Israel - Palestine Discussion | Post Respectfully | Discuss more, tweet less

adexkola said:
I disagree. There is no balance in apartheid, the onus and attention falls on the side performing apartheid.

You sound like Reagan telling the ANC to "renounce violence".
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So the strong side that has all the power, guns, and resources, is the one you expect to capitulate to the weaker side ? I can't think of many (if any) situations where this has happened. Whether we like it or not, Hamas and the positions it takes is also a major player in all of this, and it will ultimately take both sides reaching a political settlement, which involves lowering the temperature of the rhetoric.
 
2cents said:
Arab Muslim citizens of Israel have the same rights as Arab Christian and Druze citizens.
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Arab Muslims have certain rights better than Palestinian Muslims but even they suffer from socio - economic issues. In fact, it’s widely accepted that if Palestinians are considered third class citizens, Arab Muslims are considered second class citizens.

Israel has one of the most unequal societies in the developed world, partly due to the plight of its Arab populace. On paper, the community enjoys equal rights with the Jewish majority, but nearly 40% lives in poverty rooted in a weaker educational system and poorer access to basic infrastructure. A proliferation of illegal guns and tribal violence has resulted in a 50% jump in the murder rate over the past four years, yet Arab neighborhoods suffer from a lack of policing
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Tamar Nafar is a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. He told ABC News that, in his experience, having Israeli citizenship did not mean equal access to rights in Israel.

"When it comes to poverty, housing, getting permits to build houses, to equal rights when it comes to school education -- everything. We are being treated as worse than second-class citizens," he said.
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https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/druze-have-face-israel-some-are-far-more-equal-others

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel - those belonging to the small Druze religious sect - staged a protest in Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv. They were joined by large numbers of Israeli Jews, including former senior security officers and the two largest centre-left parties in the parliamentary opposition, Zionist Union and Yesh Atid.

All expressed outrage at the country’s new nation-state Basic Law, which gives constitutional backing to the principle that all Jews in the world enjoy a privileged status in Israel denied to the country’s native, non-Jewish population. The Basic Law also strips Arabic - the mother tongue of a fifth of Israel’s population - of its former status as an official language.
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As the article states, it’s a fanciful notion that one would consider all non-Palestinian groups to be on equal footing as Israeli Jews.
 
The Corinthian said:
Arab Muslims have certain rights better than Palestinian Muslims but even they suffer from socio - economic issues. In fact, it’s widely accepted that if Palestinians are considered third class citizens, Arab Muslims are considered second class citizens.





https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/druze-have-face-israel-some-are-far-more-equal-others



As the article states, it’s a fanciful notion that one would consider all non-Palestinian groups to be on equal footing as Israeli Jews.
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I don’t think you’ve followed the conversation - it concerns the distinction drawn by @Carolina Red between Muslim Arab citizens of Israel on the one hand, and Christian and Druze Arab citizens of Israel on the other, in terms of general Israeli Arab representation in the Knesset. I haven’t been discussing how their rights square up against Israeli Jews or non-Israeli Palestinians at all.
 
The Corinthian said:
There’s also this:

Two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa accuse Jewish state of 'apartheid'

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/isra...south-africa-accuse-jewish-state-of-apartheid

I mean, when literal ambassadors of your country are calling it apartheid it probably is.
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Seriously.

I just hope that more and more important and influential people choose to be on the just side of basic human rights. It’s 100%, without any shadow of a doubt an apartheid state.

Raoul said:
So the strong side that has all the power, guns, and resources, is the one you expect to capitulate to the weaker side ? I can't think of many (if any) situations where this has happened. Whether we like it or not, Hamas and the positions it takes is also a major player in all of this, and it will ultimately take both sides reaching a political settlement, which involves lowering the temperature of the rhetoric.
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Northern Ireland has come on leaps and bounds since Irish nationalists were fairly represented politically. That will never happen with Israel so where is the next step realistically coming from?
 
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2cents said:
Legally speaking, how is the relationship different?
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Likud pushed for Arab Christians to be reclassified in Israeli society in 2014 to, according to Yariv Levin, "grant separate representation and separate treatment to the Christian community, which will be distinguished from the Muslim Arabs."

