The difference being that in Israel fighting the government might actually do something since it’s a democracy, and in Gaza fighting the government will simply get you killed for being an infidel.
Israel has been rocked by protests and strikes for the last year. Tens of thousands of Israelis are in the streets demanding an election. But lets set that aside for a second.
Try to explain your whole attitude to the TWO MILLION PALESTINIAN CITIZENS OF ISRAEL. I’m not talking about the people living under occupation. I’m talking about people with Israeli citizenship who are Palestinian. Do you want to guess how the police in Israel treat you if you’re an arab citizen and go to a protest? I’ll give you a hint: their head of police is Itmar Ben-Gvir. He was convicted of terrorism by his own country. His public position is that he would like to ethnically cleanse both Israel and the occupied territories. And he runs the national police.
Think about what you’re saying when you damn everyone in Israel because “it’s a democracy” when it’s an apartheid police state.
Look I didn’t invent political science and define Israel’s representative government as a democracy. Take it up with the academics, and the dictionary people for that matter.
Roughing up protesters isn’t a crime against humanity. The treatment of Arabs or Palestinians in Israel is nothing like the treatment of blacks in South Africa. There are Palestinians working in every field and industry and in all levels of government, living wherever they want, voting for whoever they want, marrying whoever they want, having kids with whoever they want. There is a Palestinian on the Israeli Supreme Court, like if you want to argue Apartheid describes certain treatment of minority noncitizens okay I can see your reasoning at least but in what concievable grounds is Israel’s treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel substantially the same to Afrikaner treatment of blacks in South Africa? To me what you’ve said here sounds like what flat eartherism must sound like to a an astrophysicist.
It’s 12 minutes long, and in it Katie Halper points out that it’s been labeled an Apartheid state by Zionists and Afrikanners for decades. Israeli prime ministers and Nelson Mandela, academics, and human rights groups have been saying this for generations.
If you want to call it something else, feel free. But whatever you call it, it needs to end.
Also: they don’t “rough up” protesters. They disappear them. They throw them in prison and torture them. They take them away from their families indefinitely without charges or kill them for posts on social media. This is not minor ethnic repression. The head of police, as I mentioned, is a convicted terrorist.
I will watch it. I’ve seen it in my feed before but never clicked it. My education on this comes from two influential professors, one I had for constitutional law, who was an expert on constitutional history and theory and had been an envoy to South Africa to help write their new Constitution, and the other was unofficial liason between certain folks in the US government and Arafat and the PLO, which had no official relations. To me, the lack of popular consent of the governed is the sine qua non of Apartheid, that means the victims are a political but popular majority citizens of the country. Those are the things that make it so evil and so abhorrent, to me anyway, and it’s how I’ve come to understand it, both in terms of how it came to be and the reforms that ended it.
Apartheid is said to be an “aggravated form of racial discrimination.” Racial discrimination is against international law on its own, by itself. Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race, is something way, way more dastardly and offensive to humanity, mainly because it is antithetical to democratic governance, which the the only think that even leads toward peak humanity, if not the greatest human achievement.
Meanwhile, although a suspect class for which heightened scrutiny of potential racial discrimination is warranted, nationality and citizenship status are sometimes perfectly just grounds for policies that are facially neutral but discriminatory as applied. For example, how many suicide bombers have to cross the border from the same place before you restrict certain people’s rights based on national origin or immigration status, how many rockets do they have to import and launch at your people before you start inspecting their deliveries?
Still not ready to feed a democracy to Iran. Israel isn’t going to let it happen without a fight, and that will be a bloodbath that makes the entirety of the hostilities from 1948 to date look like a pleasant afternoon.
Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race
We spoke about this. We looked at the definition. The minority/majority aspect is simply not in there. In fact it says it can be done to “any other racial group,” explicitly rejecting that framework. Why are you still saying the same thing? It is totally unjustified
Jesus christ dude. If you want to discuss you need to actually engage with the points made.
The definition says it can be done to “any other racial group” - why? How can this possibly be the wording if it had to be done to the majority group?
“As practiced in South Africa.”
Again, look at the actual wording of the whole sentence:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa
It doesn’t have to be exactly the same. That’s why it says similar policies and not “identical to” or “the policies of…”
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand. Until then, there’s a reason nobody has been charged outside of South Africa, and that’s because the practices in South Africa were if a fundamentally different character than those in Israel, chiefly, based on immigration status, not race, and secondly, against non citizens, not citizens.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute or the ICERD.
Under every international definition of Apartheid, Israel is an Apartheid State.
