Israel: Democracy in action.

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by Jaggy Bunnet
Do they retain the right to vote in elections in the country from which they fled as refugees?

The difference, of course, is the Palestine National Authority is supposed to represent their interests and look after their welfare.

 

[Tmy]

Inst Israel an aparthied type of democracy?? The place is a "jewish state" which implies there will be at least 2 tier citizen system. One for the jews and one for everyone else. Woudl the local muslims ever be equal even if there were no bombing n stryfe?

 

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Tmy Inst Israel an aparthied type of democracy?? The place is a "jewish state" which implies there will be at least 2 tier citizen system.

Have you seen that officially written anywhere?

 

[DanishDynamite]

Cleo, everyone knows that Israel is a functioning democracy. What does this have to do with the Israel-Palestine problem?

 

[Tmy]

Have you seen that officially written anywhere?

Does the Star of David national flag count as a writing?

 

[Cleopatra]

Does the Star of David national flag count as a writing?

The Greek flag has a christian cross on it as well and although the majority of the population is christian , muslim and jewish citizens have the same political rights.

originally posted by Danish Dynamite
Cleo, everyone knows that Israel is a functioning democracy. What does this have to do with the Israel-Palestine problem?

I'd say that it's essential considering the situation that the occupation has created. Also, I happen to have some very strong feelings against this wall although it's efficiency has proved me wrong. When it comes to the lives of people, preaching about the morality of this construction puts you in an awkward position.

 

[DanishDynamite]

I'd say that it's essential considering the situation that the occupation has created. Also, I happen to have some very strong feelings against this wall although it's efficiency has proved me wrong. When it comes to the lives of people, preaching about the morality of this construction puts you in an awkward position.

Of course the wall will have an effect on the terrorists ease of movement. My question was more in regard to what does the underscoring of Israel's democratic nature, due to this ruling, reveal? What does it reveal which wasn't known 20 years ago?

 

[zenith-nadir]

One of these days, ZN, you'll have an original thought in your head, or express ideas that you have come to formulate from reading various sources of information. Until then, lists that are just copied from biased sites are your stock in trade. Make sure you cross that one about Mossad not helping Hamas off the list for a start.

What Mycroft said... and here's some more a_u_p. Why is a Palestinian born in Lebanon three generations removed from 1948 not eligible for Lebanese citizenship? Why is a Palestinian born in Syria two generations removed from 1967 not eligible for Syrian citizenship? Why after 50 years are their still refugee camps in Arab countries? Why after 38 years are their still refugee camps in Arab countries? Why are their Palestinian refugee camps on Palestinian land under the control of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority?



Regarding the Mossad and Hamas; You said:

It is worth pointing out, yet again, that Mossad was party to the setting up of Hamas. Blowback in a big way.

I replied with;

Propoganda 101, that is almost as true as the moon is made of green cheese. But for the jury please provide the evidence how the Mossad "created" Hamas.

There was a period whereby the Mossad sent money to members of Hamas to destabilize Arafat and the PLO. Just like America helped Saddam at one point in history to defeat the Iranians or Russia helped the Vietcong at one point in history to defeat America. The Mossad did not create OR setup Hamas. The Mossad did not tell the Hamas to send women and children to blow up jews inside Israel. The entire Mossad/Hamas conspiracy theory is just another propoganda story from those "unbiased" websites you get your information from.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Inst Israel an aparthied type of democracy?? The place is a "jewish state" which implies there will be at least 2 tier citizen system. One for the jews and one for everyone else. Woudl the local muslims ever be equal even if there were no bombing n stryfe?

Apartheid is a term that refers to South Africa. Demographically Israel is 80.9% Jewish and 19.1% Arab. Along religious lines Israel is 76.8% Jewish, 15.7% Muslim, 2.1% Christian, 1.6% Druze and 3.7% other.

Here are links to the Israeli Government website which spell out the basic laws.

Basic Law- Human Dignity and Liberty

The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Basic Law- Freedom of Occupation

Fundamental human rights in Israel are founded upon recognition of the value of the human being, the sanctity of human life, and the principle that all persons are free; these rights shall be upheld in the spirit of the principles set forth in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.

 

[a_unique_person]

Translation: You're not wrong, you haven't said anything I can refute, so I'll just bash your presentation and dismiss you that way.

I was going to refute him, then I realised it was a waste of time, space and electrons. I was going to try to explain to him, the same as I have other times he has transcribed the same points, that maybe there is more to them than just an inane smiley as a summation. Then I realised that no matter what anyone says to him, nothing will ever get into that impenetrable mind of his. He is his lists. A computer program could do as good a job, and you could run it with the option -nosmiley.

