Was the original immigrant in their ancestry legally admitted? Because as far as I can tell that is all the German law requires.
Where is the law that prohibits Muslims from becoming citizens because they are Muslim.
ISFAIK, Ibn is as American as one can get. Beyond his place of birth during the Shah’s rule or thereabouts, he has freely written about coming to the US as a child.
So I don’t buy that.
Then I’m not sure what you are complaining about.
Well that’s just erm…pure evil!!!
That’s incorrect. While it’s true that for the most part, the Arab side of the conflict is committed to the “all or nothing approach,” the Jewish side has offered to accept many compromises over the years. Starting at the very beginning in the late 1940s when the Jews accepted the UN Partition Plan and the Arabs rejected it and went to war instead.
Admitting a problem is good as a first step; taking steps to remedy it is of course better. How do you know as a fact that “thus far nothing has been done to remedy it”?
In any event, I ask this: would it be a better sign in your opinion if the Court Administration held a study that confirmed that there was no discrimination?
The issue over citizenship has been obscured by a lot of harsh words, but it is really quite simple.
Many countries base citizenship on some combination of two things: (1) being born in the jurisdiction; and (2) being the child of someone who is already a citizen.
This simple scheme is somewhat complicated by the fact that many countries extend “citizenship” out to people who have never actually lived in the country, on broadly based “ethnic” lines - a legacy of the fact that many countries were formed based on ethno-nationalism, and there are often people of the “national ethnicity” who are not actually living in the “nation”.
Such an extension of citizenship is often called a “right of return”, meaning, should those ethnic folks wish to “return” to the nation established for their ethnicity (despite the fact they were never there in the first place), their path to gaining citizenship would be made easy. It is, in short, an ethnic preference for gaining citizenship.
Germany has such a “right of return” for ethnic Germans (who were trapped in the Soviet Empire by WW2). Israel, famously, has a “right of return” for ethnic Jews.
In Germany, the existence of a “right of return” is somewhat problematic because until a decade ago, Germany did not extend citizenship to Turks born in Germany to non-citizens in Germany legally. Hence, “ethnic Germans” could walk into Germany and get citizenship no problem, but “ethnic Turks” who had been born in Germany, or even whose parents had been born in Germany, were not citizens.
In Israel, Palestinians born in Israel are of course citizens, but Palestinians who left/were expelled in '48 or who were born outside are not. They have argued that they, too, should get a “right of return”.
Whether such ethnic preferences are “racist” (more properly “ethno-centric”) or not is I suppose a question of emphasis. My own opinion is that they are, but it is ethno-centrism of a sort that is inherent in the very notion of ethno-nationalism.
I don’t for a “fact.” But if you look at the date on the article changes would have had to have been implemented very recently – have they?
I agree that the first option is obviously better. It’s the old “you have to recognize you have a problem before you can fix it.”
I have no idea. We’d have to ask an Israeli jurist, I’d think. However, I’m not stating out of hand that nothing has been done to remedy the situation. Maybe it has and maybe it has not. Also, if their legal system is anything like the Canadian, change can be expected to come very slowly.
Exactly my point.
It is a characteristic of a free society that people are always questioning it and criticizing its shortcommings and failures, and that they do so publicly. It is a mistake I think to take such questioning and criticism as evidence that the society is fundamentally flawed.
On the contrary, in a fundamentally flawed society, you will not get serious questioning and criticism of the authorities, at least, not in public - the only mechanism of dissent is riot and rebellion on the one hand or anonymous/private griping on the other.
Malthus, I agree with the overall tenor of your post – it’d be hard not to. So I’ll just ask instead, seeing that this inequality has been going on for most of our lives, at what point would you call it “endemic”?
I rather think Israel would be better off learning a thing or ten from Germany and its humanitarian stand vis-a-vis refugees & immigrants:
In shunning African refugees, Israel ignores Exodus’ call not to ‘oppress the stranger’
It was my impression that while Germany has a fast track “right of return” it has not erected extra hurdles for specific ethnicities. Or is there some special hurdle that a Turk must overcome that a Tibetan does not?
Ethnic preferences are bad but ethnic bigotry like we see in Israel natulization laws is pretty disgusting.
Israel is a fundamentally racist country and will continue to be so as long as it remains based on an archaic form of 19th Century blood and soil nationalism so none of what you’re mentioning is terribly surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention
During the 90s a huge scandal was created when the IDF was throwing out the packets of blood of Ethiopian Jews for fear that they were infected with AIDS without even being tested. This was repeated as late as the mid 2000s and outraged many who felt that this was extremely hypocritical the way the Israelis had showcased their rescuing of the Falashas to “prove” that Israel was committed to humanitarianism.
Similarly, controversy was caused when many of the Falashas(Ethiopian Jews) were expelled on the grounds that they were practicing Christianity despite probably vastly more Russian and/or Ukrainian(depending on whether one sees a difference) “Jews” were clearly practicing Christianity.
I assume you’re familiar with Gideon Levy(not a gotcha FWIW), and for those who aren’t, he’s written extensively on the plight of the Asylum seekers in Israel and I highly recommend his writings for anyone interested.