The Druze were always seen as the "loyal" Arab community by the Israeli government, leading to their use in the IDF and the Israeli government always alluding to them as some kind of model for other Arab minorities. Granted, the Druze have had a bit of a falling out with the Israeli government since the 2018 Nation-State law came out. The fact that they pushed back against it, demanding to be included in the Nation-State law, shows that they themselves have viewed their relationship with the Israeli government as different.
Raoul said:
When examining Jewish vs non-Jewish participation in Israeli elections, all ethnic Arabs as well as other minorities count (I thought this would be obvious).
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Cool. Count them. They're still an under represented group, and Israel is still pursuing the exact same apartheid practices.
2cents said:
Arab Muslim citizens of Israel have the same rights as Arab Christian and Druze citizens.
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And the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments gave black Americans the same de jure rights as white Americans. But de facto, that didn't happen.
 
Carolina Red said:
Likud pushed for Arab Christians to be reclassified in Israeli society in 2014 to, according to Yariv Levin, "grant separate representation and separate treatment to the Christian community, which will be distinguished from the Muslim Arabs."
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Did it happen? And how has it impacted upon representation in the Knesset?

The Druze were always seen as the "loyal" Arab community by the Israeli government, leading to their use in the IDF and the Israeli government always alluding to them as some kind of model for other Arab minorities. Granted, the Druze have had a bit of a falling out with the Israeli government since the 2018 Nation-State law came out. The fact that they pushed back against the law, demanding to be included in the Nation-State law, shows that they themselves have viewed their relationship with the Israeli government as different.
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The Druze have chosen to cultivate a close relationship with the state. It was their leaders who (alongside the non-Arab Sunni Muslim Circassians) requested to be conscripted to the IDF in the 50s. Legally speaking, there is nothing to prevent Arab Christians and Muslims from doing the same, but they choose not to (although some enlist voluntarily).

If your distinction is based on general sentiment toward the state rather than the law, I would argue that the Christians are closer to the Muslims then they are to the Druze, although this may change in the future. And of course, the same approach may be applied to the various elements which comprise Israeli Jews, some of which have a very ambivalent relationship with the state.
 
Raoul said:
So the strong side that has all the power, guns, and resources, is the one you expect to capitulate to the weaker side ? I can't think of many (if any) situations where this has happened. Whether we like it or not, Hamas and the positions it takes is also a major player in all of this, and it will ultimately take both sides reaching a political settlement, which involves lowering the temperature of the rhetoric.
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I expect the side committing apartheid to stop commiting apartheid. If you consider that capitulation, then sure. They won't, possibly, because they are amoral, and have the US in their back pocket. And for those reasons I doubt a more moderate version of Hamas would change much on the ground.
 
adexkola said:
I expect the side committing apartheid to stop commiting apartheid. If you consider that capitulation, then sure. They won't, possibly, because they are amoral, and have the US in their back pocket. And for those reasons I doubt a more moderate version of Hamas would change much on the ground.
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Maybe that's where you're misinterpreting the situation, which means you're likely to continue to be disappointed in what happens. It will take both sides to come together to reach a political settlement. Hamas are the weaker side and are going to have to give up the militancy approach for diplomacy and negotiations, ala the PLO in the 90s. Otherwise, we will continue to see the same thing play out ad nauseum. An incident happens, which results in rockets fired into Israel, followed by the Israelis retaliating with overwhelming force.
 
Raoul said:
Maybe that's where you're misinterpreting the situation, which means you're likely to continue to be disappointed in what happens. It will take both sides to come together to reach a political settlement. Hamas are the weaker side and are going to have to give up the militancy approach for diplomacy and negotiations, ala the PLO in the 90s. Otherwise, we will continue to see the same thing play out ad nauseum. An incident happens, which results in rockets fired into Israel, followed by the Israelis retaliating with overwhelming force.
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How can an honest dialogue happen if the side committing apartheid won't even recognize it's doing it?
 
maniak said:
How can an honest dialogue happen if the side committing apartheid won't even recognize it's doing it?
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It can't as long as both sides use pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric to describe the actions of the other. Lowering the temperature is step one of creating the conditions that ultimately result in negotiations. I think it will eventually happen if the right players are involved.
 
2cents said:
Did it happen? And how has it impacted upon representation in the Knesset?
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As far as I know, yes, it was passed, but many Arab Christians opposed it. Even still, Arab Christians in Israel are generally highly educated and well paid compared not just to Israeli minorities, but also to the Israeli Jews themselves. As far as political representation, they make up about 1.5% of the population and about 1.5% of the Knesset.
2cents said:
The Druze have chosen to cultivate a close relationship with the state. It was their leaders who (alongside the non-Arab Sunni Muslim Circassians) requested to be conscripted to the IDF in the 50s. Legally speaking, there is nothing to prevent Arab Christians and Muslims from doing the same, but they choose not to (although some enlist voluntarily).

