Thanks for the information Captain Amazing. The article says the temporary legislation was due to expire on July 31; does anyone know if it’s been reextended?
I’m all on board with your questioning American aid to Israel. Just what right do you have to tell the Israelis how to run their country.
I’m confused, perhaps you can help me out here.
Firstly if ‘some’ Palestinians are involved in terrorism out of a population of millions how does that justify a policy that effects all Palestinians living in Israel? Wouldn’t that be called descrimination any where else? Wouldn’t that be group punishment?
The population of Israel is made up from more than one group, so in an equal society why would an Arab need to marry a Jew to gain an identity card?
What if a Palestinian living within Israel wanted to marry one living in Gaza would they be allowed to live to Israel?
In the interest of saving time, I may as well admit that I have no incentive to discuss any serious issue with you.
I wasn’t. I was asking why Bryan saw a difference between offering right of return to descendants of displaced Palestinians and to Americans or Europeans with no Israeli national heritage at all.
Having said that, I haven’t noticed you holding back your opinions on US politics very much.
Because there is a smaller non-zero chance that an American moving to Israel will strap on an explosive vest and go for a stroll in a mall than there is for a displaced Palestinian to do the same thing?
Just a thought.
-XT
I don’t fully understand your questions here. I’ll take them one at a time.
Well, first of all, the law doesn’t really affect Palestinians living in Israel (except for those who are in Israel married to an Israeli citizen on an existing visa who are trying to get them renewed. There have some accusations that the government has been refusing to renew their visas. The law applies to Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Iranians trying to get Israeli visas based on their marriage to an Israeli. Is it discriminatory? Yes, which is why it’s being brought up before the Supreme Court, although the Israeli Supreme Court tends to be deferential when it comes to security issues.
An Arab doesn’t have to marry a Jew to get an identity card. So I don’t understand this question.
When you say “a Palestinian living within Israel”, what do you mean? Do you mean a Palestinian living in Israel on a work visa? Or do you mean an Israeli Arab (who isn’t a Palestinian)? Under the law as I understand it, keeping in mind that I’m not an Israeli immigration attorney, the Israeli Arab can live In Israel or outside of Israel, because he’s an Israeli citizen, but his Palestinian wife wouldn’t be granted a visa to live in Israel until she’s at least 25. In terms of the Palestinian with the green card and his wife, I have no idea.
And I’ve been called on it.
However I feel that US politics affects my life and the future of my world far more than the little irritation that is occuring on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
The question, like almost all on this board, was asked of *anyone *interested in providing a thoughtful answer.
Now get over yourself.
Thank’s for taking the time to answer those. I’m still a bit confused.
Wouldn’t the majority of Israeli Arabs not have considered themselves to have been Palestinian or at least being from Palestinian linage? Obviously not all but a large majority?
Would these same people have been able to keep some sort of dual nationality in the same way as say Jewish immigrants from the USA are?
Do the cards given to Israelies differ based on their ethic group? Could I tell who was a Jew and who was not from their I.D?
So you’re saying they make assumptins about moral character based on nothing but race?
Why would a person inclined to a suicide bombing become more likely to do it if they were citizens?
[quote=“shamblesmaybe, post:150, topic:554116”]
Thank’s for taking the time to answer those. I’m still a bit confused.
Ok. I’ll do my best
Probably most would, but they’re Israeli citizens. Usually when people use the term “Palestinian”, (like in this law, for instance) they’re using it to refer to either those people who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or those Arabs who fled what’s now Israel at the time Israel was founded.
There’s not really a Palestinian citizenship as such. The people of the West Bank were Jordanian citizens, but in 1988, the Jordanian government stripped them of their citizenship. Israel issues identity cards to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but an Israeli citizen wouldn’t be authorized one of those (and probably wouldn’t want one). The Palestinian National Authority issues passports, but I don’t think any Israeli has ever asked for one, and I don’t know what the PNA would do if they did.
Until 2005, Israeli identity cards included ethnicity, but they stopped doing that in that year. You’d be able to tell who was an Israeli from who was a Palestinian based on their cards, of course.
Thank’s again.
I expect it’s more of a cost-benefit analysis based on statistics, actually.
In any event, a American Jew moving to Israel is likely to have a much lesser effect on the long-term Jewishness of Israel than a non-Jew from Palestine… or a non-Jew from the U.S., for that matter. There is a not-insignificant incentive, supported by extensive historical evidence, to maintain a Jewish-majority population.
Besides, as before, Israel can set its immigration policies as it chooses, as can any nation. Heck, even Canada was free (and still is, I guess) to set a “none is too many” policy, even if it was morally reprehensible.
So if you want to know why Israel has immigration preferences… well… they want to have immigration preferences, since they serve perceived self-interests.
I don’t know about ‘moral character’, but I’d say from a risk analysis standpoint, the likelihood of an American immigrating to Israel and then going all mad bomber is going to be substantially less than a Palestinian returning after years of self-exile. After all, the Palestinians don’t exactly have no basis at all for years of anger and frustration, as well as the disappointed hopes of seeing the Jews pushed back into the sea or wiped out (not that the dreams of the Palestinians getting the whole shooting match were ever very realistic).
Depends on the citizen. Recall McVeigh?
-XT
It looks like Shamblesmaybe made an attempt to answer this question in another thread:
But, as has also been pointed out in that thread, that particular ruling forbids the government from establishing settlements, not private citizens.
I see where this is going. But let’s just look at this for a second. If it isn’t the governments responsibility to ensure that its citizens abide by international law then whose responsibility is it? Certainly if individuals among the private citizens of Gaza take to firing rockets into Israel, then Hamas is blamed. I think it is fair to hold a government responsible for the actions of its private citizens if it is not doing anything to prevent their actions… or as in this case, is actually encouraging their actions.
Anyway, for those with a open mind to all this.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2108727675104362672#docid=-5935337125702937135
Dragged from the deck of another thread I know but worth a watch.
Anybody who’s willing to commit military force to the area, approved by the U.N. That’s the beauty of international law - it looks pretty but nobody has to actually do anything about it unless they really really want to, and even if they really really want to, the U.N. can always stop them.
But the government has done much to promote and facilitate them, has it not?
You could make a Brickerian hairsplitting technical argument that they’re not violating their own laws, perhaps. But would it convince anyone else?
We’re all out of Baruch Goldsteins, I take it?