Israel refuses citizenship for gay man married to Jewish immigrant

[King_David]

The Interior Ministry is refusing citizenship and new immigrant status to a homosexual married to a Jewish new immigrant, despite the law's stipulation that the child, grandchild and partner of a Jew are entitled to Jewish immigrant rights.

-----------------snip--------------------------------

It's not all bad news, though. Goldberg says he's quite pleased with the Israelis he's met so far. "The Israelis we've met until now have been so sympathetic, I'm all the more amazed by how malicious the Interior Ministry can be," he says.

Attorney Dan Yakir, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, believes the High Court will grant Alvarez citizenship if asked to rule on the issue.

"It's a question the courts haven't dealt with yet," he says, "whether 'partner' in the Law of Return also applies to a same-sex partner. In view of the court rulings that have equalized the rights of same-sex couples and in view of the constitutional right for equality, it is obvious that the Law of Return must be interpreted as applying to same-sex couples, and that means an immigrant's partner must be given citizenship."


http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-refuses-citizenship-for-gay-man-married-to-jewish-immigrant-1.369936

[King_David]

1. My bet is the 'partner' in the Law of Return will soon apply to a same-sex partners

in a new Court Ordered law.

[dsc]

2. what about the religious parties?

I thought they had a stranglehold on what is and isn't marriage.

[pelsar]

3. yes and know

there are ways around them, such as getting married in cyprus, by a member of the knesset etc...but they definitely like keeping their power hold on the avg citizen (includes burial as well)....and they can make the avg citizen 'jump through hoops" if they feel like it.

[King_David]

4. Just like what happened in Canada

The Courts in Israel are Trailblazing the way,taking the lead:

From the article:

'In 2006, the High Court of Justice instructed the Interior Ministry to register same-sex marriages of couples who were married outside Israel in the Population Registry. In the wake of this ruling, the Interior Ministry registered Goldberg and Alvarez as married when they came to Israel. But despite the implications, the ministry refused to give Alvarez citizenship and an immigrant's certificate. '

[Ken Burch]

6. Why did you put "Court Ordered" in capital letters?

Did you MEAN to imply that any court ruling that backs this couple's immigration rights is illegitimate?

[King_David]

9. Tell us what you " imply"

And do not try tell everyone what I imply.

Your not a very good psychic.

[Ken Burch]

13. I didn't imply anything.

It's rather weird that you're using an example of the Israeli immigration system being homophobic and unjust and somehow trying to argue that this proves that Israel is superior to the Palestinians...

All of which raises the bizarre canard that Palestinians object to the Occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza because Israel is too socially liberal for their taste...because they couldn't POSSIBLY object to it simply because:

A)The Occupation and the siege are inherently unjust;

B)Nobody, anywhere, ever accepts the legitimacy of having another country's army occupy THEIR homelands.

[King_David]

16. Fabricate much ?

I was tring to argue that Israel is superior to Palestinians?

You just make this up or you really do consider yourself a psychic?
And not a very good one at that.

[King_David]

19. By the way ,when it comes to Gay rights,Israel is far superior to the Palestinian Governments.

Light years superior.

The PA and Hamas should be absolutely ashamed of their treatment of Gays.

The world should sanction them for that revolting attitude and behavior.

Its criminal !!


And no self proclaimed progressive should ever defend their track record with respect to Gays.

[Ken Burch]

22. Fine. But that isn't why the Occupation in place

And those who started it didn't start the settlers movement did not act out of a desire to promote tolerance, social liberalism or any other progressive values. They just wanted to take land for the sake of taking land. There was nothing noble or liberating in any aspect of the Occupation OR the creation of the settlements.

And the Occupation doesn't protect Palestinian gays. The only way to give them a chance is to end the toxic status quo. Only then can liberal movements on social issues among Palestinians ever have a chance. Such movements never emerged among captive peoples.

And I'm fairly sure that there are few gay rights activists in Israel who defend what Bibi is doing to Palestinians. A group that's been oppressed doesn't defend the oppression of another group.

Does the name Ezra Nawi mean anything to you?

[pelsar]

25. wrong again (but you prefer to ignore history)

Only then can liberal movements on social issues among Palestinians ever have a chance. Such movements never emerged among captive peoples.

you just answer based on some illusionary view of the world dont you?

not to long ago the jews were under the turkish, then british occupation and during those periods developed social democratic institutions (i realize facts and history is not your strong point, but you might want to acknowledge this..but that will destroy your whole thesis wont it?

more so since the PA took over (and hamas) the Palestinians are actually going backward in terms of civil and human rights and freedom of the press etc. (if your actually interested i'll find the link....). Which means if the PA and hamas can take away rights, they also have the option of granting them, they chose not to.