I am not a scholar on this subject, I have stated many times that I think Arafat does the Palestinians a disservice.

Here is one point for consideration from his post, Israel was also involved in the tragedy in Lebanon. He has his 'facts', but he wants to know no more than them. He feels safe behind his facts. He can smirk because he thinks he is demonstrating his unimpeachable intellectual superiority with them. But he cannot see that there are two sides to this ongoing tragedy.

Scientific facts are objective facts. They all drill down to a consistent base. Historical facts are not the same. They are not derived from a common base, but come at you from many directions. They are tooted in culture and prejudice.

Our scientific base of facts accumulates, and refines, and grows. The start of last century saw man struggling to get off the ground, he can now fly into space, has reached the moon. International travel is commonplace. International politics is still mired in ignorance, double dealing and duplicity. Simple facts, such as 'Did Iraq have WMD', cannot be agreed upon, even when there is ample evidence. One hundred years from now, there will still be debate over the reasons for the Iraq invasion, and if it was a success or not. In one hundred years, science will have progressed to a degree we cannot guess even now. (if the political climate allows it to).

ZN just does not understand, as demon has said, that there are people involved in this tragedy, and these people are experiencing pain on a scale that we do not understand. All these facts do not help these people escape that pain one iota.

 

[demon]

Israel is not a democracy, since it has removed a huge part of the electorate by force and refuses to let it back in. It occupies and colonises without giving the franchise.

From the Arutz Shiva article:
"President Moshe Katzav, during his visit earlier this year in France, condemned "rich" Arab countries for not being "able to build a town or a village for Arab refugees. Where is their sensitivity?" he said."

Nice of President Moshe Katzav to show some concern for the well-being of Palestinian refugees. Pity he is not so concerned about the treatment that resulted in them being refugees in the first place and before we get carried away with talking about history, let us remember that this is an ongoing crime, it is not something that only happened in the past. Israel is trying to add to the numbers of refugees by its vicious cowardly abuse of the Palestinians in the occupied territories...is this guy for real?

From ABC (another "nutball" for ZN)
"Some hardliners have portrayed closing down settlements as a crime, while insisting they are not inciting violence. Uri Elitzur, a settler leader and a bureau chief of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel Radio on Monday that to uproot someone from his soil is "worse than rape.""
(http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040706_71.html)

So, uprooting someone from his soil is "worse than rape"? Is he the only guy who can`t see the 900 lbs gorilla sitting quietly in the corner of the room?
You just couldn`t make this stuff up could you?

 

[a_unique_person]

Regarding the Mossad and Hamas; You said: I replied with;There was a period whereby the Mossad sent money to members of Hamas to destabilize Arafat and the PLO. Just like America helped Saddam at one point in history to defeat the Iranians or Russia helped the Vietcong at one point in history to defeat America. The Mossad did not create OR setup Hamas. The Mossad did not tell the Hamas to send women and children to blow up jews inside Israel. The entire Mossad/Hamas conspiracy theory is just another propoganda story from those "unbiased" websites you get your information from.

I did not claim that Hamas was "created" by Mossad. Apologise for that right now, especially since you have quoted the word. You deal in facts, deal with this one right now.

 

[Skeptic]

[Israel is not a democracy, since it has removed a huge part of the electorate by force and refuses to let it back in.

But the Palestinian-Arabs were never SUPPOSED to be part of the electorate of the jewish state. The UN decision was for two states--jewish and Arab--with the jews citizens of one and the Arabs of another. The Arabs refused and started a genocidal war of annihilation instead. They were expelled as a result of the war. They can hardly now demand the right to return to a jewish state they never belonged to, or even accepted its existence.

The Arab idea of "democracy" (and we all know how the Arabs just love democracy, don't we?) here is literally an oxymoron: the "demand" for full citizenship and rights... in a country you deny has a right to exist in the first place. Why the oxymoronic "demand"? Of course, because the whole talk of "democracy" here is a red herring. The sole purpose of the so-called "right of return" is to overwhelm israel demographically as the penultimate stage before throwing the jews into the sea.

That's all there is to it. All the talk of "human rights"--from the same people who keep the Palestinians in their own countries in camps for 50 years--and "democracy"--from the same people who are ruled almost exclusively by tryants and despots--is merely a rather obvious fig leave to cover the genocidal intentions.

