want a state because they want to destroy Israel. That belief of theirs that total victory over the Jews can be achieved someday is what is destroying them. A rational people's first priority is to get rid of foreign rule. For the Arabs, the dream is exactly the reverse: to take over another people's country.
That is why peace is impossible and we're not going to see it happen in our lifetime. Stephen Walt and Henry Siegman conveniently overlook the fact its not Israelis who are blocking the door to the negotiating table; the Arabs have by deciding to stay away from it. And for that, they have only themselves to blame for their own self-inflicted plight.
Diaspora implies the existence of the Jewish homeland.
In this regard, the Jews are certainly not unique. Thousands of people from different nations have left their homelands to begin lives elsewhere.
There's even an Israeli Diaspora. None of which negates the reason for Israel's existence.
Israel's Law Of Return is neither discriminatory nor unique - Germany, Finland, Russia and Italy all have similar laws to encourage ethnic kith and kin to resettle in their homeland no matter how long they have lived abroad or whether they were born elsewhere.
And from an affirmative action point of view, the law is moral also as it compensates Jews for thousands of years of enforced inequality, discrimination, mistreatment and genocide in the Diaspora. You cannot make the Jew equal by saying here is the starting line and you can go from there. True equality requires substantiative as well as formal equality.
Both notions express the intention behind the Law Of Return - to give every Jew refuge and a homeland that is always waiting for them. In view of the past Jewish experience in every country in the world closed its doors to Jews fleeing the Holocaust, Arab criticism of the Law Of Return strikes most Jews as as hypocritical, insensitive and bigoted.
What should be asked is not what Israel hasn't done for displaced and stateless Arabs but what the Arab World has failed to do for their own ethic kith and kin. If the Arab World had resettled the Arabs Of 48 - there would be no Israeli-Arab conflict today. Its not Israel's responsibility to solve Arab neglect, indifference and abuse of fellow Arabs residing in their lands.
Only in Arabic?
Now the US Consulate in Jerusalem has been known for decades as America's defacto embassy to the Arabs.
But you would never know from its website that Jerusalem is a Jewish-majority city.
As a sovereign country, Israel has the right to exclude nationals from enemy states from entering its territory.
There exists no entitlement to enter a foreign country without its permission.
Every nationalist movement claims pride in its people, land, culture and achievements.
In this respect, the Jews are exactly like the rest. Jewish nationalism is as legitimate as all the others are or none of them are.
I believe in God. And what He taught through His prophets concerning the role of a restored Israel.
He ordered nations in a certain way and made Israel to be a "light to the nations."
The Jewish view isn't that Israel is special or lords it over others; rather the thought expressed by the prophets of Israel is the Jews will show the world what an enlightened, peaceful and tolerant society can be like. In other words, Israel is a model for the world.
And yes, I see that prophetic prediction being eventually fulfilled.
Israel is as Jewish as England is English and America is American. In my view its a good thing we live in a multicultural world in which every people on earth can make a unique contribution to the betterment of mankind.
Israel is the opposite of colonialism, occupation and apartheid.
Its one of the least racist, bigoted and ethnocentric societies in the world. It has a progressive democracy that has free elections, free markets, equal rights for women, religious freedom and individual opportunity for every person living in the country.
I defend Israel because unlike its benighted neighbors, it reflects Western liberal values in its daily life. And these need no defense anywhere in the world.
With abundant quantities of natural gas and shale oil, Israel is emerging as an energy superpower. This development will be Israel's "Gold Rush" - for Jews facing anti-Semitism in Europe and a bleak future in America, the prospect of a better life in Israel will beckon them there like a magnet attracts iron fillings. And being an oil exporting superpower will give Israel a great deal of leverage around the globe. It will suck the oxygen out of the BDS movement. Its going to happen in the next few years.
Minorities in Pakistan - the Shia Muslims, Christians and Hindus are constantly persecuted and neither their lives nor their property are safe.
There is nothing analogous in Israel - Arabs have freedom of speech, the right to demonstrate and vote and can take part in all social endeavors. There is certainly discrimination but there is no mass Jewish violence directed at the Arabs.
Ironically enough, those who advocate Israel's dismantlement would have the Jewish State replaced not with a secular pluralistic state but with an Islamist tyranny of the kind Hamas runs in Gaza. The anti-Israel crowd's support of the Palestinians has nothing to do with seeking equality or more democratic freedoms for them.
Israel is an imperfect free society in a region filled with vicious dictatorships and medieval religious regimes. There are plenty of liberal arguments that can be invoked to support Israel. There are none to justify supporting its enemies that deny their own people and their own minorities democratic freedoms and human rights under the sun.
