Part 6: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

Sorry, lost the end of the thread there!

Thread 5

do you mean a state that follows the tenets of judaism (which the idf clearly does not) or do you mean a state that exists for and gives preferential rights to people of jewish ethnicity?

the former i can see no harm in (though personally in magic wand world i'd prefer all states to be secular in nature as they have a better chance of dealing with multi-culturalism) but the latter is an apartheid system imo.

perhaps it would help if you clarified what you mean by 'a jewish state'?

either the land needs dividing fairly (proportionally would seem fair - re: percentage of population = percentage of land) with each state having ports, access to resources, the same ability to travel etc or a one state solution with absolutely equal rights for all and the return of land and property to those who own it.

tbh i can't see israel agreeing to either.

Hmmm, the existence of Israel as a jewish state....

Netanyahu wants to incorporate Israel as a jewish state into law, which basically gives the jewish nature of it priority over democracy. So....if Palestinians were to recognise israel as a jewish state, rather than just a state (which they already have in the Oslo accords) then it would damage The tights of Israeli Arabs.

Mahmoud Abbas said: 'to accept it now as a Jewish state would compromise the claims of millions of Palestinian refugees whose families fled the fighting that followed Israel's creation in 1948 and were not allowed to return."

The Israeli Arab head of one of the parties said: "Netanyahu is completing the series of racist laws that have been emerging in recent years and is leading Israel to become the first racial state of the 21st century. The intent of his legislation is to realize John Kerry's description of Israel as an apartheid state. Passage of this law will revive the international debate over the issue of Zionism as racism. Arab citizens are not passersby in this country and they are not Netanyahu's guests. Our fight for equality and democracy alongside all believers in democracy will continue with or without Netanyahu's deluded and dangerous law."

Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On said: "The State of Israel also has non-Jewish citizens living in it, so it must define itself as the state of the Jewish people and of all its citizens. Whoever supports the two-state solution supports Palestinian sovereignty and asks the Palestinians to recognize Israeli sovereignty but not the character of the state."

So in a nutshell, a declaration of Israel as a jewish state is just another way of oppressing palestinians. Anyone supporting this law is actually denying the rights of a Palestinian state.

So sergeant, do you support the one state solution or two state solution? Or do you support Netanyahu's racist law of Israel as a jewish state?

*rights of israeli arabs! Bloody auto-correct!

Anyone supporting the recognition of Israel as a jewish state by law, is denying the rights of the Palestinians

Yruapita I tend to think the right of return serves is a major barrier to a peace settlement (for a 2 state solution). What do you think?

The "right of return" is very important in Israel. However it is 100% racist.

If you are Jewish you have the right of return even if you, your parents, your grandparents and all your ancestors for a thousand years have never set foot in what is today Israel or the Occupied Territories.

If you are not Jewish, you do not have the right of return, even if you, your parents, your grandparents and all your ancestors for a thousand years were born and lived in what is today Israel and the Occupied Territories.

even, in fact, if your home and land was only stolen last year.

Right. So although there was horror when I suggested some people here wanted the 'annhilation' of Israel, now it is clear. Instead you want its elimination.

The Jews are a nation, with a full spectrum of beliefs from fundamentalist to atheist, but with a shared heritage, tradition and strong sense of themselves as a people. Israel was founded as a home for the Jewish nation. It is multi-cultural, with minorities of every religion under the sun, including 20% Israeli Arabs, who are proportionally represented in parliament.

It is no more racist to have a homeland for the Jewish nation than it is to have a homeland for the Scots, or the French or the Palestinians.

no that seems a clear putting words in mouths and making things up move again.

"Right. So although there was horror when I suggested some people here wanted the 'annhilation' of Israel, now it is clear. Instead you want its elimination."

Wrong

If you are trying to get people to choose between the elimination of the state of Israel, and unquestioning support for a racist and oppressive regime, then you are creating a false dichotomy.

You might as well have been an apartheid-era Boer saying "do you support South Africa, or do you advocate the extermination of whites?"

My children go to a Jewish school - a school set up for Jewish children - which also accepts children of other religions. In fact about a third are Muslim.

Does that make the school racist?!!!

By the way, all the pupils and their parents get on very well. It is a lesson for the pigheaded people on this thread.

Surely thinking of ways to achieve peace in the region is a better way forward.

Did anyone see the Guardian report about some members of Israel's military intelligence unit refusing to spy on Palestinians because of the 'widespread surveillance of innocent civilians'? They say that this surveillance is used for 'political persecution' and to create 'divisions in Palestinian society'.

sticks2

I am assuming that the school does not have a policy of stealing the possessions of the non-Jewish children, and handing them to the Jewish ones?