If your distinction is based on general sentiment toward the state rather than the law, I would argue that the Christians are closer to the Muslims then they are to the Druze, although this may change in the future. And of course, the same approach may be applied to the various elements which comprise Israeli Jews, some of which have a very ambivalent relationship with the state.
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I know the Druze chose it, I simply pointed out that it exists and that it's been different compared to Arab Muslims.
 
Raoul said:
It can't as long as both sides use pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric to describe the actions of the other. Lowering the temperature is step one of creating the conditions that ultimately result in negotiations. I think it will eventually happen if the right players are involved.
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The right players :lol: 74 years now... I'm sure there'll be a few regen players coming through.
 
Raoul said:
It can't as long as both sides use pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric to describe the actions of the other. Lowering the temperature is step one of creating the conditions that ultimately result in negotiations. I think it will eventually happen if the right players are involved.
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But this isn't Hamas calling it apartheid, it's an international organization which is in general a trusted one. When you add the multiple personalities across the world, and even ex-Israeli officials, calling apartheid too, you can't label this as "the other side inflaming the rhetoric".
 
maniak said:
But this isn't Hamas calling it apartheid, it's an international organization which is in general a trusted one. When you add the multiple personalities across the world, and even ex-Israeli officials, calling apartheid too, you can't label this as "the other side inflaming the rhetoric".
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4 of them at this point. Amnesty, the UN, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem.
 
maniak said:
But this isn't Hamas calling it apartheid, it's an international organization which is in general a trusted one. When you add the multiple personalities across the world, and even ex-Israeli officials, calling apartheid too, you can't label this as "the other side inflaming the rhetoric".
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Either way, these sorts of things aren't really amenable towards negotiations and an eventual diplomatic solution to all of this. The Apartheid thing is just a linguistic device to gain moral leverage among people who have zero say in the outcome of what Israel or Hamas do.
 
Raoul said:
Either way, these sorts of things aren't really amenable towards negotiations and an eventual diplomatic solution to all of this. The Apartheid thing is just a linguistic device to gain moral leverage among people who have zero say in the outcome of what Israel or Hamas do.
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Oh c'mon a linguistic device? It's a translation of what's happening to defenseless people every day, to discard it like that seems really cruel.
 
So it's not the state committing apartheid or it's allies which fail to question said actions that need to change, it's the moaning and reaction from those oppressed? Cool

Presumably they're also to blame if this continues because if they were just more compliant Israel would be so nice.
 
maniak said:
Oh c'mon a linguistic device? It's a translation of what's happening to defenseless people every day, to discard it like that seems really cruel.
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Its still just that, and people who really interested in resolving the situation don't engage in this sort of thing. Same applies to extremist Israelis who speak in similar terms about things Hamas has done.
 
Carolina Red said:
As far as I know, yes, it was passed, but many Arab Christians opposed it. Even still, Arab Christians in Israel are generally highly educated and well paid compared not just to Israeli minorities, but also to the Israeli Jews themselves. As far as political representation, they make up about 1.5% of the population and about 1.5% of the Knesset.
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I know the Druze chose it, I simply pointed out that it exists and that it's been different compared to Arab Muslims.
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But again, how does this justify distinguishing them from the Arab Muslims and dismissing their relevance in a discussion concerning Israeli Arab political representation? Such differences among groups are found in pretty much every society with ethnic, religious, and other social cleavages. They may be a consequence of any number of factors, but in legal terms in Israel, while there is obvious merit in accounting for the distinction between Jews and non-Jews, I’m just not seeing any reason for such a distinction among the Arabs.
 
2cents said:
But again, how does this justify distinguishing them from the Arab Muslims and dismissing their relevance in a discussion concerning Israeli Arab political representation? Such differences among groups are found in pretty much every society with ethnic, religious, and other social cleavages. They may be a consequence of any number of factors, but in legal terms in Israel, while there is obvious merit in accounting for the distinction between Jews and non-Jews, I’m just not seeing any reason for such a distinction among the Arabs.
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I already said include them in the discussion if you want. At this point, it doesn't really matter, as @Raoul is saying calling apartheid apartheid is just "a linguistic device", so we're well beyond the point I was making.
 
Raoul said:
Its still just that, and people who really interested in resolving the situation don't engage in this sort of thing. Same applies to extremist Israelis who speak in similar terms about things Hamas has done.
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By your logic, all the entities @Carolina Red mentioned a few posts above are not interested in resolving this conflict?
 