There were Jews living in Ottoman Palestine. Jerusalem had a Jewish majority long before the rest of the country did. The Jews had two factors that helped them: they had ties to the land and a sense of national consciousness. And Zionism was perceived in England and the US as a liberal form of nationalism that would ultimately address the "Jewish question" that bedeviled the 19th Century. Put all of those things together, Israel's creation was the end result of a long historical process, which led to the only non-Islamic people attaining freedom and independence in a completely Islamic region. The consequences of that are still very much with us today.
There is the Hebrew language, Judaism and Zionism. They all constitute an integrative process that's melded Jews from around the world into a single nation. Israel unlike many immigrant countries, already starts out with considerable advantages. And these will only acculturate and grow stronger with time. Israel is stable and prosperous at a time the Arab World is in its death throes. Anti-Zionists will have to be disillusioned. History hasn't gone the way they hoped and the Jewish State is here to stay.
That's not possible because opposition to Jewish self-determination involves stripping the Jews of it by forcing millions of people to relinquish that right based on who they are. And that more or less is anti-Semitism. Its sophistry and disingenuous to pretend its anything else in intent and aim.
A Jewish minority would not survive. But thanks for making clear why you're really opposed to a Jewish State. Its not equality, freedom and human rights that animate you and your ilk; its hatred of the Jews and their existence in the form of a national collectivity. Anti-Zionism is simply more or less, a politically correct species of anti-Semitism.
Neither does the Arab World that deny their minorities equal rights. But you don't make an argument against the racist discrimination that takes place there.
There are lots of Disasporas.
A time is coming though when the majority, if not all of the world's Jews will eventually live in Israel.
When the Jews attained independence, their existence was no longer dependent on the grace or goodwill of others. The new Jewish State abolished the illegal 1939 British White Paper that forbade Jewish immigration and threw open the country's gates for Jews to arrive. If the British had not imposed it in the first place in contravention of the Mandate's explicit terms, a Jewish majority would have been attained in Palestine much sooner. The rest of your argument is red herring.
The Vatican and Pakistan are states founded for a religion. What makes the Jews ineligible to exercise self-determination? The principle is the same under international law and if you say they can't have it, then the Vatican and Pakistan have no right to exist - its absurd to allow Catholics and Muslims to claim sovereignty over a given territory. But you are not honest enough to put forward the argument.
The Jews were grandfathered in by the Palestine Mandate which was approved by the League Of Nations in 1922 - as a pre-1945 trusteeship and Art. 80 of the UN Charter specifically allowed it to stand. The Jews were one of the many peoples in the former Turkish Empire promised independence. This is what they received when the British relinquished the Mandate in 1948.
Joseph Levine's logic is of the sort that says Jews cannot exercise self-determination because Arab rights are going to be infringed. Now unless you have an empty continent somewhere, some people's rights are inevitably going to be limited when someone else takes over their territory to exercise self-determination on it. This can describe virtually every country in the New World and Oceania.
But he doesn't employ his own standard to say no other country should exist because their self-determination is privileged above other claimants. No - he says only the Jews alone should not be able to exercise self-determination because in his mind the Arabs also have a claim. It should be noted nearly every country is a homeland for a particular ethnic people. The Arabs also constitute an ethnic group and a religious group and this is specified in the constitution of every Arab country. Dr. Levine doesn't take issue with Arab ethno-domination and subjugation of minorities under their rule. He bristles only when the Jews exercise majority rule over their own homeland and grant the Arabs full minority rights. No one wants to live as a minority in someone else's land - but the Arabs have options open to them the Jews don't have.
Put quite simply, Dr. Levine's essay is a more sophisticated version of the classic anti-Semitic meme that Jewish national rights threaten the rights of others which is not true at all. When he argues only the Jews have no practical right to self-determination, the fallacy of his argument is patently clear to all to see. And it doesn't improve with age.
Apparently, you can' t read!
Israel is required to buy American-made military equipment, creating jobs in America. Its Americans who built these vehicles.
This is money that Israel spends here that it could easily spend elsewhere.
The Israeli state is a legal fiction - the Jewish nation is broader than the territory of Israel. Of course in other instances, a majority of a country's people do not livc in a Diaspora or they have no wish to return to their homeland. The Jews do and continue to voluntarily exercise that right. At some point, the majority of the world's Jews will finally live in Israel and the relationship between Israel and the rest of the Jewish people will become a more "normal" one.
Zionism is self-determination for the Jews.
A national liberation movement champions the cause of its own people. Every country takes pride in its roots. So do the Jewish people in their homeland.
The Arabs have 23 countries in which to exercise all their rights.
Jews have only one and this is not equality by any standard of justice. And the mistreatment of stateless Arabs is an Arab not a Jewish responsibility.
Had the Arabs shown as much solicitude and care for displaced Arab brethren as Israelis have done for the world's Jews, there would be peace today.
There have been population exchanges and new nations coming into being throughout history so Israel is not an outstanding exception to that rule.