It's not "human rights" and "democracy" that's the real issue. It's "Itabach al-yahood". I'm sure you can translate for the group, demon.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Here is one point for consideration from his post, Israel was also involved in the tragedy in Lebanon.

Israel was not involved in the "tragedy" in Lebanon it was FORCED to defend itself from PLO terrorists operating inside Lebanon. But let's go over some facts, you know the ones you hate so much because they blow huge holes in your arguments.

The PLO was expelled from Jordan by King Hussein in 1970, many of its fighters fled to Lebanon. The PLO seized entire areas of the country, where it brutalized the population and usurped the Lebanese government's authority.

The Lebanese civil war started in April 1975 it ended in 1990. The Lebanese civil war was between Palestinian forces who joined predominantly leftist-Muslim factions and Lebanon's Christian population.

Israel became involved in Lebanon only when the PLO infiltrated Israel from southern Lebanon, killed an American tourist and hijacked a bus killing 34 hostages in March of 1978. Israel retaliated with Operation Litani which overran PLO terrorist bases in the southern part of Lebanon in order to push the PLO terrorists away from the northern Israeli border. In two months Israel was out of Lebanon and UN troops moved in to try to stop PLO attacks on Israel. Well the UN troops failed miserably a_u_p and the PLO continued to attack Israel from Lebanon. Israel only became involved again when in June 1982 Palestinian terrorists led by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israel's Ambassador to Great Britain, Shlomo Argov.

So you see a_u_p, Israel was not involved in the Lebanese civil war. It had nothing to do with the "tragedy" of the Lebanese civil war. The "tragedy" of the Lebanese civil war was because of Palestinian forces who joined predominantly leftist-Muslim factions who attacked Lebanon's Christian population first AND Israel second.

 

[a_unique_person]

Israel was not involved in the "tragedy" in Lebanon it was FORCED to defend itself from PLO terrorists operating inside Lebanon. But let's go over some facts, you know the ones you hate so much because they blow huge holes in your arguments.

I don't hate facts. Like I said, in the realm of science, they all back each other up, they converge to a conclusion, we can all move on. In the realm of computers, science, based on facts, has moved on so rapidly that it is simply amazing.

Politics, based on facts alone, gets us nowhere. The facts do not converge, we do not achieve a known base we can take for granted and move on from, we cannot say that the political realm has made any real advances over the past century, only incremental ones that can fall aside at any point, depending on who holds the whip hand.

Sharon was behind Israel's move into Lebanon, and it's subsequent retreat. The forces involved in the creation of the tragedy of Lebanon where much more powerful than anything the PLO could create. They were based on forces exactly like the one that Sharon is trying to head off at the moment, simple population growth. A muslim minority, that accepted a subservient role, found itself to be the majority over time, and did not want to be subservient any more. A Xian majority did not want to be the minority. Tell me, ZN, where is the centuries old evidence that the Palestinians are nothing more than barbaric savages? Or is this is just a relatively recent phenomenon that has to be explained by reasons other than that they are inately savages?

 

[zenith-nadir]

Sharon was behind Israel's move into Lebanon, and it's subsequent retreat.

Sharon had NOTHING TO DO with Israel going into Lebanon. Arafat's PLO forces began shelling civilians in northern Israel, provocation #1 and in March of 1978 PLO terrorists infiltrated Israel from southern Lebanon and KILLED 34 Israelis, provocation #2. Israel responded to those two serious provocations with Operation Litani. Oh, but I forgot, Sharon is responsible for everything, including PLO terrorism...

The forces involved in the creation of the tragedy of Lebanon where much more powerful than anything the PLO could create.

That single statement shows your naivete regarding the PLO and the Lebanese civil war. I recommend you read this link and then backpedal as fast as you can.

Arafat's Massacre of Damour

In January of 1976, the destruction of Damour, a town of some 25,000 was completed by the PLO within two weeks.

 

[zenith-nadir]

A Palestinian teenager whose father set up a militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda has been shot dead in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon. - February, 2004

At least seven people have been killed in fighting between rival groups in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon. - May, 2003

At least two Palestinians and a Lebanese soldier have been killed during a gunfight in al-Jalil refugee camp in Lebanon. - September, 2002

Palestinian sources at a refugee camp in southern Lebanon say the local headquarters of the Fatah movement has been attacked. They say one Fatah member was killed and at least six wounded in the assault, in which automatic weapons and grenades were used. - August, 2002

The Lebanese army may have positions around the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Helweh in south Lebanon as well as checkpoints at all the entrances of the camp. But Lebanese soldiers will not actually enter the camp to arrest any Palestinian suspect. - July, 2002

Three Lebanese army intelligence officers have been shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the southern port city of Sidon. They were killed during a raid on the home of a member of an obscure Palestinian militant group which is based in the nearby Ain al-Helweh refugee camp. - July, 2002

The Lebanese army has warned that it will respond as it sees fit to any aggression from inside Palestinian refugee camps. The warning came just hours after grenades were thrown at an army post outside the Ain el-Hilweh camp in south Lebanon, in what police said was the third such incident in the past two months. There were no reported injuries. - November, 2001


Starting to get it yet a_u_p ? The same crap that is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is happening between these same islamofascist groups living in Lebanon....an Arab country.

