Having blogged before concerning The Myth of the Palestinian People, Dennis Prager flays some other misconseptions concerning Palestinians in light of the recent push for full membership at the U.N. One of the more mind-blowingly stupid tactics proposed by the enemies of Israel is to compare Israel to South Africa during the latter's time of apartheid...
"First, what is an apartheid state? And does Israel fit that definition?
From 1948 to 1994, South Africa, the country that came up with this term, had an official policy that declared blacks second-class citizens in every aspect of that nation's life. Among many other prohibitions on the country's blacks, they could not vote; could not hold political office; were forced to reside in certain locations; could not marry whites; and couldn't even use the same public restrooms as whites.
Not one of those restrictions applies to Arabs living in Israel.
One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of that country's population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property and businesses and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here's one telling example: it was an Arab judge on Israel's Supreme Court who sentenced the former president of Israel – a Jew – to jail on a rape charge.
Some other examples of Arabs in Israeli life: Reda Mansour was the youngest ambassador in Israel's history, and is now consul general at Israel's Atlanta consulate; Walid Badir is an international soccer star on Israel's national team and captain of one of Tel Aviv's major teams; Rana Raslan is a former Miss Israel; Ishmael Khaldi was until recently the deputy consul of Israel in San Francisco; Khaled Abu Toameh is a major journalist with the Jerusalem Post; Ghaleb Majadele was until recently a minister in the Israeli Government. They are all Israeli Arabs. Not one is a Jew.
Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world. No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel enjoy."
From 1948 to 1994, South Africa, the country that came up with this term, had an official policy that declared blacks second-class citizens in every aspect of that nation's life. Among many other prohibitions on the country's blacks, they could not vote; could not hold political office; were forced to reside in certain locations; could not marry whites; and couldn't even use the same public restrooms as whites.
Not one of those restrictions applies to Arabs living in Israel.
One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of that country's population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property and businesses and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here's one telling example: it was an Arab judge on Israel's Supreme Court who sentenced the former president of Israel – a Jew – to jail on a rape charge.
Some other examples of Arabs in Israeli life: Reda Mansour was the youngest ambassador in Israel's history, and is now consul general at Israel's Atlanta consulate; Walid Badir is an international soccer star on Israel's national team and captain of one of Tel Aviv's major teams; Rana Raslan is a former Miss Israel; Ishmael Khaldi was until recently the deputy consul of Israel in San Francisco; Khaled Abu Toameh is a major journalist with the Jerusalem Post; Ghaleb Majadele was until recently a minister in the Israeli Government. They are all Israeli Arabs. Not one is a Jew.
Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world. No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel enjoy."
Gee, I wonder why we never hear this espoused by the liberal lions of the mainstream media. Must not fit the template of the month. Such organizations that buy into the Israel/apartheid canard truly give credence to what Joseph Goebbels said about repeating a Big Lie often enough.
Special thanks to Israel News for providing such a great picture of Palestinian soldiers showing their true colors.
6 comments:
Don't confuse Israeli Arab citizens with the Pseudostinians in the unannexed territories...
from Wikipedia
Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and deemed to be occupied territory under international law, have never been offered Israeli citizenship (except the Arabs of East Jerusalem). In the West Bank, Palestinians are under the civil control of the Palestinian Authority, but in some areas, they are under Israeli security control. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are under the full civil and security control of Hamas, which governs the area as an autonomous entity, although Israel controls its airspace and waters. In East Jerusalem, which Israel officially annexed, Palestinian residents have permanent residency rights in the city. They carry Palestinian identity cards issued by the Palestinian Authority and elect members of the Palestinian Authority. They are entitled to social and health benefits, and are eligible for Israeli citizenship. Those that become Israeli citizens can vote in municipal elections.
In the occupied territories, Palestinians and Israeli settlers are subject to different criminal laws leading to prolonged detention and harsher punishments for Palestinians than for Israelis for the same offenses. Amnesty International has reported that in the West Bank, Israeli settlers and soldiers who engage in abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, enjoy "impunity" from punishment and are rarely prosecuted. However Palestinians detained by Israeli security forces may be imprisoned for prolonged periods of time, and reports of their torture and other ill-treatment are not credibly investigated.