Article II then lists specific inhuman acts that committed in this context amount to the crime under international law of apartheid, ranging from violent ones such as murder and torture to legislative, administrative and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participating in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and deny them basic human rights and freedoms. The specific inhuman acts enumerated are:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
That’s the language you need to quote because that’s the language I’m talking about, it qualifies the whole thing. You’re reading it out. That’s not how reading law works. All words have their usual meaning. No words are superfluous.
So you’re saying the international definitions of the crime of apartheid, are irrelevant span and presupposition, when it comes to determining if Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid?
The Rome Statute [Article 7] provides that the crime against humanity of apartheid is committed when “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, are committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”. The “special intent” element of the crime of apartheid under the Rome Statute that distinguishes it from other crimes against humanity is thus the maintenance of a regime of systematic oppression and domination.
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
i. By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
ii. By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
iii. By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Try and keep up slow poke, it’s irrelevant because it’s a wall of text everyone here talking about this has already read. You don’t need to constantly link things to me that I’ve already seen.
The Rome Statute says “as practiced in South Africa.”
That means it’s about policies that are of the same character and kind as they had in South Africa.
The defining policies of Apartheid are simply not present in Israel, so you must agree you are making a stretch.
I think they are trying to quote Article II of the ICSPCA, but if they did, then they intentionally left out the rest of the Article which goes against their point.
“For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them: …”
"in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, "
to all the nice folks reading this gibberish, please know that this is flat out misinformation. @JustZ@lemmy.world had never been able to support this with any kind of source and it is not in the legal definition of apartheid. The crime of apartheid definition is very clear and says this applies to any racial group with absolutely NOTHING about it having to be a racial minority over a majority (and by miniority here, JustZ also just means less population).
Here is the definition of apartheid according to the ICC:
The ‘crime of apartheid’ means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by ONE RACIAL GROUP OVER ANY OTHER RACIAL GROUP OR GROUPS and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
@JustZ@lemmy.world do you know why you can never respond to this? Because your lame argument rests entirely now on your false definition of Apartheid. Once that is gone, you are forced to admit that ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIAL APARTHEID STATE and very little about its founding and practices is actually legal.
Don’t be the kind of law expert that enables evil by saying BS like this…
It hurts, I get it. It’s okay. You can cross that bridge.
Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.
Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).
I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.
I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.
So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.
I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize.
Good for you dude! It is hard to recognize but it’s better than having the wrong idea about something so important
I will acknowledge that when I describe the Israeli system as Apartheid, I’m using it in a colloquial sense, not a legal sense. Which I think is appropriate, because my purpose is to characterize the severity and urgency of the situation rather than prosecute the case in international court. But I can accept that it might fall short based on legal definitions (in part because Israel is familiar enough with international law that they usually take care in developing policy to try to avoid when possible making their violations easy to prosecute).
It’s a bit long, but the feature I think is useful is summed up here:
“If the Holocaust is the paradigmatic case for the crime of genocide and South Africa for that of apartheid, then the crime against the Palestinian people must be called the Nakba.”
The thesis, at least in my understanding, is that the situation is unique enough to fit poorly into the major categories we use for describing atrocities, and that it requires that we recognize it as the primary case for a novel form of ethnic oppression that incorporates elements of genocide and apartheid, but operates in a way that is ultimately unique to the specifics of this situation. I’m curious what you might think of that argument.
Honestly, I have a bone to pick with legal language.
I think it puts the cart before the horse. Law as a concept is an incredible invention, but I think we in our present often forget that it IS an invention: it’s a technology that was developed to systematize our ability to limit and remedy harm.
However we frequently ignore the fact that people will always shape their behavior to avoid consequence while looking for ways to serve their interests at the expense of the public good. And then when they do, we often act as if law is itself a kind of natural law, and if we can find no category for the behavior we abhor, that means that we must accept that they have some right to do it, as thought it’s out of our hands.
This situation is a profound demonstration of all of it. South Africa’s system of apartheid is a very useful framework for understanding the systems used to maintain Palestinians as a permanent underclass unable to gain meaningful political agency. This fact – that apartheid is a useful framework for examining the Israeli system and determining what to do about it – is true regardless of whether the system in question fulfills a definition. The definition is supposed to be useful. If you don’t think the term applies, that’s just a reflection that the definition apparently needs to be updated, because the thing the definition describes exists regardless of whether our language presently communicates it.
Language – like law – is a man-made tool that is supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
Really I must have missed the part in South African history where they had any blacks on their Supreme Court.