Yes, I’ve been reading “propagandist for Hamas” Gideon’s Haaretz columns for many years now and his book “The Punishment of Gaza” is high on my always growing reading list. I actually take it as a (very) good sign that he still able to live & write there, ostracized as he might be in many an Israeli circles.
And I agree, certainly not a ‘trick question’ this one. I think reading Levy’s columns are intricate to getting the ‘other side’ within Israel. So no bitching on my end this time around.
Can you explain why you would think that he would NOT be able to “live & write” there? Israel is not one of the Arab countries, you know, where they put journalists in jail for an inconvenient opinion. Can you give an example of an Israeli journalist arrested or jailed or chased out of the country somehow for his unconventional views?
Not journalist per-se that I am aware, but right off the bat I can think of two prominent American Jews that are banned from entering Israel and are quite welcomed elsewhere in the world:
-Noam Chomsky
-Norman Finkelstein
I also doubt John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt would get much of a reception there if allowed in at all. There are probably quite a few other, less prominent Jewish figures facing the same predicament.
As for ‘freedom of the press’ in Israel, I am afraid it’s pretty dismal for ‘the only democracy in the ME’: Israel’s ranking in press freedom has dropped to 92nd place out of 179 countries in 2011, according to a report by Reporters Without Borders. The advocacy group dropped Israel six places, from 86th last year.
Full list: Press Freedom Index 2011-2012
Not something to brag about methinks – thus my slight surprise that Gideon Levy keeps on ticking from inside of Israel. Again, to their credit, in case you missed it the first time.
How is that relevant? US bans some people from entering United States as well. I was asking about Israeli journalists. Since you’re surprised about Gideon Levy I am sure you can find examples of Israeli journalists being thrown in jail or prosecuted for their views, no?
Sorry for not getting back to you. Been a bit ill over the weekend.
There is that very real chance. Unfortunately, as the link I gave said, a lot of the targets were not rocket launch sites and there is a high amount of doubt that they had anything to do with rockets (storage or whatnot). More likely is that “smart bombs” are never as accurate as those dropping them claim they are. Either than or they just don’t give a shit where they drop them.
For the most part, yes. Of course there is always the issue of throwing loads of people into a certain area and then claiming a majority.
One could argue that this happened with Northern Ireland with the Ulster Scots in the seventeenth century (although as they moved more generically to Ulster as Northern Ireland didn’t exist, and wouldn’t for another two hundred years, it would be unusual to claim it was done to legitimise British rule of Nothern Ireland instead of giving it to the, then non existant and wouldn’t for 200 years, Republic), but then there’s Alessan’s claims of a “natural” border between Ireland and Britain. That seems like a sensible suggestion until you look at the history of Ireland and see that prior to Cromwell’s invasion it wasn’t a united Ireland at all, rather a mishmash of independent kingdoms that had wars with each other, one taking control of other bits and vice versa without any overall control. Yes, there is a natural border between Britain and that island, but there wasn’t a nation/kingdom/whatever of “Ireland” that Britain could have or not have a border with.
(Incidentally, that is why few ever say “Reunited Ireland”, instead opting for “United Ireland” as arguably it was only ever united under British rule).
So, basically, I think Alessan’s view of the Middle East being different because of natural borders is wrong. But the long and short if it is that the British invasion of that island happened centuries ago and, personally, I feel you have to get to a point where you can just let go. That’s where I was sarcastically going with my comment about Mercia.
Incidentally, my Mother is from Scotland, but a two generations after her the family is in Northern Ireland (she has a very typical Northern Irish maiden name). And Catholic. So this isn’t a regional pride/nationalism thing, in all reality I have ancestors that did the invading and ancestors that were invaded. I have family that were treated crappily by the British army all the way through the twentieth century. I just think after a while you have to let go. All countries’ borders have been changed through war, invasion and/or colonisation. That’s how it was back then. Let’s try to be a bit more civilised and move beyond that now …
The same advocacy group ranked the U.S. only 47th internationally in freedom of the press (behind such beacons of freedom as Niger, Namibia, South Africa and Romania), because of “violence against reporters covering the Occupy Movement”. :dubious:
There is no question that Israel has problems dealing with ethnic/religious hatreds. Most Israelis (if you put it to them in a way that does not get their backs up - i.e., don’t simply accuse the lot of them of being bigots) would agree.
What you are perhaps missing, is that these problems are multi-sided. It is not simply Jew against Arab, although that surely exists. It is also different “flavour” of Jew against Jew, and different “flavour” of Arab against Arab. Indeed, the hole-in-courner hatreds among different flavours of Christian in Jerusalem is an amusing, if depressing, microcosm of this (they riot regularly).
Such antagonisms are to be expected, given that the people living there live in a constant state of conflict with their neighbours, and are exposed to pressures of all sorts, and moreover live in a place that has been the focus of religious and political discord for millenia.
Indeed, if you ask a (secular, Jewish) Israeli who they most dislike, you may be surprised at the answer - it is more likely that they actively dislike (and thus would discriminate against) the ultra-Orthodox Jews, than against Arab-Israelis. Not that this means they like Arabs much, necessarily, mind.
So yes, there are problems. It would be naive in the extreme to assume that there would not be. To their credit, though, many Israelis recognize this and actively attempt to identify and remedy them.