[Ken Burch]

28. I don't ignore history

I know as much about history as you do(and your personal insults towards me don't rebut that at all).

There's no comparison with the situation of the Zionists under British rule and the Palestinians under the Occupation at all. The Zionists under British rule had it much, much easier.

The British never restricted the Jewish population of Palestine as harshly as the Israeli government has restricted people on the West Bank.

There were never deliberate efforts by the British to impoverish the Jewish community in Palestine or prevent people within it from getting to their jobs and carrying on their lives on a daily basis. And there was no British or Turkish equivalent to the West Bank settlements. The British didn't stop people bringing in food or construction materials to make it possible for that community to live a decent as Israel does to Gaza. And the British never cut down Zionist olive trees or drove people off of their farms. So the situations aren't comparable at all.

Finally, the British never attempted to dictate who the leadership of the Zionist movement should be or which leaders it would deal with. That community, compared to the Palestinian Arabs, was largely left unharried by the authorities and ALLOWED to organize its own institutions...something Israel never allowed Palestinians to do under the Occupation. The British ALWAYS accepted that they'd have to deal with the Jewish Agency. For decades, Israel refused to accept the reality that it would have to negotiate with the PLO, even though there was NEVER any possibility of the PLO ever, under any circumstances, being replaced as the Palestinian leadership with a group that would settle for anything short of a Palestinian state comprising all the West Bank and Gaza.

It's simply arrogant for the Israeli government to say to Palestinians "You have to behave better before we take our boot off of your neck". The British never did anything remotely like that to any part of the Zionist movement-they never, for example, imposed collective punishment on Revisionist Zionists for the acts of LEHI and the Irgun, even when those two groups were being just as brutal as Hamas is now. And there's no way that anybody in the Israeli government can seriously argue that the Occupation is a battle for liberalism in the West Bank. No occupation is about liberating the occupied population.

It serves no purpose for Israelis to keep saying "we're better, we're better, we're better". The things Israel is good about don't justify the Occupation(and you know it)and they aren't the reasons that Palestinians want self-determination. As long as the Occupation was in place and the settlement blocs continuing to grow, and as long as the siege of Gaza were in place, the resistance would go on even if Palestine were just as socially liberal as Israel. If I were wrong about that, you'd see Palestinian LGBT people DEFENDING the Occupation. Yet no Palestinian defends it or defends the siege of Gaza at all.

[pelsar]

29. one statement at a time...do you stand by this?

hat community, compared to the Palestinian Arabs, was largely left unharried by the authorities and ALLOWED to organize its own institutions...something Israel never allowed Palestinians to do under the Occupation

so your stating clearly that the Palestinians do not have their own organizations and institutions under the occupation?

[Ken Burch]

31. They've had to constantly struggle for the space to create them

even Fatah(the successor to the PLO, the organization that should have been accepted, from the start, as being just as truly the Palestinian leadership as the Jewish Agency was the Zionist leadership)had to struggle to be allowed to do what it had to be allowed to do, which was to be included in the peace negotiations, as opposed to the Agency, which was always recognized for negotiating purposes by the British from the start.

Palestinian leaders were restricted in their movements and sometimes forced into either exile or internal siege(like the completely pointless restrictions imposed on Arafat at Ramallah at the end, restrictions that never had any positive results).

The Israeli efforts to delegitimize the PLO did that group, a group that was at least trying to work for a peace deal, horrible damage and had no effects other than to help give Hamas its chance for a breakthrough in popularity. It's not as if there was ever any chance that the PLO would ever, under any circumstances, have been replaced by a group that would accept the permanent stationing of IDF troops in the Jordan Valley and the preservation of the major settlement blocs, let alone one that would accept anything short of full statehood(such as Begin's arrogant and inherently unjust and unworkable "autonomy" proposal).

And as for nonviolent resistance, people among the Palestinian community who tried to organize that(like Mubarak Al-Awad)were repeatedly harassed(when, being nonviolent, they should have been left alone)isolated, and arrested.

It was made as difficult as possible for Palestinians to get higher education(something the British never interfered with in the days of the Mandate as far as the Zionist side went)by repeatedly closing down Bir Zeit University.

