This guy just walked into the capitol of the United States and criticized the American people for exercising their first amendment right. The audacity.
This guy just walked into the capitol of the United States and criticized the American people for exercising their first amendment right. The audacity.
Israel is not going to stop until all the territory of British Mandate Palestine is theirs, and all non Jews are removed from it, one way or another. As an American, it’s absolutely infuriating that my government is so committed to helping them do it.
He specifically said in this speech that Israel would not resettle Gaza. It’s maybe the first time we’ve seen him directly oppose the radical wing of his government that has advocated for it.
He was lying. That’s like breathing to fascists anywhere in the world, but especially the ones in Israel. If you like podcasts, I recommend you check out Bad Hasbara for hundreds of clear examples of this.
He IS part of that radical wing when it comes to Gaza. What the fuck do you think he means by “total victory”?
— OverSimplified, 202x
And you believed him?
I believe it was a politically risky statement for him to make explicitly.
If he alienates his Right Wing, they could dismantle the government and force elections at will. In the past he has used vague statements or diversions to avoid making public statements that could pose political risks to him. No one was demanding an answer on the issue (and he left out plenty of issues that US lawmakers HAVE demanded to know about).
The better question is: Why would he take the risk of saying it at all?
Well, Israel has proven that they are willing to build settlements in areas they are not supposed to, so forgive me if I don’t take him at his word. But, maybe Israel is willing to give up that narrow strip of land, if they can have the rest of Mandatory Palestine. I’d believe that.
Removed by mod
You’re aware that over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab, right?
Yes and members of the Knesset have proposed stripping them all of citizenship and deporting them. There’s many Jim Crow style laws on the books that discriminate against them, so using them as a prop to show Israel being moral somehow is stupid.
Do you have a source for that? I’m not aware of it and don’t want to be unknowingly defending them if that’s the case.
From Israeli NGO Adalah: some Key Discriminatory Laws
The Law of Return (1950) grants every Jewish person in the world the right to obtain citizenship in Israel; by contrast, Israel denies the Right of Return to the Palestinian refugees.
The Absentees’ Property Law (1950) defines all Palestinians who were expelled or fled in 1947 as absentees and their property as absentee property. The law was used to confiscate millions of dunams of land later used for Jewish settlement.
The Citizenship and Entry Law (2003) bans family unification in Israel between Israeli Arabs and their spouses from the Palestinian Territories, Iran, Syria, Lebanon or Iraq.
The Benefits for Discharged Soldiers Law (2008) allows all institutions of higher education to consider military service –from which Israeli Arabs are exempt for historical and political reasons –when determining applicants’ eligibility for financial assistance.
The Economic Efficiency Law (2009) gives the government sweeping discretion to designate “National Priority Areas” and to allocate vast resources for their development, which it does so in a way that systematically excludes Arab communities.
The Admissions Committees Law (2011) allows hundreds of small towns built on state land to select applicants based on their “social suitability”. The law is used in practice to filter out Israeli Arabs and members of other marginalized groups.
The Nakba Law (2011) strips state funding from any public entity, including educational institutions, that commemorates the Nakba.
The Expulsion Law (2016) allows for the expulsion of Arab Knesset Members by their peers on ideological grounds, based on majority claims that they incite racism or support terror. (This is not used on MKs who support Israeli settler terrorist attacks)
The Kaminitz Law (2017) increases enforcement and penalization of planning and building offenses. The law has a disparate impact on PCI, many of whom are forced to build illegally due to decades of discrimination by the planning and building system.
The Jewish Nation-State Law (2018) guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish, denies the right to self-determination of PCI, and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring systemic inequality, discrimination and racism against Israeli Arabs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-parliament-attackers-citizenship-rescinded-law-1.6749567
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201028-israel-bill-to-revoke-arab-prisoners-citizenship-if-they-receive-pa-aid/
Note that simply receiving aid is grounds for revoking citizenship in the second link, and in the first, the definition of “terror” is almost as vague as “afraid for my life” defenses in police shootings in the US.
Thanks for this, I wasn’t aware of that law. It definitely isn’t acceptable to have laws based on the ethnicity of a particular subset of the population. Yet another reason why I hope to see Likud leadership at the Hague one day.
Basic law:
Yes, that one I was aware of. The rest of the law is sensible enough — not much different than what we see in Quebec, for example — but that clause is unacceptable.
“First, they came for the Palestinians, but I did not speak out, for I am not Palestinian…”
Yes, I’m aware there is an Arab, Muslim minority in Israel. They are the non Jews I was referring to.