Here you go again, repeating this as an issue. I don't say that Israel provides rights and freedoms to non-Jews in Israel as mere opinion,
its practiced as law in Israel. Perhaps I wasn't clear the first half-dozen times I've stated it. Its NOT an opinion.
So we're at the point that this is an issue of your perception of Israel as not granting equal rights to non-Jews in Israel.
And here again, its your perception including the term Jewish as inflammatory.
Perhaps you explain the reasoning, with actual references bound in history, where the PA/Hamas/Palestinian populace in general will be more accepting of Israel if it were to remove Jewish from "Democratic and Jewish state"?
This of course is beyond repeating the same statement as above with such catchy terms as 'inflammatory' and 'biased'.
How so?
Perhaps you could point to me the countries with a listed
State religion are automatically classified as discriminatory as well, compared to say a Jewish identity, of those who reside in the country without said State religion.
Yes, we do. The big difference is my opinion is based on fact and a long history, whilst your perception of Israel is based on a misconception tied in with the concept of having a Jewish identity attached to a country where it originated from inherently implies discrimination against non-Jews without just cause.
So we are at the point where you can keep repeating the same red herring in relation to it being a hinderance to a two-state solution, or one can address the actual issues at hand.
This is not an issue of "
IF" disrimination exists in Israel against people who are not Jewish.
If you are so confident that discrimination doesn't exist in Israel, than go ask an Israeli Arab or Palestinian if they have been discriminated against, know of cases where people have been discriminated against, or have family or firends who have been discriminated against.
The facts are that there has been a long history of discrimination against people who are not Jewish in Israel, and Netanyahu's demand as a representative of Israel's far right to recognize Israel as a "Jewish First" Nation before he will allow any peace negotiations to commence is a bid to continue that discrimination, and many would argue that Netanyahu's demand is designed specifically to prevent peace negotiations from happening.
The following article details how a number of laws in Israel encourage and perpetuate racism and discrimination:
http://www.cjpme.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DO=795&RecID=149&DocumentID=219&SaveMode=0
Here is a few selections from the article:
Israeli Legal Discrimination against its Palestinian-Arab Citizens
The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found 17 laws of which are discriminatory on their face, in that they either relate only to the rights of Jews in Israel or abridge the rights of Arab citizens of the State and 3 laws which use neutral language and general terminology but have a discriminatory effect on Arab citizens.
Constitutional Equality
There is no provision in Israeli law for the concept of constitutional equality. It is absent from The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, which since 1992 has served as Israel’s constitutional Bill of Rights.
Military Service
The Israeli Government uses military service as a requirement for various public benefits. Given that the vast majority of Palestinian-Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli military, this requirement camouflages as a racist policy. This limits the ability of many Palestinian-Arabs to receive “housing loans preference in public employment, and financial aid for university study.”
Education
The Israeli education system is based on the State Education Law of 1953. This Law established a system of schools designed to meet the explicit demands of the Jewish community. The objectives the Israeli education system as explicitly stated in Article 2 of this Law are to exclusively advance Jewish culture and Zionist ideology.
Discriminatory Curriculum
...As no autonomous educational
system has been established for the Arab community, Palestinian students are subjected to an educational curriculum which has been developed by and for the Jewish population: e.g. Arab students are expected to spend more time studying the Torah than their own religious texts...
Discriminatory Funding for Education
While nearly 1/3 of all Jewish students have received support from governmentfunded enrichment programs for impoverished students, Arab students are not eligible for these programs. In fact, there is no funding for educational enrichment programs for Arab students in Israel. Also, government funded pre-schools do not operate in Arab towns or villages, and more than half of the tens of
thousands of Arab children with special needs are denied access to appropriate classes or schools.
Political Participation
Election to the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) is limited by 2 laws which require political parties to accept the “existence of the State of Israel as a state of the Jewish people.” In practice, these laws dictate that a political party calling for full equality of the Palestinian-Arab community in Israel may be disqualified. In order to become a politician of the Knesset, a Palestinian politician is forced to essentially negate her/his
own identity, history and entitlement to equal rights.
Unrecognized Arab Villages
Approximately 100,000 Palestinians in Israel (10% of the Palestinian population) reside in villages which have been deemed “illegal” by the State and therefore cannot be found on any map, have no local council or government representation, and receive no government services such as: health facilities, running water,
connection to a sewage or electricity network, safe access to major roads, postal services, connection to telephone network, adequate education facilities, environmental upkeep and security. These villages are known as “unrecognized villages” and total 45 in the Naqab/Negev Valley and 9 in the Galilee. Most of
these communities existed prior to the establishment of Israel and their residents continue to struggle to survive as citizens of a state that denies them their most basic rights and needs.
In 1965 the Knesset passed the Planning and Construction Law, a national plan for future development. Dozens of Palestinian villages were denied official recognition by this discriminatory law and therefore excluded from development planning schemes.23 Overnight, all buildings in these “unrecognized” villages became retroactively “illegal” and “unlicensed” and therefore subject at any moment to demolition. At the same time, planning authorities were given the right to plan projects on these lands, establishing exclusively Jewish settlements on the remains of the villages.
Land Confiscation
There exists in Israel a multi-faceted framework of laws and military regulations which have granted the State the legal authority to confiscate Palestinian land and property. In addition to legal manipulation, Arab citizens of Israel are faced with a number of administrative practices to limit their use of the land, including discriminatory national planning and zoning regulations, as well as forced evictions and housing demolitions.
.......................................................
These are just some of the laws set up specifically to encourage the discrimination against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Read the article, and many others for more information and detail. Although, this may not help, as it looks as though your opinion has a lot more sway over your perceptions than the facts do.
I would argue that these racist and discriminatory policies are not conducive for the long term sustainability of the Israeli State in it's current form, and that serious reform that actually works to improve the security and viability of the Israeli State as opposed to the purposefully agititative and inflammatory policies of Netanyahu and Likud.
Israel needs to support leaders who are working to improve and better Israel instead of supporting leaders who just make their situation worse off like Netanyahu has done.