There is a moral, humanitarian, spiritual and political case to be made for Israel, whether justified by affirmative action or on other grounds.
Affirmative action is seen as taking measures to redress the lot of persecuted and deprived peoples. As President Johnson famously said, its not enough to give an ex slave formal equality and say he should begin from there. Equality cannot just be a formal fact, it has to be expressed in substance as well which is why the state helps minorities to overcome past officially imposed disadvantages so they can attain their full potential.
Israel is a unique instance in which a formerly persecuted and deprived minority uses state power as a state majority to redress mistreatment at the hands of others to give Jews national self-determination, protection of their cultural and spiritual heritage, seeks to make the Jewish people whole again and establish true equality within the family of nations. State power used to that end is affirmative action and neither is illegal nor racist; the Zionist goals were recognized in the Balfour Declaration, at San Remo and in the League Of Palestine Mandate as encompassing humanitarian, cultural-spiritual and national goals for the Jewish people. The Jewish people have despite realizing national independence, still not attained true equality and the Jew of the nations is still not a full member of the human family.
Zionism remains as relevant as ever to the Jewish condition today and for the future.
The emerging Arab theocracies and Iran do resemble Nazi Germany in the extraordinary violence men who believe in rule by divine fiat are willing to employ to repress all opposition.
In Tunisia, a secular Arab leader was murdered by Islamists. From Western leftists, the reaction has been one of deafening silence. Israel does not kill its opponents or prevent them from expressing their views.
A pro-Zionist site would not be permitted to exist in any Arab country and Iran. Non-Zionist, indeed anti-Zionist individuals and groups can operate openly in Israel.
Much of the vitriol, slander and defamation of Israel has nothing to do with reality let alone the truth of the Middle East, which is exactly the opposite of the way Israel is commonly depicted.
Phillip says he's tired of being lectured to by Israelis about democracy.
But he doesn't have a word of reproach for the Palestinian Arab regimes in Gaza and in Ramallah that are literal dictatorships that arrest each other's opponents and which deny Palestinians the right to freely elect their own leaders.
None of which is Israel's fault. Tolerance and respect for others is not a noted Arab trait. Arabs in Israel and eastern Jerusalem certainly do hate and resent their Jewish ruler but they're also well aware an Arab ruler would treat them far worse.
They only have to look at how Arabs fare in Syria, Egypt, Hamas and the PA in which there is no democracy and in which the state puts down dissent with naked force.
There is nothing similar in Israel.
Mass killings in the Arab World and Iran do not interest CODEPINK nor does sexual apartheid, gender discrimination and mistreatment of gays in that part of the world.
The Left supports some of the most repressive regimes in existence but it can't be bothered to support a liberal democracy that just held free elections, that has a wide range of viewpoints in its society and which women, minorities and gays are fairly treated. Israel is not perfect but its human rights record far outshines that of its neighbors.
Those who support Israel's enemies should not be the first to throw stones at the glass house.
UNHCR is dominated by dictatorships and Islamic tyrannies.
Its one sided obsession with a small democratic country has been used to divert public attention from real human rights abuses committed by Israel's enemies.
Israel will not cooperate with a kangaroo court that has made up its mind to pronounce Israel guilty in advance and which has subverted the principles of universality, impartiality and due process in its giving special attention to the Jewish State reserved for no other country.
Israel will not give its enemies a platform to harass it and to undermine its core vital national interests. As a sovereign nation, Israel reserves the right to decide on the nature and extent of its cooperation with international bodies.
Its going to last - and the reason being is that centrist parties are fly by night operations in Israel. This is what makes Yesh Atid so attractive to Netanyahu and in the end Lapid's survival will be dependent on Netanyahu.
Yair Lapid is a centrist - not a leftist. Most Israelis are right up the middle.
Ironically enough, the anti-Zionist Far Left, the Zionist Left and the Haredim will probably be sitting in the opposition even though they have nothing constructive in common and will never form a shadow government.
Lapid has already said "no" to leftist moves to try to block the voters' wish to re-elect Netanyahu.
And with Bayit Yehudi certain to pick up a 12th seat later this week, what we look at is an all-Zionist government anchored by the Likud and Yesh Atid in the center and Bayit Yehudi on the right, possibly with the rump Kadima which would give it a stable majority of 64 votes.
It will follow more less the same policies of the previous government. and Yair Lapid is a natural replacement for the equally moderate Ehud Barak. As long as the Arabs refuse to make peace with Israel, the government can be expected to focus on domestic policies that haven't been attended to for years out of a focus on the "peace process."
Since yesterday was a status quo election, this doesn't come as quite a surprise.
This discussion of cartography omits one salient fact: Jerusalem is 72% Jewish and 28% Arab. Jerusalem has an undisputed Jewish majority since the mid 19th Century. Its always been the most Jewish of cities in the world.