Regardless, the defining characteristic of Apartheid is rule over the uncontenting majority by the minority. That is the harm of apartheid and that the thing that makes it a crime against humanity as opposed to regular old discrimination.
It’s baked into the definition of any primary source you might look at. For example the UN convention defines the crime of apartheid as something like “such discriminatory policies as practiced in South Africa,” etc., etc. it’s also inherent to the hallmarks of Apartheid, like, what would have been offensive to humanity about a political majority discriminating or disenfranchising itself? If they didn’t like the discrimination or disenfranchisment, they have the majority power to stop it. “As practiced in South Africa,” refers to little else if not the majority who had been systemically denied their inherent majoritarian political power.
I realize modern organizations use the word apartheid to to describe Israel and I’m sure it’s great for their fundraising. Self interested experts and thinkers say all sorts of things. Most of them, at least disinterested scholars writing in law reviews, for example, if you look closely, are saying that Israel is like Apartheid.
To the extent some make the argument that Israel is literally apartheid, they are glossing over the actual state of things in South African Apartheid that made it so offensive to humanity. Like LaFayette said “the good fortune of America is closely tied to the good fortune of all humanity.” He was talking about the idea of government of, by, and for the people, likez to be copacetic with humanity, a government must derive it’s legitimacy through the popular consent of the governed, who is represented by people chosen from among them, it means a constitutional compact, things South Africa did not have as a result of how its black majority citizens were treated by their own government’s laws. Those that defeated Apartheid speak of its downfall in terms of “gaining our democracy” and “the democratic transformation.” The day apartheid died is considered the day they had the first election afterward. Israel has free elections. Hama could host elections too if it wanted. It had an election once, then immediately cancelled all future elections, which is a crime against humanity in itself.
Also, take note, if you look closely at analysis that says Israel literally is Apartheid, they are citing work of scholars, jurists, and experts, who were doing research in comparative law. I.e., they were comparing Israel and South Africa from the starting point that, although they are alike in certain ways which are useful for legal scholars to compare in peer reviewed journals, they are materially different things. In other words, like if you decide to go click through KeepOnStalin’s non-profit link spam, check for yourself and see if the authorities they cite for their presuppositions aren’t being misrepresented, and that they aren’t going circles, i.e. B’Tselem citing HRW, HRW citing Amnesty, Amnesty citing B’Tselem, and that all of them aren’t citing unverified reports published in veritable tabloids owned by Qatar and Egypt, or directly from Hamas. They also gloss over their presupposition that Apartheid can be something a country does to non citizens. No country afaik gives full rights to non citizens.
Yes, run of the mill racial discrimination is bad. There is racial discrimination all around and it should be rooted out and made equitable. That’s where strong minoritarian rights and protections come into play, a constitution based on something other than biblical nonsense, for example.
A policy of discrimination voted on by all people is far more palatable than one arising from religious proclamation or superstition, or from a minority, such as they have in Iran.
the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
Then it goes on to list some acts. Note that it says similar to not identical to. And it says over any other racial group. Absolutely nothing in there about majority/minority status.
So where did you see this? What makes you think this?
what would have been offensive to humanity about a political majority discriminating or disenfranchising itself? If they didn’t like the discrimination or disenfranchisment, they have the majority power to stop it.
Nobody is suggesting this.
What about if the majority discriminates against a minority , who doesn’t have the political power to stop it? That is offensive to humanity, so why would you exclude this from the definition of apartheid? That’s why they wrote the definition the way they did. South Africa isn’t the only way it can be.
Then why is that explicitly not part of the definition?
“Similar” =/= identical. If all of the societal prejudice, injustice and disparity is still there but it’s 51% oppressing 49% instead of 49% oppressing 51% are you seriously saying that this is a totally different thing?
"The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime" .”
The other definitions are similar. Nothing about majority or minority. Nothing about having to be exactly like South Africa.
Amnesty International has analysed Israel’s intent to create and maintain a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians and examined its key components: territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights. It has concluded that this system amounts to apartheid. Israel must dismantle this cruel system and the international community must pressure it to do so. All those with jurisdiction over the crimes committed to maintain the system should investigate them.
Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.
See that’s called a pin cite, even if it is 16 pages, now you’re approaching making a coherent argument instead of just spamming. They gloss right over the key part of the definition though, because they are torturing the word to force a square peg into a round hole and they have to do that because that’s how they raise money.
I agree there are similarities and useful comparisons to be drawn. Still, Amnesty literally says that all apartheid requires is a system of oppression and that’s just not correct, and that’s why when people try to force this definition onto Israel, it just comes off as anti-semitic.