...the problem isn't that the Israeli's don't recognize the rights of Pseudostinians in the occupied territories... it's that the Egytrians and Jordanians/Syrians/Lebanese, et al, don't recognize the Pseudostinians as their own citizens... which they undoubtedly are.
The Palestinians are convinced that the Netanyahu government in Israel is pursuing a strategy of delaying negotiations while creating facts on the ground that will make a Palestinian state impossible. A visitor to the increasingly encircled and truncated Palestinian territories can see these facts on the ground with his own eyes if he is willing to look.
This Christian version of Zionism matters deeply, not just because theology intrinsically matters, but because it is overwhelmingly clear that American evangelical-fundamentalist Christian Zionism affects US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians in distressing ways. It is one reason why the United States stands almost alone in the world community in supporting Israeli policies which our international friends generally find intolerable if not immoral and illegal.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin.
[W]e have seen enough to claim that the occupation practices of the modern state of Israel are a direct violation of the most basic biblical moral principles. It is immoral to steal anything, including people’s land, homes, and vineyards. It is immoral to dehumanize people, as occurs daily at Israeli checkpoints. It is immoral to choke people’s freedom and deprive them of their dignity. And it is foolish, a violation of every lesson of history, to think that through sheer intimidation and superior military power a people can be subjugated indefinitely without rising up in resistance or attracting more powerful allies who will do so on their behalf. God gave humanity a recognition of justice and a nearly endless capacity to resist injustice. It is wired into our nature, and the Palestinian people and the neighboring countries have it just like everyone else does.
Evangelical Christians David Gushee of Mercer University and Glen Stassen of Fuller Evangelical Seminary
Let’s consider the main claim that Perry makes. He says he has a “clear directive” as a Christian to support Israel. That suggests that he believes there is some obvious and authoritative command from God to do this, and presumably this means that somewhere in Scripture this directive can be found. Tendentious readings of Old Testament passages aside, there is no such “clear” directive, and there is no way that there could be. The most troubling thing about Perry’s answer is not that it validates jihadist propaganda. That propaganda would likely frame the actions of largely post-Christian Western governments in terms of crusades in any case, and in the end it is the willingness of those governments to invade and bomb Muslim countries that is a far more important factor in stoking hostility abroad.
What is obnoxious is that Perry takes it as a tenet of his faith that he ought to endorse a particularly close relationship with another state. The “clear directive” doesn’t leave room for considerations of national interest or changed circumstances. That suggests that he would support that relationship in its current form no matter how costly it might become to the U.S., and it would mean that there is virtually nothing that an Israeli government could do that would make him change his position. Link
Tendentious readings of Old Testament passages aside, there is no such “clear” directive, and there is no way that there could be
I believe what Perry is talking about in regards to Israel is this.
"May those who curse you be cursedand those who bless you be blessed" Link to full chapter
Yeah; I think that counts as a "tendentious readings of Old Testament passages".
One of Obama's first acts in office, my friend Eli "Beast of All Daily Beasts" reveals, was to secretly give Israel bunker-buster bombs that it had long sought. That's a fact that should change people's analysis of Obama's tenure. It's also one that makes Obama look straight-up reckless -- the bombs, as Eli writes, could easily be interpreted as a U.S. green light on an Israeli attack on Iran. What would happen when, after such a hypothetical attack, the Iranians noticed the bomb fragments and traced the weaponry back to the United States?
And all this was happening, in secret, while Obama issued (unrequited) treaties to the Iranian regime for negotiations. No one can ever credibly claim Obama took a military option off the table. He did way more than keep it on the table, he shipped it to Tel Aviv.
Back to Netanyahu. So here comes this shipment of bunker-busters, from the patron to the client. Netanyahu opens the package. And then a card comes in the mail. Hey, it reads, now we need you to stop settlement construction. That's what Abbas needs to come back to the table. And Netanyahu says: Nah, fuck Obama. Not only does Netanyahu refuse, but he cynically repurposes Obama's "negotiations without preconditions" line to mean that he's ready to talk only under conditions that Abbas cannot take back to the Palestinians and look like a credible peacemaker. It's a lot like saying that you're perfectly welcome to come over for dinner, as long as you don't mind watching me fuck your wife. More.
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