And no UN resolution nor world disapproval can ever erase this fact.
The world can say the say the earth is flat, too. But it can never sever the Jewish attachment too and love for Jerusalem.
You Arab supporters like to have it both ways. You claim the UN had no authority to partition Palestine and then you say Israel must be bound by the terms of the same UN resolution the Arabs rejected and then went to invalidate by invading the newly independent Jewish State. Israel's rights as a country do not derive from the UN but from the Jewish people's inalienable right to national self-determination - which includes Jerusalem in which by the way, Jews have been a majority since the middle of the 19th Century.
Israel's constitutional law seats the country's parliament, government and supreme court in Jerusalem. I'm not aware of anything Israel has done to relinquish its sovereign rights over its capital - they are unreserved and absolute like with every other country on earth.
The UN 1947 Corpus Separatum was a dead letter when the UN never came to the city's defense.
The world has no say over it.
Israel has treaty-delineated borders with Egypt and Jordan. And a UN mapped border with Lebanon - the "Blue Line."
Apparently people who know nothing about the Middle East can't be bothered to check the facts.
Every country has the right to decide its capital. Its one of the attributes of sovereignty.
Jerusalem IS Israel's capital no matter what the rest of the world thinks.
Israel is the Jewish homeland, not the world's last place of resort to every one who wants to come there.
Illegal migrants will be and are being deported. The new border fence should end the flow of illegals trying to infiltrate the Jewish State.
Like every other country in the world, Israel will uphold its sovereignty in accordance with international law.
There's chutzpah in a convicted terrorist being able to write his daughter.
Thousands of Israeli Jewish families will never see their loved ones again, to write them letters, speak to them or comfort them.
This is beyond obscene and what he is demanding is not human dignity but alleviation of his just punishment.
What he has now is more than the choice he offered his victims.
No one has the right to enter a sovereign country without its permission. A country may with hold permission to enter for no stated reason. That is Israel's right under international law and also under its domestic law, with which airlines are required to comply.
Anti-Israel activists are not coming to Israel to make friends with the country but to pursue hostile activities against it. The Jewish people have the right to decide who their guests are. Enemies of the Jewish State will not be welcome in their country, period.
There are certain restrictions on movement and freedom of association but they all have to do with decades of Arab terrorism against Israel. Lifting them depends on the end of the preaching of hatred, incitement and violence on the the other side. The Arabs are not prepared to make peace with Israel today and as long as that remains in the case, certain reasonable limitations on their freedoms will remain in force and it has nothing to do with any Israeli desire to oppress them.
Israel does not have a written constitution but then neither do the UK nor New Zealand. There is no need to rush having one and every free society on earth has evolved based on its own national history and unique set of circumstances. And as long as the entire Jewish people are not in Israel, it would not be appropriate to adopt a single law to govern them for all time. The Jewish State has functioned exactly as intended. Its the richest, freest and most progressive country in the Middle East. This is a country liberal people should be willing to support. True, its far from being the ideal in some respects but I challenge any one to show me one country on earth that has reached a nebulous standard of perfection. Judged by any realistic criteria, Israel is a success story that has rightly caught the human imagination.
There is nothing humane or dignified about starving oneself to death. It will not change Israeli policy. Islamic Jihad is a banned terrorist group. Israel will continue to detain suspects who constitute a threat to the public safety or state security as long as the circumstances require it. Every democratic country practices administrative detention. It is not always always possible or practical to put a suspected offender on trial. He must be locked up when that is necessary to protect the lives of others. And this is not a procedure abused by Israel and it has more safeguards than than that provided for example in US law. Israel faces a daily terrorist threat that simply put, is not going to disappear in our lifetime. That is why administrative detention will remain part of Israeli law.
Israel hasn't occupied Gaza since 2005.
The blame for the plight of its inhabitants rests with the Hamas regime.
Destroying Israel is a greater priority for it than assuring its people have a normal existence.
And benefits of the Arab Spring have not reached the Palestinian Arabs.
Hannah Arendt's fears have proven by the passage of time to be misplaced.
Israel is a healthy and vibrant democracy with a strong civil society, growing economy and confidence about its future.
Its neighbors in contrast are societies sundered by fanaticism, the lack of pluralism, economies on life support or on the verge of collapse and pessimism about the future.
The Zionist experiment succeeded against all the odds. Arab nationalism is dead and the Islamists waiting in the wings to takeover promise only more repression, demagoguery and distraction from the Arab condition.
Israel is not yet a Sparta and American Jews see no reason to abandon their support of the Middle East's only democracy.
I thought the ads were well done. Assimilation won't preserve the Jewish identity. Within a generation or two , today's liberal Jews will be extinct. The few Jews left will be Orthodox and nearly all of the world's Jews will be living in Israel. We're seeing the Jewish Diaspora come to an end for a variety of reasons. As for loving Israel, liberal Jews loved Israel only when Israelis all lived on the kibbutz and now that they no longer do, they don't feel comfortable loving Jews who are different from them. True love means accepting others for who they are and such a love is not only for a season but for all time.