I’m of the mind that if the majority has the opportunity to vote for their leadership, the situation is not like South Africa in the way that matters that is so offensive to humanity as to be a crime against it.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute.
Article II then lists specific inhuman acts that committed in this context amount to the crime under international law of apartheid, ranging from violent ones such as murder and torture to legislative, administrative and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participating in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and deny them basic human rights and freedoms. The specific inhuman acts enumerated are:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
That’s funny because I think the entire middle east is apartheid. Jews are only allowed to live in one small strip. They are not allowed to own land in Jordan. They are not allowed to practice their religion in Saudi Arabia. They have been ethnically cleansed from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.
ALL non-Muslim religious practices are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, they hate EVERYONE else, not directed specifically at Jews. Alsp, I lived in Jordan for most of my life and have never seen any law to indicate that claim. I also tried to google that. Could you source that claim? Because if it is true, then it would be directly contradicting the Jordanian constitution.
My friend’s grandmother is a Palestinian Jew who lives in Jordan and never seems to have had any legal trouble (even in the religious marriage court).
And yes, Jews from Arab countries have been cleansed and forced to leave during this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
But that was only one factor. Many simply immigrate for pull or push factors. That is not to undermine the terrible event of anyone being forced out of their home.
Finally, it’s good to remember what Israel did to those Yemeni Jews, whether expelled or leaving to build a better future:
We need to recognize that supremacy and oppression are symptoms of destructive settler-colonial Zionism. And that it needs to end. Israel is not the Jewish state Jews deserve… they deseeve much better as dignified people than to have this country (founded on violence, lies, and colonialism) drag their name in the mud and use the holocaust to justify genociding Palestinians. Jews deserve better than an undemocratic apartheid state that indoctrinate them from the cradle to the grave.
I’m just going to answer you and @JustZ@lemmy.world 's comment above at the same time.
What’s the hell is your point?
Generally, when someone mentions something like the existence of some admirable quality in a country facing criticism or a terrible quality in a different country, it’s irrelevant to the point at hand. It’s either to derail a conversation or terminate it.
The conversation thread is about the fact that Israelis should not be held responsible carte blanche for atrocities committed by their government, because many lack political representation and face extremely oppressive prejudice from their government.
If you’re arguing that the presence of any Arabs within power at all disproves their overall repression, in this context you’re arguing against my point that they should NOT be held responsible for the crimes of their government. Is your point that Israel Palestinians are guilty of genocide in Gaza? Think about how inane that is.
And if you’re pointing out that regionally, Jews are an oppressed group… well then what? What does the fact that Qatar and UAE and Jordon are repressive mean in this context? It is wildly off-topic, and also utterly irrelevant that Israel’s neighbors suck too. You know what? I don’t think we should send weapons to Iran or Egypt or Saudi Arabia either. That’s not exactly a hot take.
Almost everyone absolutely thinks Saudi Arabis is abhorrent, any involvement they hsve with any human rights groups is instantly identified as whitewashing and becomes a meme. Protests in Iran receieved wide global attention and support. We don’t hold Israel to a different light. It’s the same light, Israel is just one if the really bad baddies.
I don’t know that dude’s point but my point is that even though the light of democracy may seem dim right now in Israel, it’s still there and must be protected. No legitimate human rights will come from Islamic law or pan Islamism because religious law is made up by church muckity mucks as they go along, and any right they grant can be taken at their whim. Meanwhile, the good fortune of democracy on this earth is closely tied to the humanity of all mankind, and ill fight anyone that violently insists otherwise. Like it’s fine if you want to live like it’s the dark ages but don’t cross the border or shoot at boats. Maybe if the Likuds survive the next election the idea of smothering the baby in its crib might be more palatable to me. I’m not ready to feed a burgeoning democracy to Iranian far-right extremists or their proxies, just yet.
I agree with you. I’d like more democracy is Israel.
I think that people ARE going to need to reimagine what Israel is, though. People – including folks like Einstein – have been saying since it’s founding that it is fundamentally incompatible to have a multi-ethnic democratic ethnostate. It’s internally contradictory. You have to lose one of those words.
Jewish nationalists would like to lose the multi-ethnic part. Religious extremists would like to drop the democratic part (and probably the multi-ethnic part too). I’d like to drop the ethnostate. I think Israel can be a democracy that welcomes Jews AND Palestinians. But to be frank, democracy and Zionism have been looking increasingly incompatible for a long time, and a lot of folks in the US need to start recognizing that.