2cents said:
I don’t think you’ve followed the conversation - it concerns the distinction drawn by @Carolina Red between Muslim Arab citizens of Israel on the one hand, and Christian and Druze Arab citizens of Israel on the other, in terms of general Israeli Arab representation in the Knesset. I haven’t been discussing how their rights square up against Israeli Jews or non-Israeli Palestinians at all.
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My point being that representation in the Knesset is one thing but life for the layman there is very different and dependent on what religion you are and what citizenship you hold. Which goes all the way back to what started this discussion which is a form of apartheid does exist.
 
The Corinthian said:
My point being that representation in the Knesset is one thing but life for the layman there is very different and dependent on what religion you are and what citizenship you hold. Which goes all the way back to what started this discussion which is a form of apartheid does exist.
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A 'form of apartheid' exists in every society - but your obsessive and excessive focus on Israel is what's really telling.

 
Fearless said:
A 'form of apartheid' exists in every society - but your obsessive and excessive focus on Israel is what's really telling.

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As Yossi Sarid, a former Israeli cabinet minister, ex-leader of the opposition, and member of the Knesset for 32 years, put it in 2008: “What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck – it is apartheid.”

Leading Israeli politicians have warned for years that their country was sliding into apartheid. They include two former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who can hardly be dismissed as antisemites or hating Israel.

“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic,” Barak said in 2010. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”

Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, was even clearer.

“We established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day,” he said in 2002.

Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, has said his country has “apartheid characteristics”. Shulamit Aloni, the second woman to serve as an Israeli cabinet minister after Golda Meir, and Alon Liel, Israel’s former ambassador to South Africa, both told me that their country practices a form of apartheid.
 
Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, published a groundbreaking report last year that described “a regime of Jewish supremacy” over Palestinians that amounted to apartheid.

Another Israeli group, Yesh Din, gave a legal opinion that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank”.
The reckoning is not confined to the political class. “The cancer today is apartheid in the West Bank,” AB Yehoshua, one of Israel’s greatest living writers, said in 2020. “This apartheid is digging more and more deeply into Israeli society and impacting Israel’s humanity.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/comment...ty-israel-apartheid-israeli-politicians-agree
 
The Corinthian said:
Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, published a groundbreaking report last year that described “a regime of Jewish supremacy” over Palestinians that amounted to apartheid.

Another Israeli group, Yesh Din, gave a legal opinion that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank”.
The reckoning is not confined to the political class. “The cancer today is apartheid in the West Bank,” AB Yehoshua, one of Israel’s greatest living writers, said in 2020. “This apartheid is digging more and more deeply into Israeli society and impacting Israel’s humanity.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/comment...ty-israel-apartheid-israeli-politicians-agree
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Funny how you present various Jewish Israeli's with a clear political bent yet I provide actual Muslim Israeli's with the opposite and lived point of view.

First Muslim Maj.-Gen. in Israel Police at UN: State offers equality......

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-...ael-Police-at-UN-State-offers-equality-610636
 
Fearless said:
Funny how you present various Jewish Israeli's with a clear political bent yet I provide actual Muslim Israeli's with the opposite and lived point of view.

First Muslim Maj.-Gen. in Israel Police at UN: State offers equality......

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-...ael-Police-at-UN-State-offers-equality-610636
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Well I’ve provided - 3 human rights organisations, 2 former Israeli diplomats, and various Israeli cabinet members and politicians all of whom say it’s apartheid. Are they all wrong?
 
The Corinthian said:
My point being that representation in the Knesset is one thing but life for the layman there is very different and dependent on what religion you are and what citizenship you hold. Which goes all the way back to what started this discussion which is a form of apartheid does exist.
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Yeah I was just talking about representation in the Knesset.
 
Fearless said:
Which one of these is


Which of these is actually, provably true true?



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Hmmm what to believe, 3 published reports, Israeli diplomats etc etc from reputable organisations or some random MS paint graphic that you’ve scrabbled around online for.
 
Fearless said:
Which one of these is


Which of these is actually, provably true true?



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Anyone can live anywhere they want - yep, as long as you're a Jew. Then you can kick people out of their homes and claim it as your own.
 
It's one of the most horrific things of our time, the genocide being committed by the Israeli forces. The videos from there, people seem so indoctrinated. There seems to be a genuine belief that Palestinians are the scum of the earth. It's really harrowing. It shows how much the media can manipulate people and cultures over time.
 
Reapersoul20 said:
It's one of the most horrific things of our time, the genocide being committed by the Israeli forces. The videos from there, people seem so indoctrinated. There seems to be a genuine belief that Palestinians are the scum of the earth. It's really harrowing. It shows how much the media can manipulate people and cultures over time.
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That’s it and to be a passionate nationalist is to be celebrated on one side but a crime and supposedly the main source of all the problems coming from the other side.
 
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