Israelis don't feel guilty because they consider the price of establishing the state acceptable. And they are bemused by criticism from countries that wiped out native peoples to make way for the newcomers. Israel may be the only country on earth to which Arabs willingly sold land to Jews to allow them to create their own state. It would be more accurate to say the Jews did not force themselves on the Arabs, who fled rather than share the country with the Jews. The problem is not Zionist thinking, its Arab thinking that sees the conflict with Israel in terms of a zero sum solution. And as long as the Arabs think in this way, there will be no two state solution and no peace.
Leftists fail to see reality. An ill wind is blowing now through the Middle East. The promise of freedom of the Arab Spring is being consumed by the totalitarian nightmare of the coming Arab Winter. Islamist totalitarianism is taking over one country after another like Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II. Slowly and surely, we're watching a vast Black Curtain descend over a continent, dooming it to decades of poverty, intolerance, strife and fanaticism. This is not 1989 in Europe but the exact opposite. The Arab World intends to be the exception to the spirit of freedom, equality and openness that swept over the rest of the planet. Edmund Burke warned us that violent revolutions unchecked in their temperament and zeal, lead to worst kind of despotism, the most horrid and repugnant spirit of repression seen among men. We must resolutely reject and refuse to embrace that portentous development which threatens our lives, freedom and all that we hold dear to us. Our principles are not for sale.
The Left is not supporting democrats. Its supporting totalitarian Islamists. Given this reality, an army takeover is the least worst of all the bad options.
Those Arabs every one lauds as a model of co-existence massacred their Jewish neighbors a lifetime ago. Hebron is one of the oldest Jewish cities in the world. It was the first capital of Israel under King David. And as the Bible rightly notes, Abraham insisted on buying the Cave Of Machepelah because he wanted to leave no doubt who owned it. It still belongs to the Jewish people and the Arabs have no right to it. They conquered it and then for several hundred years forbade Jews from going beyond the seventh step of the entrance to their ancestors' tombs. This is a situation that must never be allowed to happen again - and the only way to return the Cave Abraham bought for his wife to the Jewish people is to make Hebron a Jewish city - in fact as well as in name.
Nice piece of desperate spin Norman, but you’re completely off mark. You cannot have apartheid without colonialism, because ultimately, apartheid requires racist segregation and rule by colonists over indigenous people.
The Jews are an indigenous people. In the absence of colonialism, there can be no apartheid.
Israel has mandated that the Jewish religion is the national identity.
The Jewish people are more than the sum of their religion. You present a reductionist argument. Zionists have never claimed Israel is the homeland of the Jewish faith.
The few token exceptions in Israel does not change the fact the Israel is an apartheid state. There is only freedom for 50% of those living under Israeli rule, which is applied by sheer military force.
Arabs in Israel have the right to vote, to own property, to worship and to travel freely. Rights that only exist theoretically in the Arab World.
What’s more, is that during the Arab Spring, it was openly revealed that Israel relies on those dictatorships you deride to maintain the status quo. That makes Israel not only worse than the lot of them, but a clear reason for why those dictatorships even exist.
Again, Israel has not interfered in the right of Arab peoples to chart their own destiny. This makes Israel far better than the lot of Arab dictatorships, that have used hatred of the Jewish State as a diversion from their own illegitimacy and failure to develop their own societies for the benefit of their own people.
The vast majority of Israel's Jews have lived in the Middle East for centuries. They have come home and what happened was a population exchange. There have been countless instances of them throughout history.
Ah yes.... if only that was true about Zionism! The Syrian regime mows down unarmed protesters every day of the week. That is what Arab nationalism has turned Arabs into - people who mass murder their own people.
Zionism has never made the Jewish people do anything like that to their own people!
And you have the chutzpah to talk about pogroms!
Sylvia Schwarz never mentions the real apartheid regimes in the Middle East are Arab countries that privilege Arabs over non-Arabs and which mandate Islam as the state religion. No non-Arab can become a citizen of an Arab country. Freedom of religion is non-existent in the Arab World.
In contrast, Israel's naturalization law is liberal in that non-Jews can become Israeli citizens. The Jewish State moreover is history's affirmative action answer to millenia of homeless, dispossession and genocide. Yes, Jews are privileged in Israel but this is to correct past discrimination and persecution and such preferences are allowed under international law.
Finally, Israel is the only free country in the Middle East. Its neighbors are all governed by dictatorships of one stripe or another - including the Palestinians who are ruled by unelected autocracies. That is already a moral and factual difference.
History will judge the Jewish State quite favorably.
