No it’s not.
Israel hasn’t been a democracy in almost fifty years and was never a “western style social democracy”.
Can you please explain? There are several different models for a ‘Western style democracy’ and Israel is one to the best of my knowledge but perhaps you have detailed knowledge of some nuances that I do now.
Also, what was the ‘No, it’s not’ comment referring to. I stand behind everything I wrote but it may require some elaboration.
I’m not sure what a “western style social democracy” is, so I don’t know if it’s that or not. They’ve got universal health care. for whatever that’s worth. Don’t know how you can say it “hasn’t been a democracy in almost 50 years”, though. They’ve got universal suffrage for the Knesset, which has sole lawmaking power. The Prime Minister can’t rule by decree or anything. Seems pretty democratic to me.
Elected parliament. Pretty much the definition. What’s yours?
South Africa under Apartheid had an elected Parliament and it’s citizens always insisted it was a democracy. Despite this I’m reasonably certain everyone would agree it wasn’t a democracy.
Israel has ever since 1967 always insisted that “the occupied territories” weren’t really “occupied” and insisted they were “part of Israel” which is how they could explain that they weren’t violating international law by placing settlements within them.
There’s a reason one of the slogans of the Likud Party has always been “our Easternmost border is and always will be the Jordan River”.
They even went so far as to force foreign newspapers published in Israel to not have the Green Line and government sponsored maps refuse place the Green line there.
And of course schoolbooks in Israel don’t list the Green Line and make it a point to place the West Bank in Israel just as Syria always labeled Lebanon, “Southern Syria” and most Arab countries label over Israel “Occupied Palestine”.
Sorry, but if you’re going to claim the land as your own you can’t turn around and claim they people living there aren’t “citizens”
The South Africans tried this by claiming that the Blacks weren’t citizens of South Africa but instead were citizens of the various Bantustans and to everyone with an ounce of integrity and a functioning brain it’s clear the Israelis aren’t classifying them as citizens because they don’t want 40% of their citizenry to suddenly become Palestinian.
So no, Israel hasn’t been a democracy since it decided to occupy the West Bank unless you want to argue that South Africa under Botha was a Democracy
Beyond that, even if you want to classify it as a democracy, I’m not familiar with any “western democracy” since the collapse of Jim Crow that had officially racially segregating schooling, had official racial discrimination policies when it came to housing, employment and other government functions.
I"m also not familiar with any western democracy that requires it’s citizens to carry IDs that label their ethnicity/nationality declaring “Nationality: Arab” “Nationality:Jew” or the like.*
And of course let’s not even talk about Israel’s rather childish and extremely racist decision to refuse to recognize the marriage of Muslim boys and Jewish girls in Israel. I’m not familiar with any “Western style” democracies which still ban interracial marriage.
Now, some might object to my use of the term “racial” and “racist” throughout this but the Israeli government has, to their credit always made is clear that discrimination against Arabs and discrimination against Jews is “racism” so please no playing the “they’re not racists they’re bigots” card.
Anyway when you’re going to deny 40% of your population citizenship based on their nationality even though they’ve lived their for centuries then no, you’re not a democracy. Democracy is about the consent of the governed and Israel hasn’t remotely pretended to care about this in nearly 50 years.
*. I should add, that technically this is no longer printed on ID cards though not for anything that people might consider progressiveness or tolerance. In the mid 2000s, the Israeli Supreme Court(which really does deserve a lot of credit it doesn’t get) declared that gentiles who converted to Reform Judaism were to be considered Jews and would have “Nationality: Jew” placed on their IDs. The religious parties rather predictably had a hissyfit and Israel’s then interior Minister issued an order whereby all IDs would henceforth still say “Nationality:” but not list the nationality after this because they couldn’t stomach the idea of reform Jews being officially labeled “Jews”.
Bullshit! Israel has never incorporated the occupied territories! The comparison to apartheid is total garbage.
I thought you were knowledgeable about these subjects, but you’re clearly an ignorant fuck.
Meh. I think you’re overselling *who’s *doing the bombing and underselling why.