If it went to far to say that the Israeli government never allowed the organization of Palestinian institutions, we can fairly say they allowed as little of it as possible...and the difference between that and never was very, very small.

[pelsar]

33. just to clarify

we can fairly say they allowed as little of it as possible...and the difference between that and never was very, very small.


so if i understand correctly the PA security services are considered by you to be "very small"...the PA govt is pretty much "almost non existent"

[Ken Burch]

35. Those were created after Oslo, after decades in which

the Palestinian people were allowed virtually no right to self-government at all. The fact that this changed after 1994 does not negate my larger point. In the 1967-1994 period, The Israeli government tried desperately to prevent the Palestinians from developing their own institutions and spent a significant part of that time denying that "Palestinians" were a people at all-insisting, years after this insistence had become ludicrous, that these people had no real connection to the land of Palestine at all and were simply part of what the CAMERA/FLAME ads always called "the unrelenting Arab campaign to destroy Israel".

[pelsar]

36. oh....

so you acknowledge that the PA does actually have institutions (wow that was tough).....in your previous posts you seem to have neglected to mention anything about time....leaving out critical information is part of the demonization process (you do that a lot).....I understand why you did that, because if you put it in, your forced to admit that the israeli govt and its people had a major change in attitude towards the Palestinians....

why dont you like that?

[Ken Burch]

40. The Israeli government did change its policy for awhile

(And no, I don't have a problem admitting that the Israelis did change on this in the 90's(although it is legitimate to say that they were wrong to demonize the idea of a two-state solution prior to 1994). BTW, I read a recent interview with Tom Segev in which he pointed out that Yitzak Rabin suggested right after the Six Day War that Israel give the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians for a state of their own.

I don't see the Israeli people as evil. Nor do I assume that they and the Israeli government are always on the same side on security. I don't hold people responsible for the actions of the governments they live under.

You came damn close to implying that I was an antisemite with that last post, and you owe me an apology for that.

[pelsar]

60. apologize?....

lets see:
first you claim that NO people under an occupation ever made liberal institutions;
Only then can liberal movements on social issues among Palestinians ever have a chance. Such movements never emerged among captive peoples.

when i mentioned that obvious that the jews did it, you then claimed that the Palestinians did not have the same conditions that it was "worse" and they had no institutions....except that post olso 20+ years ago they had/have in fact far better conditions than the jews did in 48 in terms of strong institutions/UN involvement/ etc.
_____

so what do we call your claims?
you were wrong in your first statement
your excuse was weak and "forgot" the last 25 years of occupation.

did you not know such basic information? if you did (you claim to know the history), why did you make such foolish claims?

apologize for calling you out on such a blatant, half truth version of the history?

quite the opposite, i would say you owe the whole israeli people tons of apologies, not for your political viewpoint, but in attempting to defend it, using half truths...all the while insulting many of our citizens (example) as mass murders (it our citizens that prepared/loaded the bombs/mapped out the areas for the "carpet bombing' that you claim we did for example, it was israeli citizens that worked hard to develop social institutions while under the turk and brit occupations, that you first claimed never happened).
________

i apologize when i make mistakes in history, make a argument using info i can't back up...i don't apologize for calling out a post that is so narrow in its viewpoint that it leaves out essential information....and i cannot claim to know the motivation for such actions, so don't try.

[Shaktimaan]

63. yes but...

weren't the Palestinians (in the west bank), citizens of Jordan for just about that entire period of time? Why would the citizens of an existing state be offered their own government?

were simply part of what the CAMERA/FLAME ads always called "the unrelenting Arab campaign to destroy Israel".

Wasn't that the PLO's stated mission until 1993? Yet you're critical that "the Palestinian people were allowed virtually no right to self-government at all." Why would Israel try and empower an entity whose goal was to destroy it?

[King_David]

55. And its not the reason they sell cheese in Milwaukee either

Or that the Exon Valdez spilled so much oil.

Does the name Robbie Cohen mean anything to you?

:eyes:

[azurnoir]

24. Thanks for the link Jordan legalized being Gay 37 years before Israel n/t

[King_David]

39. Jordan is a gay paradise

Ha ha !

[aquart]

5. Naturally, Israel is the only country to do so. Right?

Every other country on this earth recognizes gay marriage and grants full citizenship to a citizen's same sex spouse.

Right?