And incase you didn't notice between 2001 and now there was no Sharon in Lebanon, there are no "zionist" settlers in Lebanon, no Israeli occupation in Lebanon, no Likud in Lebanon. And that why Israel is forced to build a frikkin wall to separate themselves from these endless islamofascist madmen who send women and teens to blow themselves up while they use palestinian civilians for human sheilds.

 

[a_unique_person]

Typical, off on another tangent. If you ever need to say 'look, over there', and run off, you raise another topic. Please, start a thread on the topic on the Lebanese civil war and it's relevance to Israel. The war was, like much in the Middle East, a complex clash of religion, cultures and power changes.

I leave a similar post to yours, to whet your appetite.

As for gun-toting, the Cairo agreement was forgotten after Israelis made two highly visible raids into the heart of Beirut. On the first they blew up all of the commercial jetliners on the tarmac at Beirut airport.

On the second raid in April 1973, only three months before our return, Israelis disguised as foreign tourists had rented cars for "hit squads" which then drove by night to the apartments of three PLO officials and assassinated them, along with neighbors who opened their doors to see what was happening. The Israelis had departed by sea, taking with them whatever confidence the Palestinians might have had that Lebanese authorities could or would protect them in Beirut. Uniformed Palestinians now carried their sidearms and Kalashnikovs openly, as did soldiers of the proliferating Christian, or "rightist," and predominantly Muslim, or "leftist," militias.

For me, as US Embassy spokesman, every day brought a new problem. Did the US have any idea who was responsible for mysterious arms caches that turned up along Lebanon's coasts? Did the US have any comment on the latest Israeli jet strikes on Palestinian refugee camps, teeming with children, whose crushed and torn bodies were pictured over and over again in the newspapers? We were even shown booby-trapped toys allegedly found in the camps after raids. Were they actually dropped by the Israeli planes, or were they placed there by local provocateurs? To mutilated children, it would if t make any difference. To journalists, however, it would provide clues as to who was behind the spiraling violence in this country which was still home to 25,000 Americans.

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0689/8906003.html

I can trade facts with you till the cows come home, we won't be one step closer to a resolution and close to the suffering in the middle east. For every fact you can find, I can find a counter fact.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Typical, off on another tangent.....For every fact you can find, I can find a counter fact.

I am not off tangent, you say half-truths and dumb things I respond upon the things you say. By the way your counterfacts suck.

...two highly visible raids into the heart of Beirut.

The first "raid into the heart of Beirut" was in 1968, it was called Operation Gift. It was in r-e-s-p-o-n-s-e to the hijacking of an El Al plane in July 1968 and the shooting of another El Al plane in November 1968 at Athens Airport. Israel blew up 14 Arab planes in Beirut as a message to stop trying to destroy their aircraft.

Five years later.

On the second raid in April 1973, only three months before our return, Israelis disguised as foreign tourists had rented cars for "hit squads" which then drove by night to the apartments of three PLO officials and assassinated them

That second raid was in r-e-s-p-o-n-s-e to a three man hit squad from the Red Army working for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which killed 26 people at Lod airport in May 1972. In September 1972 Fateh, the armed wing of the PLO, utilized the name the Black September Organization and massacred eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. So yes, in 1973 Israel sent the Mossad out into the field to kill any individual identified as involved in the planning or the execution of the assault on the Israeli athletes in Munich. So your sob story about three PLO "officials" getting wacked in the Beirut night is probably true and they probably deserved it.

You wanna stay on topic? Fine. This thread is about a wall Israel has had to build because of terrorists like the ones who killed in 1972. This thread is about a wall Israel has had to build because of terrorists like the ones who killed innocent people in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976...2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. This thread is about even after all that killing Israel still can argue democratically in a court of law about the rights of Palestinians and how a wall to stop the killers will affect Palestinian lives.

 

[a_unique_person]

And if I bothered, I could find facts to counter those facts.