A Jew bought the land from the Israeli government. After complying with the laws of the land, its his property to do with as he wants and Hillary Clinton has no say in its disposition.
As for the Mufti Husseini, he was an ally of Hitler. From where he is sitting now in hell, he is getting his richly deserved comeuppance to see Jews living on what once was his property. Such is history coming full circle!
Heh
Nothing about the Mufti's Nazi connections, his siding in a rebellion against the British and the great harm he did to the Arabs by opposing a reconciliation of the two communities.
May he burn in hell. And oh yes, Jews living on his former property is the ultimate triumph of good people over a very evil man who tried and failed to exterminate them in their own country!
A biased report from a kangaroo court that condemned Israel in advance and made no pretense of an impartial fact-finding.
The truth is when IDF soldiers were attacked, the occupants of the Mavi Marmara lost their status as non-combatants. Their resistance was put down with force. This is legitimate under international law and no other army in the world would have reacted any differently.
Those who seek to beat and kill Jews deserve what they get. And the days when Jews could be beaten and killed with impunity are never going to return again whether the UN likes it or not.
Deal with it!
Palestinian intransigence, violence and terrorism is never discussed by their supporters. They don't want a two state solution. They want to destroy Israel and kill every Jew living there. Any one who denies this is blind to reality. Israel is not a perfect country. But it is an oasis of freedom, progress and enlightenment compared to the savage, ossified and reactionary societies in its neighborhood. Zionism has done a lot of good for the Jews. Israel has made impressive strides in 62 years and with real peace, its development would be even more rapid. But those who hate the country are unwilling to acknowledge it has good people who just want to live like people in other countries around the world do.
Philip leaves out the real reason for the Arab majority in the eastern part of Jerusalem - the Jews were ethnically cleansed from that part of the city when the Jordanians ruled it from 1948 to 1967, erasing every trace that Jews had ever lived there. Much has been done to redress the demographic imbalance. Much more remains to be done to allow Jews to live in all parts of their capital. And it bears reminder the city has had a Jewish majority since the mid 19th Century.
There is no collective right of return in international law. There is only an individual right and even that is conditioned on state sovereignty and meeting various requirements for entry. No country allows any one an unlimited right to enter and stay in it. And since the Palestinians are not Israeli nationals, they do not even have an individual right to return to a country of which they are not by their own consent, nationals there.
There is no contradiction between Zionism and democracy. As a state with a Jewish majority, it has resolved to implement policies that empower Jews - which after all is what any nationalism does for its people. The anti-Zionists overlook the fact that every Arab state in existence is an ethnocracy defined both by ethnic identification - citizenship and nationality are Arab and religion - virtually all Arabs are Muslim. None of these ethnocratic regimes, unlike Israel - are democratic. So Arab nationalism is legitimate but Jewish nationalism is illegitimate. And the irony is compounded by the fact all the Arab states are even more colonial creations than Israel which at least had a basis in international law that acknowledged a long-standing Jewish right of national self-determination in what eventually became Israel. So Zionism is not really an exception to how the various peoples in the Middle East live; it is organically part of the rule.
Then what is goose for the Arabs is equally gander for the Jews as well.
There is no collective right in international law to return to a country... and secondly millions of Palestinian Arabs are denied by their own leaders basic individual rights: to decide to return to Palestine, to settle in an Arab country as full citizens where they already live or to accept compensation if they have no interest in returning. The Palestinian Arab leaders colluding with Arab countries in the oppression and discrimination of Palestinians is the most shameful event in Arab history. History will not forgive them.
Noam Chomsky is a Jewish anti-Semite. As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to keep Jewish fellow travelers of Arab fascism out of the country. I unreservedly endorse Israel's decision.
Its not about fear of ideas. Every country has the right to refuse any one entry. And you didn't really think Israel would admit an open enemy inside its borders, did you? He does not have the right to express views that are harmful to true peace in the region. That among other things, was reason enough to refuse him entry. Those who truly want a two state solution should welcome Chomsky's exclusion.
Chomsky supported Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. He supported Iran's Khomeinists. And he supports Arab and Iranian fascists who seek Israel's destruction. He is a clear and present danger to Israel's security. He should never be welcome in the Jewish State.
Yep. Its all Israel's fault. As Efraim Karsh documented, the Arab leaders themselves inflicted the catastrophe on the Palestinians. Barghouthi is not being honest when he refuses to hold the leaders of his people responsible for their misery and enforced statelessness to this very day. It is not Israel that is standing in the way of a two state solution.
Funny when you consider gays are routinely persecuted in "Palestine" and around the Arab World and Iran.
Why again is the progressive Left defending homophobic Arab fascists?
The New York Times didn't grant Israel Jerusalem. Its a Jewish city and the vast majority of its residents are Jews. Philip Weiss doesn't like that inconvenient fact. Well Jerusalem will remain the united and eternal capital of Israel, no matter what he says.