[pelsar]

7. morality is not really the worlds strong point....

its just used as another method to delegitimize israel...I don't believe there is pressure on the US from europe to have "gay rights." Nor do i believe there is pressure from US to europe to keep their borders open to african immigrants.

nor do i believe the "worlds morality cops" are pressuring saudi arabia to loosen their grip on sexual apartheid (here the definition actually fits quite well). I wont even touch the worlds lack of pressure on hamas or the PA as to their attitudes toward their own gays, womens rights, etc

is it any wonder why we don't take the worlds "morality lectures seriously"

oh yea, hows the bombing going in libya these days...i understand that targeting civilians, carpet bombing and just general collective punishment (bombs do that) is now the norm..

[Violet_Crumble]

8. The OP's not about Europe or the world putting pressure on anyone...

Have I missed something in the OP? I didn't see any mention of Europe or the world putting any pressure on anyone at all...

[pelsar]

10. its a discussion about morality....

my time here has shown that even the most standard of democratic internal conflicts that every western democratic country has...gay rights, economic distribution of resources, freedom of the press, etc are eventually used to declare or imply that israel is not a democracy, but a racist/fascist/genocidal theocratic regime.....or some variation there of.
(one of Sweden's newspapers had us harvesting arab organs....)

i simply "jumped the gun" before the traditional post(s) came about....called it preemptive action, why wait for those posts?...and if they dont show up, all the better, for perhaps it might make a change here and discussions will leave out the exaggerations and hyperbole?...and then i wont feel like i have to wait for them and attempt to prove the obvious?

i dont like having to waste time and "prove" that democracies, such as israel, have freedom of choice or that democracies (for example) get to have stupid rabbis make stupid statements and it doesnt mean that israel is a theocratic state, etc.......

--------------------
this would be a good example.....a clear implication that israel really isn't a democracy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x356392
1. Nice To See The Only Free Democracy In The Middle East In Action (n/t)Fr

if this wasnt the I/P conflict such a statement could be considered simply innocent enough-a mild exageration, but this is the I/P conflict so it doesnt have such innocence attached to it.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Silly me for thinking it had anything to do with the OP...

I'll leave you to it, then...

[shira]

12. The delegitimizers use these liberal critiques as their ammunition...

...to bash Israel.

Not that they care about liberal values b/c when's the last time you heard their concern about gay rights within Gaza or the West Bank, for the Palestinians they say they love and support so much? See, they don't love them if they can't use them to bash the Jooooooz!

So they use these liberal critiques like Hamas would in order to attack their perceived enemies. Pull liberal heartstrings in order to get to the useful idiots they can use to assist them in their ongoing war...

This totalitarian far Left is no better than their far Rightwing counterparts (especially those who are their natural comrades vs. Israel).

[Ken Burch]

14. Western Europe already has full rights for LGBT people.

And there is massive American LGBT pressure for Eastern Europe to do the same...so your "it's only because it's Israel" canard is once again disproved.

Also, a lot of us oppose what's being done in Libya, and you know it. And we speak out about that just as strongly as we oppose the Occupation. And you know THAT as well. So once again no "double standards" and nobody on this issue is driven by antisemitism, because criticism of the Israeli government ISN'T driven by hatred of Jews and never has been.

[shira]

15. Bullshit, Ken - did you just make this up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory#Western_Europe

Israel's ahead of most liberal democracies - want to do a count?

Or maybe Israel is full of shit, doing this only to cover for their Zionist crimes? :eyes:

[Shaktimaan]

17. Do you really think so?

because criticism of the Israeli government ISN'T driven by hatred of Jews and never has been.

You don't think that a double standard exists against Israel in general? Or that it is strictly because Israel is a Jewish state? Really?

So how would you explain the amount of resolutions in the UN against Israel? Or the fact that Israel is the sole nation lacking full rights within the UN structure itself?

What in the world do you think it is driven by then?

[Ken Burch]

21. The Arab hostility to Israel, a hostility I don't agree with

(other than to agree that Palestinians must have self-determination), has not been about the fact that Israel self-identifies as Jewish. If the Arabs were pathologically anti-Jewish, they would not have protected the indigenous Jewish communities in their countries during World War II at the same time that every European Christian country turned their Jewish populations over to Hitler with no questions asked.

Of course there have been Arab anti-semites(though none as vicious as the European variety, as the above example shows)but that was not the primary issue in post-1948 Arab attitudes toward Israel

(where it has been expressed, I condemn it and that should always have gone without saying). TO a much greater degree, The Arab attitude has been based on Israel being a self-proclaimed representative of "European" culture and giving at least the strong impression that it would act as an agent of Western power in the Middle East. The tendency of Israel to act as if it was the ONLY civilized country in the region and that all Arab/Muslim states were barbarous hellholes(and to act like this even in times when Arab attitudes toward Jewish people were much kinder than now)also had a lot to do with the tension.

