"Last year, former Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu openly called for the adoption of policies aimed specifically at reducing or at least neutralising Arab demographic growth in Israel.?
The growing demographic weight of Israeli Arabs, who constitute up to 20% of Israel’s overall population, was more serious and more dangerous for Israel than threats posed by the Palestinians, he said.
Netanyahu’s remarks triggered no outcry in Israel."
Is not the metacommunication in Bibi’s expression of concern an implicit toss of the towel?
When duty whispers low, thou must (fuck faster)
the youth replies, I can('t) ??!!
With a five to one headstart, I object on behalf of my jew brothers in israel.
They CAN fuck fast enough, long enough, hard enough, oh hell, you know the song.
Alternately, should the we in dastard complicity with Bibi accept this slur on jew manhood what ought we to do?
Put succinctly
(ed. note:hah!)
Do the jewish men in Israel need emergency testosterone patches and cialis airdrops to maintain the “jewishness” of Israel over the next hundred years unless there is periodic ethnic cleansing to remediate their wretched lack of fecundity?
As a general rule the educated have fewer children, choosing to invest more resources in each child’s future success, while lower SES groups with leser education and less hope for their children to climb into a higher SES grouping have more children. This occurs worldwide. An exception occurs in Israel in that the Orthodox are both educated and of high fecundity, but the majority, more secular, Jewish population and the Palestinian population, follow that basic rule. Bibi’s concern over the demographics is an obvious truth.
So the answer? A lasting peace with equal education and opportunities for the Palestinian members of Israeli society. As Palestinains become part of the participatory and enfranchised middle class, their birth rate will become more typical of other middle class, educated groups. Problem solved.
That said I find the link quite humorous. An Arab intellectual saying that “Israel can’t be Jewish and democratic at the same time. The two are oxymoron.”
Now substitute Islamic for Jewish and see if he’d still agree. Unless it isn’t religious/cultural identitification that he has a problem with, just which religion it is.
BTW, I did intend, if in a provacative way, to raise the supervening question, who the fuck gives one self-identified group the right to complain about the outcome of numerical competiton with some other group when THEY have already taken by force the right to draw the fucking border?
I don’t think any observer with a pretension to rationality and intellectual honesty will rise to defend a preference amongst otherwise equally deserving citizens that is allowed to turn upon religious affiliation.
What do you know exactly about this man that allows you to make such statements? Have you read his books/articles/whatever else he wrote? Attended to his conferences/speeches/lessons? What do you know of his political or religious views?
If not, should I assume that the reasonning is “since he’s arab, he must think exactly like I think all these arabs think”?
I didn’t bother to research additional writings of this “intellectual.” Reading the linked article was enough polemics for me. The gist of it was that the author has his panties in a bunch by the nerve, the absolute chutzpah of Netanyahu to claim that Israel is a “Jewish State.” As if, I don’t know…it was created as a state. Where, you know… Jews could live.
Color me stupid, but wasn’t that the basic idea behind creating Israel from part of the Mandate?
Alaric, what?! you were trying to provocatively stir up responses by posting statements that you don’t really hold? Who’d have thunk it?
Clairobscur, you serious? Yes, as a group Arab intellectuals are often persecuted for expressing thoughts in Islamic countries that are at all considered against the state. This particular “intellectual” could never make similar anti-state statements as a citizen in most Arab countries.* Many (not all) Arab intellectuals long for an Islamic version of democracy. They do not want the pluralistic secular vision that is the Western ideal, but one based on Islamic principles for Islamic states. See, for example. Islam remains central. And what is the place for non-Muslim minorities in these Islamic nations?
My questions stand.
*Truth be told, he may have crossed the line even for Israel. He had gone into Syria and given speeches that were felt to be encouraging violence against Israel. In terms of his thoughts about the value of an Islamically identified power structure, he had heaps of praise for Hezbollah. Last I knew there was talk of some kind of charges.
Netanyahu’s “ilk” consist of 99% of the Jewish population of Israel. Absolutely nobody wants the Jews to stop being a majority in this country, because as history shows us, the moment we become a minority, we’ll be a persecuted minority. Jewish control over the country is the entire nation’s raison d’etre, sand the only difference between political right and all but the furthest of the political left is how this is to be achieved.
Do’t like the way that sounds? Tough shit, because that’s the way it is. Any comments about Germans just make us giggle at the stupidity of your comparisons. I we were like the Germans, we wouldn’t have a problem with Arabs.
I would also like to state that we’re know different than any other nation (execpt the U.S., which is the Borg of nationalities) in this regard. I’m willing to predict with absolute certainty that such European nations as the Netherlands, the UK and France will never allow immigrant population to approach the 50% mark. We’ve seen the rumblings already. I’m also certain that when the Euros revert to their old xenophobic selves, they’ll do it in a much more nasty fashion than Israel.
Actually, the Jewish birth rate is higher than that of the US (at something like 3.0 per family) and MUCH higher than that of most European nations. Save your comments for the Italians, OK?
any people who make a mitzvah of schtupping the old lady (and a double mitzvah if its friday night–when the really good cable is on–) has a running start for sure…
That’s why I think Bibi is overly pessimistic about natural selection playing out against the Isaacian cousins vs the Ishmaelite cousins.
alaric, this is the worst GD question I’ve ever seen.
If he doesn’t mean what you say he means, I kind of agree. Although I would never have phrased it that way. I think a religious state is inherently less democratic because the citizens who are not part of that religion are - even if they have the same legal rights - made out to be second-class citizens. I’d say it’s in contradiction to democracy rather his overblown statement that it is a total oxymoron.
Ya know, Alaric, considering your comments on circumcision and your belief in a one-state solution, I have the feeling that your “jew brothers in Israel” might appreciate it if you stayed off their side.
Girding your loins could be the cause of the problem Mr Netanyahu describes. Gotta keep your boys under 97°F if you want to maintain population parity and that’s not going to happen if your loins are too tightly girded…
It is certainly not in contradiction to democracy as otherwise dreamed for in the ME.
It is by the standards that Israel sets itself up to be judged by: a true secular democracy with equal rights for all while simultaneously being a Jewish State.
But then the majority of secular Jews are second class in rights to the Orthodox minority in Israel.
This is a collision of imperatives that has been delayed by constant threats - the obvious need for a Jewish homeland versus high secular values. Are you a Jewish State verging on theocracy or a secular State that happens to be a majority Jewish? Can you have it both ways? I honesty don’t know.