The difference being that in Israel fighting the government might actually do something since it’s a democracy, and in Gaza fighting the government will simply get you killed for being an infidel.
Israel has been rocked by protests and strikes for the last year. Tens of thousands of Israelis are in the streets demanding an election. But lets set that aside for a second.
Try to explain your whole attitude to the TWO MILLION PALESTINIAN CITIZENS OF ISRAEL. I’m not talking about the people living under occupation. I’m talking about people with Israeli citizenship who are Palestinian. Do you want to guess how the police in Israel treat you if you’re an arab citizen and go to a protest? I’ll give you a hint: their head of police is Itmar Ben-Gvir. He was convicted of terrorism by his own country. His public position is that he would like to ethnically cleanse both Israel and the occupied territories. And he runs the national police.
Think about what you’re saying when you damn everyone in Israel because “it’s a democracy” when it’s an apartheid police state.
Look I didn’t invent political science and define Israel’s representative government as a democracy. Take it up with the academics, and the dictionary people for that matter.
Roughing up protesters isn’t a crime against humanity. The treatment of Arabs or Palestinians in Israel is nothing like the treatment of blacks in South Africa. There are Palestinians working in every field and industry and in all levels of government, living wherever they want, voting for whoever they want, marrying whoever they want, having kids with whoever they want. There is a Palestinian on the Israeli Supreme Court, like if you want to argue Apartheid describes certain treatment of minority noncitizens okay I can see your reasoning at least but in what concievable grounds is Israel’s treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel substantially the same to Afrikaner treatment of blacks in South Africa? To me what you’ve said here sounds like what flat eartherism must sound like to a an astrophysicist.
I think this video does a very good job of laying this out plainly:
The Video That Got Me Fired: Israel IS An Apartheid State
It’s 12 minutes long, and in it Katie Halper points out that it’s been labeled an Apartheid state by Zionists and Afrikanners for decades. Israeli prime ministers and Nelson Mandela, academics, and human rights groups have been saying this for generations.
If you want to call it something else, feel free. But whatever you call it, it needs to end.
Also: they don’t “rough up” protesters. They disappear them. They throw them in prison and torture them. They take them away from their families indefinitely without charges or kill them for posts on social media. This is not minor ethnic repression. The head of police, as I mentioned, is a convicted terrorist.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Video That Got Me Fired: Israel IS An Apartheid State
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I will watch it. I’ve seen it in my feed before but never clicked it. My education on this comes from two influential professors, one I had for constitutional law, who was an expert on constitutional history and theory and had been an envoy to South Africa to help write their new Constitution, and the other was unofficial liason between certain folks in the US government and Arafat and the PLO, which had no official relations. To me, the lack of popular consent of the governed is the sine qua non of Apartheid, that means the victims are a political but popular majority citizens of the country. Those are the things that make it so evil and so abhorrent, to me anyway, and it’s how I’ve come to understand it, both in terms of how it came to be and the reforms that ended it.
Apartheid is said to be an “aggravated form of racial discrimination.” Racial discrimination is against international law on its own, by itself. Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race, is something way, way more dastardly and offensive to humanity, mainly because it is antithetical to democratic governance, which the the only think that even leads toward peak humanity, if not the greatest human achievement.
Meanwhile, although a suspect class for which heightened scrutiny of potential racial discrimination is warranted, nationality and citizenship status are sometimes perfectly just grounds for policies that are facially neutral but discriminatory as applied. For example, how many suicide bombers have to cross the border from the same place before you restrict certain people’s rights based on national origin or immigration status, how many rockets do they have to import and launch at your people before you start inspecting their deliveries?
Still not ready to feed a democracy to Iran. Israel isn’t going to let it happen without a fight, and that will be a bloodbath that makes the entirety of the hostilities from 1948 to date look like a pleasant afternoon.
We spoke about this. We looked at the definition. The minority/majority aspect is simply not in there. In fact it says it can be done to “any other racial group,” explicitly rejecting that framework. Why are you still saying the same thing? It is totally unjustified
“As practiced in South Africa.”
What was practiced in South Africa was minority political rule over the racial majority.
Jesus christ dude. If you want to discuss you need to actually engage with the points made.
The definition says it can be done to “any other racial group” - why? How can this possibly be the wording if it had to be done to the majority group?
Again, look at the actual wording of the whole sentence:
It doesn’t have to be exactly the same. That’s why it says similar policies and not “identical to” or “the policies of…”
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand. Until then, there’s a reason nobody has been charged outside of South Africa, and that’s because the practices in South Africa were if a fundamentally different character than those in Israel, chiefly, based on immigration status, not race, and secondly, against non citizens, not citizens.
