Nothing, if the bit I bolded and underlined is how you see things. So you agree - Israel is an apartheid state.
Your earlier statement about the “idiot” and “doesn’t make it the truth” were what mislead me.
I’d say that most countries with racial minorities have a certain level of institutionalized racism - even the U.S. Is the U.S. an apartheid state?
No, it’s a genocidal nazi baby-eating state!
:rolleyes:
Why is it that you feel that you have to play quite so fast and loose with terminology? Apartheid has a very specific meaning, one that, to begin with, you are misusing to score rhetorical points. You are also basing your hyperbolic rhetoric, not on the state department’s actual thoughts on Israeli society, but on Israel’s treatment of certain foreign nationals.
And, more than that, you’re basing your claim that Israel, as a society is an “apartheid state” on one, single, quote. Seventeen words long. Jumping from the claim that certain foreign national tourists aren’t treated as a fungible block to the claim that thus Israel is an “apartheid state” should be a painfully obvious fallacy.
Weak.
That’s not how I read it. I read it as Arab Americans, not Arab Israelis. So, they are treating them as if the were second class US citizens, not Israaeli citizens.
You are going out of your way to find fault here. This is not apartheid, dude.
I hope you’re not presuming to lecture me as to the meaning of aprtheid, because that would be monumentally stupid on your part.
No, I’m basing it on the SD’s expectation of what treatment like an Arab in Israel would mean for an Arab-American.
No, I’m not basing my claim that Israel is an apartheid state on the statement, I’m saying the statement means that on some level, the staff at the SD also realises what I’ve said before on this board (and other victims of South African apartheid like Desmond Tutu, etc. have said) - Israel practices apartheid
Good thing I didn’t make that jump, then - I said that the US is inadvertantly admitting it, not that that’s the basis for my claim of apartheid. Nice strawman.
The key word is “institutionalised” - I was unaware that the US had institutionalised racism (not since the 60s, AFAIK).
No, he’s saying they are acting as if the person is from an Arab nation, not the US. It says absolutely nothing about what an Arab Israeli citizen is treated like. Nothing, nada, zilch. You have simply misread this and have worked yourself into a fit over one sentence in an article.
…or apartheid, even.
That’s your interpretation. I see nothing there about dual passports like Alessan alluded to, or any other reason to favour your interpretation over mine.
Why would Israel treat any foreign tourist like a citizen of it’s country? Your interpretation makes no sense.
Oh, and the complaint is how they are being treated in the Palestinian territories, not in Israel. Did you even read the article, or just see that one sentence and flip out?
Emphasis added.
On preview, John, you’ve said it better than I could… but I’ve still spilled some ink, so imma post.
So “lecturing” a person who is deliberately misusing terminology is wrong? You think that just because you have your location listed as being in South Africa that I shouldn’t call you on such foolish and hamfisted falsehoods? So you wouldn’t ever challenge any American’s definition of modern representative democracy and a civil society? Keep up that bluster, hope it’s working for you.
I quoted the State Department’s actual claims, they don’t support your allegation. There’s also the fact that your own cite puts the lie to your claim as they talked about American tourists’ treatment regarding non-Israeli territory. Leaving aside, of course, that you’ve commited the fallacy of False Analogy by conflating Israeli citizens’ treatment and American tourists’.
Ahhh, mind reading. A long and distinguished profession. You might want to actually read the State Department report that I cited. I’m sure its authors will be surprised when you tell them what they really and truly believe. :rolleyes:
Yes yes, you can torture their statements about one group of people to fit your agenda regarding a totally different group of people. You can ignore actual State Department publications in favor of reading one single line and claiming that it reveals “on some level” that the State Department actually agrees with you. And you twist a situation about foreign nationals into an ‘inadvertant admission’ of something that is explicitly gainsaid by actual State Department documentation.
Stunning display of proof, that.
Nope.
Honestly, you make a post a matter of minutes in the past, and now want to deny it and claim it’s a strawman?
You have an obvious ideological axe to grind, to such a degree that you ignore what’s actually said, invent things that were not said, and pretend that a quote about American tourists ‘proves’ anything about Israeli citizens. What’s worse is that you seem to actually believe this.
Institutionalized is perhaps a poor choice - maybe “ingrained,” “deep-rooted” or “endemic” would have been better. I can’t claim poor knowledge of the English language - after all, people have been known to pay me money to translate from Hebrew to English - but I’ve always assumed that “institutionalized” referred to social institutes (academia, the business world, etc.) in general, and not specifically to government legislation. I apologize for being unclear.
How dare the Israeli government treat Arab Americans different than other Americans! Only our government is allowed to do that!
No, you have the right meaning of institutionalised, but I still don’t see it in the US - AffAct legislation implies it would be the exact opposite.
Please show how I’ve misused the term, then. Apartheid is a government policy of discrimination on racial or ethnic lines. This is what Israel practices.
Firstly, SD statement from 2004 doesn’t say jack about a current situation. Secondly, :
I don’t see how this makes Israel any different from South Africa just 15 years ago.
I deal below about the issue of where this happened, and lastly, no, no false analogy. The article doesn’t say “treated like tourists”, it says “treated like Arabs”.
That’s again not what I got out of it. The telling bit, in that artice, is that they’re getting turned away before they even make it that far:
“the Israeli government has recently denied Palestinian-Americans and certain other Americans entry.” Therefore how they are getting treated by Israeli customs.
Look,everyone, my thesis is simple - *the fact that US State Dept. doesn’t want its citizens treated by Israel the way Israel treats its Arabs, shows they know there’s something wrong with the way Israel treats its Arabs. *
That’s what I got from the article. Show me how that’s wrong. It’s a simple statement, prove it wrong. From what the article, and especially that quote, said. It said Arabs, not Palestinians.
Leave aside for the moment my belief that Palestine is a de facto bantustan, and that the distinction between Israeli and Palestinian Arabs is a smokescreen.
You are assuming that Arab = Israeli Arab. There is nothing to indicate that was what the guy was talking about. You are assuming that “second class citizen” was refering to Israeli citizens, not US citizens. Again, there is nothing to indicate that was what the guy was talking about.
I don’t really have input on the primary topic, but this seems off to me. Affirmative Action is a government mandated program ostensibly designed to ensure that minorities are not discriminated against on the basis of race in hiring and other business practices, correct? If that’s so, then wouldn’t that suggest there is (or at least was, though I doubt it) institutionalized racism in the US to such an extent that the federal government needed to consciously take action against it? Again, institutionalized in the sense that it’s pervasive throughout societal structures such as academia and the business world, not at the level of government.
You are right, John Mace. There is a huge leap being taken, to assume that if Israel has some sort of policy of treating one group of non-citizens/tourists differently from another, that this means that there is a policy of treating one group of citizens differently from another. It simply is not the same thing, and one cannot be construed as proof of the other.
Is this supposed to be news? No credible person would deny that arabs (particularly Palestinians) are treated as second class citizens in Israel. Think of how we treat Mexican immigrants, now imagine that Mexicans have been strapping bombs to their chest and blowing up crowded intersections. I’m not saying its fair, but it certainly isn’t news to anyone I know who has been there.
That’s not what the OP is talking about. He’s talking about Israeli Arabs who are Israeli citizens, not Palestinians living in the occupied territories-- they are not Israeli citizens.