I'm new to the thread (and MN) hope it's not had form (or something?) to join in so late to the thread. I'm secular Jewish, DP is Israeli and Jewish, we live in the UK.

Firstly, I'd say the right of the return isn't racist. I think it's incredibly important. Basically every single country a significant Jewish population has lived in ever, they have been persecuted or oppressed or discriminated against or simply forced to leave. It has played over and over again for hundreds of years, more than two thousand years of misery and pain and death, for being Jewish. Whether you were a Ashkenazi or Sephardi, whether you were Yemeni, Ethiopian, Polish, American, Australian, Indian, Chinese- every single Jewish person who comes from a Jewish family will have had someone killed or persecuted or subjected to anti semitism for their beliefs within the last two hundred years, most of them in far, far less than that.

So I can completely understand why there is a 'right to return' for any Jew, because the need for a homeland is so very important. Jews were turned away from democratic countries who were allies and fighting against their oppressors not that long ago, I can completely get and am very grateful for the right to return. There seems to be no stopping anti semitism, it is a cycle which repeats over and over and over. It is a weird feeling but every Jew I know, everyone who's from a Jewish family, they all, including me, accept that, within a century probably, there will be another mass exodus, another holocaust (even if on a smaller scale), another kicking out, ghettos, systematic discrimination, because even after periods of peace, complete integration and acceptance, it rears it's ugly head, and at least now we will have, or they will have, a place to run to.

Apart from that, we of course disagree with Israeli policies. DP's aunt was assaulted for protesting.

You have explained why you think Jewish people should have the right of return. You have not explained why non-Jewish people should not. It is this difference in treatment that is racist.

The rest of it is simply you can't take everyone- space wise, you can't, and. Israel won't be able to afford it, like any other country. I suppose it is discrimination, but honestly, I'm fine with that for discrimination. I can't find any similar groups of people but I would support the Yazidis doing that, if they so wanted, or maybe indigenous Mayans in some central american countries (family in Guatemala and there are some appalling cases of discrimination), if they so wanted. But we need that protection of a country which we know will not ever oppress, discriminate or kill us, our children or our descendants for being Jewish, and Israel is the only country which realistically offers that. French Jews are already leaving to Israel thanks to anti semitism in France, it's serving its purpose.

It's plain depressing that Israel hasn't just removed anti semitism, a global, far reaching and massive historical problem, it's just attempted to replace it with abusing the rights of Palestinians.

So the right of return is racist, but you're OK with it.

No, I'm not saying it's racist. I'm saying it is discriminatory, the exact same way I suppose you could say women only spaces are sexist/misandrist/etc or scholarships for people for people from certain developing countries are discriminatory or having a certain number of women required on panel shows is discriminatory or a women refuge charity is discriminatory.

Sorry for the awkward phrasing, not my first language.

but what you just said about jewish people all having had someone in their family persecuted or killed historically is true of palestinian people contemporarily at the hands of israel. what of their right to return? what of their persecution? what of their being 'now' fenced into the equivalent of a ghetto and having once again been subjected to bombings and shootings and military assaults from land sea and air just a few weeks ago?

if jewish people live believing 'it will happen again' because of a cycle of events with the most recent being fifty years ago how must those palestinians feel?

does having been abused in one's past (and in this case one's groups past not even individual pasts) excuse abusing others?

i've been thinking about what i posted above on and off all day and my conclusion is that i think this is exactly why we have to focus on human rights and international law being upheld. it cannot be one group carving it out at the expense of another. nor can it be that i want to protect what i perceive as 'my' people regardless of the effect on others. it's that kind of thinking that has led to so much hideousness in human history.

the best way for jews to be protected from another cycle such as someone described is for the international community to be strong in it's rejection of the kinds of atrocities happening to palestinians now, anyone else tomorrow. the safest path is to live in a world where persecution, lessened human rights, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, apartheid systems etc etc etc are loathed, rejected, responded to and punished accordingly.

there are some countries where we exercise (we the international community) very little influence and can little effect on things. israel is not one of those countries. it is a country that receives funds from the west, a country that trades with america and the eu and a country that wishes to be an influential part of the international community. there is no way we can have the right to even begin to interfere in countries outside of that 'family' if we don't even ensure human rights and international laws are protected within it. therefore i really think either israel has to massively change it's approach OR it has to be rejected from the dinner table.

there can be no favoritism. if we are serious about international law and human rights then we cannot have someone sitting at the dinner table who has a free pass to ignore them.

and no i don't want to see israel eliminated but i cannot approve its actions and i would not be associated with a government that practices such actions. i do not want israel 'gone' i want it to change and be worthy of it's place at the table. i desperately hope that the decent people within israel can make that happen.

I agree with you to some extent about Jewish people needing a safe homeland.