Where is this quote from? Link please.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute or the ICERD.
Under every international definition of Apartheid, Israel is an Apartheid State.
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Amnesty International Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report, Explainer
More irrelevant spam and presupposition.
That’s the language you need to quote because that’s the language I’m talking about, it qualifies the whole thing. You’re reading it out. That’s not how reading law works. All words have their usual meaning. No words are superfluous.
So you’re saying the international definitions of the crime of apartheid, are irrelevant span and presupposition, when it comes to determining if Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid?
The Rome Statute [Article 7] provides that the crime against humanity of apartheid is committed when “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, are committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”. The “special intent” element of the crime of apartheid under the Rome Statute that distinguishes it from other crimes against humanity is thus the maintenance of a regime of systematic oppression and domination.
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as:
Try and keep up slow poke, it’s irrelevant because it’s a wall of text everyone here talking about this has already read. You don’t need to constantly link things to me that I’ve already seen.
The Rome Statute says “as practiced in South Africa.”
That means it’s about policies that are of the same character and kind as they had in South Africa.
The defining policies of Apartheid are simply not present in Israel, so you must agree you are making a stretch.
What is this from? Source?
I think they are trying to quote Article II of the ICSPCA, but if they did, then they intentionally left out the rest of the Article which goes against their point.
“For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them: …”
to all the nice folks reading this gibberish, please know that this is flat out misinformation. @JustZ@lemmy.world had never been able to support this with any kind of source and it is not in the legal definition of apartheid. The crime of apartheid definition is very clear and says this applies to any racial group with absolutely NOTHING about it having to be a racial minority over a majority (and by miniority here, JustZ also just means less population).
Here is the definition of apartheid according to the ICC:
@JustZ@lemmy.world do you know why you can never respond to this? Because your lame argument rests entirely now on your false definition of Apartheid. Once that is gone, you are forced to admit that ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIAL APARTHEID STATE and very little about its founding and practices is actually legal.
Don’t be the kind of law expert that enables evil by saying BS like this…
It hurts, I get it. It’s okay. You can cross that bridge.
Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.
Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).
I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.
I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.
So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.
Good for you dude! It is hard to recognize but it’s better than having the wrong idea about something so important
I actually think that all makes sense.
I will acknowledge that when I describe the Israeli system as Apartheid, I’m using it in a colloquial sense, not a legal sense. Which I think is appropriate, because my purpose is to characterize the severity and urgency of the situation rather than prosecute the case in international court. But I can accept that it might fall short based on legal definitions (in part because Israel is familiar enough with international law that they usually take care in developing policy to try to avoid when possible making their violations easy to prosecute).
I think if that’s the framework you’re applying, you might be interested in this law review (assuming you haven’t already read it): “The Ongoing Nakba: Towards a Legal Framework for Palestine,” by Rabea Eghbariah
It’s a bit long, but the feature I think is useful is summed up here:
The thesis, at least in my understanding, is that the situation is unique enough to fit poorly into the major categories we use for describing atrocities, and that it requires that we recognize it as the primary case for a novel form of ethnic oppression that incorporates elements of genocide and apartheid, but operates in a way that is ultimately unique to the specifics of this situation. I’m curious what you might think of that argument.
You should use it in the legal sense :)
Honestly, I have a bone to pick with legal language.
I think it puts the cart before the horse. Law as a concept is an incredible invention, but I think we in our present often forget that it IS an invention: it’s a technology that was developed to systematize our ability to limit and remedy harm.
However we frequently ignore the fact that people will always shape their behavior to avoid consequence while looking for ways to serve their interests at the expense of the public good. And then when they do, we often act as if law is itself a kind of natural law, and if we can find no category for the behavior we abhor, that means that we must accept that they have some right to do it, as thought it’s out of our hands.
This situation is a profound demonstration of all of it. South Africa’s system of apartheid is a very useful framework for understanding the systems used to maintain Palestinians as a permanent underclass unable to gain meaningful political agency. This fact – that apartheid is a useful framework for examining the Israeli system and determining what to do about it – is true regardless of whether the system in question fulfills a definition. The definition is supposed to be useful. If you don’t think the term applies, that’s just a reflection that the definition apparently needs to be updated, because the thing the definition describes exists regardless of whether our language presently communicates it.
Language – like law – is a man-made tool that is supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
Really I must have missed the part in South African history where they had any blacks on their Supreme Court.