Bevakasha Yom Yerushalim!
The same international standards that condemn Israel for exercising its right of self defense, that turns a blind eye to the Iranian nuclear threat and that overlooks human rights abuses in all the Middle Eastern dictatorships.
THOSE international standards.
Treason is always noble - when its something that you're in favor of. But its still treason, all the same.
Israel was no more and no less involved with apartheid South Africa than the Western-ruled countries were. To be sure, the white regime was a problem but its worst aspects could be overlooked to contain a far greater evil - Soviet Communism. When the Evil Empire fell, South Africa's strategic importance to the West went right along with it.
Richard Goldstone voluntarily chose to be a servant of the apartheid machine. He didn't have to. But the Israel-bashing crowd is willing to forgive just about any wrongdoing as long as the guy is own their side. Just keep on changing the subject, folks - and incidentally the Middle East is full of apartheid regimes that have not a single Jew living in them - and on that there is silence.
The Israel-hating crowd just can't stand the life-saving advances in medical care and new drugs Israelis have made to save millions of lives around the world.
Pathetic.
Post-modern anti-Semitism is about denying the national rights of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism because it attacks the Jews alone for having aspirations to their own country like every other people on earth. No one questions Poland's, America's or India's right to exist. The attack on the nationhood of a people is reserved exclusively for the Jewish people alone.
Israel is negotiating now on a two-state solution with America as a mediator because the Palestinians refuse to talk directly with Israel. The real obstacle is the Palestinians' rejectionism in refusing to accept the legitimacy of Zionism. Should that ever happen, peace will finally come to the Middle East. I don't bet on that happening in my lifetime.
Anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism. To hate national rights for the Jews, is to hate Jews, period. To pretend otherwise is just sophistry and that is an insult to the intelligence.
I can see why Weiss is defender of Arab fascism - societies in which Jew hatred is mainstream, in which there no democratic elections and freedom of the press, let alone equality for minorities and women. The piece is just throughly dishonest and I might add the Arabs have contributed nothing of note to civilization, unless its rampant Judeophobia, flying planes into buildings and of course the oil. And let's recall here for the umpteenth time that Israel publishes more books in a year than are published in the entire Arab World in a decade. Facts are stubborn things and all this needs to be placed on the record to have a throughly honest discussion about the Middle East.
Its hilarious how the Left evades Goldstone's apartheid record. They're in the position of a defending a man who served a vile regime because it furthered his career. Of course, the fact he bashed Israel in his report, has allowed them to forgive him his past.
How people like him - and those who defend him today can sit in judgment of Israel just leaves one shaking one's head.
Israel had good reason to refuse to cooperate with him and his panel and that reason has now been more than justified.
I am outraged and deeply offended by this perversion of Jewish history to justify an inappropriate comparison of Israel as a Nazi-like state. It is just in bad taste. Israel's acts of self defense against Arab fascist terrorism and mass murder of Jews do not even come close to what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. Its says a lot about the character of the editors who run this website that they allowed this drivel of Holocaust Denial to be posted - and another form of Holocaust Denial is denying the uniqueness of Jewish suffering and torment during the Second World War.
You do know they've been convicted of terrorism and murder. Out of 3 million Arabs, doesn't sound like Israel - is even by your figures - keeping an entire nation in prison.
Interesting. In most countries, the regime's critics just disappear. In Israel, the worst they face is an ordeal at a police station and they're released alive and unharmed to tell the tale.
"Ethnic cleansing" of Jerusalem never bothered the world and the Left when the Jordanians drove every last Jew out of Jerusalem, demolished every synagogue in it, forbade Jews from acquiring property in the city, desecrated Jewish graves and the Kotel and forbade Jews from visiting their holy site. The world was not concerned then about such "racist" practices. It is only roused to fury by Israeli efforts to redress the racist and illegal Jordanian policies of oppression, exclusion, discrimination and desecration of Jerusalem.
Blind support for Israel? LMAO! Its nothing like quite the blind support for Arab dictators and Islamic fascists.
The Left's idea of freedom of speech is to disinvite speakers whose views its disapproves of and if it can't them disinvited, to shout them down, harass them and keep them forcibly from getting their viewpoint across. This is is Leftist tolerance in its true form.
The Red-Green alliance goosesteps in solidarity with the Hamas fascists!
Let's hear it for 7th century medieval Islamic rule in Gaza! And "Free Gaza" is replete with ironic overtones.
The Goldstone Report is a pack of lies written to absolve the aggressor and to punish the victim. It will never lead to to justice, to peace and to co-existence in the Middle East.
The Jews are so wicked that the Zionist lobby should have complete control over the minds of Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. How did they escape the Elders' control?
Another one of life's mysteries...