In one case it’s a territorial struggle [del]with Hamas[/del] with the non-Jewish inhabitants of Gaza; in the other it’s putting down Daesh. And Daesh is explicitly and without ambiguity a genocidal program that seeks to eliminate all Shi’ites it possibly can.
Similarly, the bombing of Dresden was an enormity, but breaking Nazi Germany was “worth it.”
James McPherson? Who, the Union major general or the 20th Century historian?
I looked up these names on Wikipedia. I guess I have heard of Benny Morris before. I think he’s very obviously biased and working from a specific and interested standpoint, but I can understand some of his conclusions.
Likud has insisted from the beginning that those territories are properly and historically part of Israel, though. :shrug:
Yeah, it’s a gray area. Truth be told, if this was any other nation the occupation would be recognized internationally as Israel’s territory. How much pressure is there on Russia to get out of the Crimea, which has only been occupied for a year? How much pressure is there on China to get out of Tibet? Armenia to get out of the territory they occupy of Azerbaijan’s?
This is why anti-semetism is often suspected of Israel’s critics.
Being fair, the UK only just found out that they were involved with Syria. The UK parliament rejected involvement in Syria back in 2013 but it came out a couple of weeks ago that “up to a dozen pilots” had been involved.
But as someone else pointed out, the public is generally pro bombing ISIS as it is for the greater good. War is annoying like that.
Yeah. Generally speaking, it’s OK to bomb people if you’re doing it for their own good. Doing it to protect your own country is a no-no, though.
Of course I never actually said we were doing it for their good, I said for “the greater good”, seeing ISIS as a threat to people all over the sodding place.
But of course you knew that, you just chose to try and pretend I wrote something else to try and show how anti-Israel I am.
You’re pathetic.
Edit:
Note that I didn’t actually even say if I, personally, was pro the bombing.
I think that’s a wild misunderstanding of an amalgam of things I’ve posted in the past covering many different specific topics. Having a “right” to something and “not having a problem” with something are different things, one passive and one active
Israel has a right to exist just as Palestine has a right to exist. Israelis have a right to request that their state be known as the Jewish state just as Palestinians have a right to request their state be known as Muslim. However, Israel is actively asking for it and its been a sticking point in negotiations, something I think is stupid and that they should give up asking. Palestinians have not been asking for that, so I have no problems with whatever state they cobble together.
In order to move negotiations forward, if people sincerely want to have 2 states, Israel should cease from making the request that their state be officially recognized as Jewish. That they make it a point of contention is problematic to me. That Palestine doesn’t make demands of their state’s official recognized religion is not problematic. If they did, that would bother me just as much
Then there’s the whole power discrepancy and how much influence each side has. Israel has more power to move peace forward than Palestine does, and thus holds more responsibility in doing so, but that’s a different argument.
So yeah, if you want to read it incorrectly, you can say that I don’t want “Jews” to have a state. I want Israelis to have a state, just not an officially Jewish one. They can be Jewish in practice, but its stupid to demand Palestine or Saudi Arabia or Iran to recognize them as Jewish. Thus, I or other liberals are not antisemitic
So then you think it’s wrong for the Palestinians to demand “an independent Palestinian State”?
If not, you do look like you feel the Jews don’t have the same rights as other ethnic groups.
Not just Likud. The Israelis have always insisted that “Judea and Samaria” are not “occupied” and are part of Israel.
No. Golan Heights are part of Israel, that is why they were annexed and all its residents given Israeli citizenship. Judea and Samaria are disputed territories, not “part of Israel”. They may become part of Israel, if annexed.
How this is relevant to whether the left is anti-Semitic I have no idea.
So then every Israeli PM who has claimed that their easternmost border is the Jordan River has been lying and every Israeli map that refused to show the green line was also lying?
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Cite for PM statements (and I mean official, government statements, not election propaganda). Or maybe you could give me official Israeli statements that say that Judea and Samaria are official “part of Israel”?
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Show me official, Israeli maps that refuse to show the green line. Weather map in a newspaper doesn’t count.
I do not think its wrong for Palestinians to demand an independent Palestinian state. I think it would be wrong of them to demand an independent Muslim state.
I think Jews are right to demand an independent Israeli state. I think Jews are wrong to demand an independent Jewish state and use that to hold up progress on peace talks.