Regardless, the defining characteristic of Apartheid is rule over the uncontenting majority by the minority. That is the harm of apartheid and that the thing that makes it a crime against humanity as opposed to regular old discrimination.
Source for the majority/minority claim?
But “regular old discrimination” is still not a good thing, right?
It’s baked into the definition of any primary source you might look at. For example the UN convention defines the crime of apartheid as something like “such discriminatory policies as practiced in South Africa,” etc., etc. it’s also inherent to the hallmarks of Apartheid, like, what would have been offensive to humanity about a political majority discriminating or disenfranchising itself? If they didn’t like the discrimination or disenfranchisment, they have the majority power to stop it. “As practiced in South Africa,” refers to little else if not the majority who had been systemically denied their inherent majoritarian political power.
I realize modern organizations use the word apartheid to to describe Israel and I’m sure it’s great for their fundraising. Self interested experts and thinkers say all sorts of things. Most of them, at least disinterested scholars writing in law reviews, for example, if you look closely, are saying that Israel is like Apartheid.
To the extent some make the argument that Israel is literally apartheid, they are glossing over the actual state of things in South African Apartheid that made it so offensive to humanity. Like LaFayette said “the good fortune of America is closely tied to the good fortune of all humanity.” He was talking about the idea of government of, by, and for the people, likez to be copacetic with humanity, a government must derive it’s legitimacy through the popular consent of the governed, who is represented by people chosen from among them, it means a constitutional compact, things South Africa did not have as a result of how its black majority citizens were treated by their own government’s laws. Those that defeated Apartheid speak of its downfall in terms of “gaining our democracy” and “the democratic transformation.” The day apartheid died is considered the day they had the first election afterward. Israel has free elections. Hama could host elections too if it wanted. It had an election once, then immediately cancelled all future elections, which is a crime against humanity in itself.
Also, take note, if you look closely at analysis that says Israel literally is Apartheid, they are citing work of scholars, jurists, and experts, who were doing research in comparative law. I.e., they were comparing Israel and South Africa from the starting point that, although they are alike in certain ways which are useful for legal scholars to compare in peer reviewed journals, they are materially different things. In other words, like if you decide to go click through KeepOnStalin’s non-profit link spam, check for yourself and see if the authorities they cite for their presuppositions aren’t being misrepresented, and that they aren’t going circles, i.e. B’Tselem citing HRW, HRW citing Amnesty, Amnesty citing B’Tselem, and that all of them aren’t citing unverified reports published in veritable tabloids owned by Qatar and Egypt, or directly from Hamas. They also gloss over their presupposition that Apartheid can be something a country does to non citizens. No country afaik gives full rights to non citizens.
Yes, run of the mill racial discrimination is bad. There is racial discrimination all around and it should be rooted out and made equitable. That’s where strong minoritarian rights and protections come into play, a constitution based on something other than biblical nonsense, for example.
A policy of discrimination voted on by all people is far more palatable than one arising from religious proclamation or superstition, or from a minority, such as they have in Iran.
The convention says:
Then it goes on to list some acts. Note that it says similar to not identical to. And it says over any other racial group. Absolutely nothing in there about majority/minority status.
So where did you see this? What makes you think this?
Nobody is suggesting this.
What about if the majority discriminates against a minority , who doesn’t have the political power to stop it? That is offensive to humanity, so why would you exclude this from the definition of apartheid? That’s why they wrote the definition the way they did. South Africa isn’t the only way it can be.
Right, it’s not similar, by any defintion, if it not the minority oppressing the majority.
Then why is that explicitly not part of the definition?
“Similar” =/= identical. If all of the societal prejudice, injustice and disparity is still there but it’s 51% oppressing 49% instead of 49% oppressing 51% are you seriously saying that this is a totally different thing?
@JustZ@lemmy.world here is the legal definition of the crime of Apartheid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid
The other definitions are similar. Nothing about majority or minority. Nothing about having to be exactly like South Africa.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
comparative law
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Amnesty International Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report, Explainer
More irrelevant and false presuppositions.
Okay that’s great. Apartheid is way more than a system of oppression. Amnesty needs to grow up. Great fundraising pitch, though.
Did you miss pages 44-59? There is an entire chapter going through the international definitions of Apartheid
See that’s called a pin cite, even if it is 16 pages, now you’re approaching making a coherent argument instead of just spamming. They gloss right over the key part of the definition though, because they are torturing the word to force a square peg into a round hole and they have to do that because that’s how they raise money.
I agree there are similarities and useful comparisons to be drawn. Still, Amnesty literally says that all apartheid requires is a system of oppression and that’s just not correct, and that’s why when people try to force this definition onto Israel, it just comes off as anti-semitic.