The Hebrew Palestinian daily has like a 5% market share in Israel and people buy it less for its Far Leftist, Post-Zionist drivel than they do for "Makor Rishon," which by universal consent, is the best business section in Israel, let alone the entire Middle East.
Protecting a country's existence by your lights is extremist activity. The Shin Bet hasn't done to the Arabs what Russia's FSB did to the Chechens.
The Shin Bet is working hard to disrupt extremist activity in Israel. But Israel has yet to ban radical Islamist associations seeking the overthrow of the state.
This "giant elephant" the Left is defending are Islamist fascists who put women in burqas and have brought back crucifixion as a form of capital punishment.
Three cheers for the Left on Gaza. There are truth and consequences for their vocal support for Hamas.
Israel has the right to keep Islamist fascists out of the country. Entry into Israel is NOT an entitlement. I'm glad to see Prado exposed his true Jew-hating colors after being expelled back to Spain. 1492 has finally been avenged!
With Israel seeking to end the occupation, what is the point of BDS? If the Palestinians want a two state solution, they can have it today.
All they need to do is accept the right of the Jews to their own homeland and that a Jewish State is as legitimate as an Arab one.
The Shin Bet probably found terrorist connections so he was taken into custody on national security grounds. He won't be tortured or killed like happens to dissidents in Arab countries, Iran and Pakistan. Israel is by Middle Eastern standards, a humane society.
What sleazy is leftists on here defending a guy in the service of apartheid. And they have the chutzpah to accuse Israel of being an apartheid state!
Ihsan, we'll do that for you AFTER you Muslims open Mecca to the rest of the world.
Goldstein does remind me of the late Farah Fawcett. A dead ringer!
Chaos isn't familiar with Israel as the Start Up Nation. He sees only one side of Israeli strength. Israel publishes more books in a year than the Arab World does in a decade and it has a great lead in science, technology and culture. The rest of the Middle East lags far behind in ignorance and medieval obscurantism.
Zionism is Jewish nationalism. Its the first and yet imperfect attempt by the Jews to govern themselves in more than two millennia. For all their problems, they have succeeded. All their enemies have is impotent rage mixed with envy at the success of the Zionist experiment in Eretz Israel.
America has every right to assert its sovereignty and to control its borders. But for the Left, foreigners taking up residence in this country now amounts to entitlement rather than a privilege. Yes, I can see why it is outraged at Arizona's very modest law, which by the way, I absolutely do support. Its time America closed its borders to the foreign invasion that's changing America's culture and which is stealing jobs from hard-working Americans.
The bill under consideration has three objectives: 1) to require Israeli NGOs to disclose their funding, 2) to ensure they obey the laws of the country and 3) to prohibit them from undertaking any activity that could harm or discredit Israel or jeopardize its national security. In a democratic society, there are limits to freedom of association and freedom of speech. Israel's Far Leftists - who incidentally dominate these NGOs, must play by the same rules as all the other citizens of the state.
The raw sewage dumped off Gaza for one thing. One would like to see Western peace groups bash Israel less and try to get the Arabs to move from hatred of Israel to improving their own lives.
Incidentally, Israel treated the daughter of the Hamas Interior Minister in an Ashkelon hospital before allowing her to be transported to Jordan for treatment. One had pressed to think of a case in history where such mercy has been shown to an enemy.
Rachel is correct: Israel is a leader in Green technologies long before they became fashionable in the West: to name but a few: drip water irrigation, desalination and solar energy. All of which has improved the quality of life for millions of people around the world. And the care for G-d's things is found in the Torah and in Jewish tradition. I just thought I'd correct the record on here.
Like the Gaza Arabs who trashed the greenhouses left for them and proceeded to pollute their own coast and went into the business of building bombs and rockets. For some reason, the Left isn't exercised about Palestinian Arab lack of ecological awareness and a preference for things militarism over things Green.
If the Jews of British Mandate Palestine had been offered a state with temporary borders on just 60% of the territory, they would have accepted it. There is an irony in the Palestinians rejecting a state because the borders are not to their liking. The Jews in 1947 were in an even more disadvantageous position under the UN Partition Resolution which cut their infant state into three parts but they accepted it because that was the best deal they could get then. They were always willing to compromise on the theory that half a loaf was better than no loaf at all. In contrast, Palestinian Arab intransigence has always been their own worst enemy. That is why they have no state today and are unlikely to have one in the foreseeable future.
Oddly enough, the only country in the world that offered to terminate the Occupation immediately.... was Israel. Who turned that offer down? The Palestinians!
Jerry Haber isn't a Zionist. He is a post-Zionist, another shade of anti-Zionist who rejects self-determination for the Jewish people. The effort to transform Israel into a "state of all its citizens" is in fact a repudiation of the ideal of Jewish self-rule. Such post-Zionists are in favor of every nationalism in the world save the Jewish one.