I wonder if this dude still agrees that the security concerns aren’t valid, after October 7: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/19/israel-apartheid-state-south-africa-netanyahu
I’m of the mind that if the majority has the opportunity to vote for their leadership, the situation is not like South Africa in the way that matters that is so offensive to humanity as to be a crime against it.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute.
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
That’s funny because I think the entire middle east is apartheid. Jews are only allowed to live in one small strip. They are not allowed to own land in Jordan. They are not allowed to practice their religion in Saudi Arabia. They have been ethnically cleansed from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.
Some clarifitcations and corrections:
ALL non-Muslim religious practices are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, they hate EVERYONE else, not directed specifically at Jews. Alsp, I lived in Jordan for most of my life and have never seen any law to indicate that claim. I also tried to google that. Could you source that claim? Because if it is true, then it would be directly contradicting the Jordanian constitution.
My friend’s grandmother is a Palestinian Jew who lives in Jordan and never seems to have had any legal trouble (even in the religious marriage court).
And yes, Jews from Arab countries have been cleansed and forced to leave during this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world But that was only one factor. Many simply immigrate for pull or push factors. That is not to undermine the terrible event of anyone being forced out of their home.
Finally, it’s good to remember what Israel did to those Yemeni Jews, whether expelled or leaving to build a better future:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Children_Affair
We need to recognize that supremacy and oppression are symptoms of destructive settler-colonial Zionism. And that it needs to end. Israel is not the Jewish state Jews deserve… they deseeve much better as dignified people than to have this country (founded on violence, lies, and colonialism) drag their name in the mud and use the holocaust to justify genociding Palestinians. Jews deserve better than an undemocratic apartheid state that indoctrinate them from the cradle to the grave.
I’m just going to answer you and @JustZ@lemmy.world 's comment above at the same time.
What’s the hell is your point?
Generally, when someone mentions something like the existence of some admirable quality in a country facing criticism or a terrible quality in a different country, it’s irrelevant to the point at hand. It’s either to derail a conversation or terminate it.
The conversation thread is about the fact that Israelis should not be held responsible carte blanche for atrocities committed by their government, because many lack political representation and face extremely oppressive prejudice from their government.
If you’re arguing that the presence of any Arabs within power at all disproves their overall repression, in this context you’re arguing against my point that they should NOT be held responsible for the crimes of their government. Is your point that Israel Palestinians are guilty of genocide in Gaza? Think about how inane that is.
And if you’re pointing out that regionally, Jews are an oppressed group… well then what? What does the fact that Qatar and UAE and Jordon are repressive mean in this context? It is wildly off-topic, and also utterly irrelevant that Israel’s neighbors suck too. You know what? I don’t think we should send weapons to Iran or Egypt or Saudi Arabia either. That’s not exactly a hot take.
Figure out what the hell your point is.
Almost everyone absolutely thinks Saudi Arabis is abhorrent, any involvement they hsve with any human rights groups is instantly identified as whitewashing and becomes a meme. Protests in Iran receieved wide global attention and support. We don’t hold Israel to a different light. It’s the same light, Israel is just one if the really bad baddies.
I don’t know that dude’s point but my point is that even though the light of democracy may seem dim right now in Israel, it’s still there and must be protected. No legitimate human rights will come from Islamic law or pan Islamism because religious law is made up by church muckity mucks as they go along, and any right they grant can be taken at their whim. Meanwhile, the good fortune of democracy on this earth is closely tied to the humanity of all mankind, and ill fight anyone that violently insists otherwise. Like it’s fine if you want to live like it’s the dark ages but don’t cross the border or shoot at boats. Maybe if the Likuds survive the next election the idea of smothering the baby in its crib might be more palatable to me. I’m not ready to feed a burgeoning democracy to Iranian far-right extremists or their proxies, just yet.
I agree with you. I’d like more democracy is Israel.
I think that people ARE going to need to reimagine what Israel is, though. People – including folks like Einstein – have been saying since it’s founding that it is fundamentally incompatible to have a multi-ethnic democratic ethnostate. It’s internally contradictory. You have to lose one of those words.
Jewish nationalists would like to lose the multi-ethnic part. Religious extremists would like to drop the democratic part (and probably the multi-ethnic part too). I’d like to drop the ethnostate. I think Israel can be a democracy that welcomes Jews AND Palestinians. But to be frank, democracy and Zionism have been looking increasingly incompatible for a long time, and a lot of folks in the US need to start recognizing that.