If you're a small country in a region, you can't continually berate and insult all the other countries around you and NOT expect that to cause tension. Nor can it have helped that the Israeli leaders kept repeating the assertion that Arab and Muslim countries could NEVER live in peace with Israel and could never be anything but regressive police states(an assertion the Arab democracy movement has now disproved once and for all).

It serves no purpose to keep saying "they just don't like Jews". It's not necessarily true(as the World War II example shows)and repeating it ad nauseum achieves nothing.

You can't diss people into making peace with you. No matter who you are. No matter where.

[Shaktimaan]

41. So let me get this straight...

Despite the (literally) mountains of anti-semitic literature, speeches, rhetoric, replicated studies and actions in the Arab world over the past decades, your belief is that the Arab hatred of Israel is due to Israel acting like they're better than the Arabs and insulting them too much? And you think they are clearly not anti-semitic because they killed less Jews than the Europeans did?

So all of those massacres that did occur, the widespread ethnic cleansing over the entire of the Arab kingdom, and the words of Arab leaders and columnists the world over is unrelated to anti-semitism? That's interesting. Because everything I've described is actually the definition of anti-semitism.

TO a much greater degree, The Arab attitude has been based on Israel being a self-proclaimed representative of "European" culture and giving at least the strong impression that it would act as an agent of Western power in the Middle East.

And your evidence for this is... what? Do you have a single thing to back this up? I have truckloads and truckloads of anti-semitic evidence. Really, just GOBS of it. What is your evidence?

It serves no purpose to keep saying "they just don't like Jews".

Which is why there are so many indigenous Jews thriving throughout the Arab world. Not massacred. Not ethnically cleansed. In every single Arab state. Nope. They exist and are happy.

It was never "they just..." Anti-semitism (and by extension, all bigotry), is far more complex than some over-simplified ideology seemingly based on nothing. That said, to try and refute the fact that anti-semitism is widespread to an unchecked degree throughout the Arab kingdom shows a truly astonishing lack of knowledge. I don't have to mindlessly repeat "They just don't like Jews." They say it themselves.

Nor can it have helped that the Israeli leaders kept repeating the assertion that Arab and Muslim countries could NEVER live in peace with Israel

Ummm... you have this backwards. It is the Arab states who said this about Israel. Can you show me where Arab states cited Israel's belief in this mantra as a reason for their denial of Israel's legitimacy?

Israel has had peace with some Arab states for decades now. What Israeli leader has been denying that those peace agreements exist?

You still haven't addressed the double standard I raised. Israel's treatment at the UN... Do you believe that this is due to a fair and equitable process? That they are NOT singled out for criticism? What is your explanation for Israel having more resolutions against them than every other UN state combined, and why does Israel have less rights than every other state?

(an assertion the Arab democracy movement has now disproved once and for all).

Hahahaha. Stop it! You're killing me! I kid, they really DO have such vibrant democracies now. No, really... do you know what the word "disproved" means?

[Ken Burch]

44. I didn't say that democracy had been established as of now

merely that there is a mass movement for it throughout the region, and that the existence of this movement in and of itself proves that the Arab world is just as capable of change as any other.

[King_David]

56. 'you can't continually berate and insult all the other countries around you '

Ha ha ha ha

The never sung Kumbayah together?

That caused the Mideast conflict and antisemitism , huh?

Oh Boy !!!!

:silly:

[Ken Burch]

59. Nothing I said equated to wanting anybody to sing "Kumbayah"

(btw, I don't even freaking LIKE that song...and it was never sung in Africa, only in the Sea Islands, and nobody ever actually sang it as "Kumbayah" at all...they were just singing "Come By Here" in a Gullah accent and some white folksingers THOUGHT they were singing "Kumbayah"-so can the "K word" please be retired as a euphemism for extreme naivete already?)

I never said there was NO antisemitism in the Arab world...just that it wasn't the total driving force behind everything the Arabs have done since 1947. What's so terrible about admitting that? And about admitting that the Arabs are not the biggest supporters of antisemitism on the entire planet(Christian Europe was far worse for much of its history).

Why is it so threatening to admit that this dispute isn't solely the Arabs' fault?

Most Israelis don't think the situation is as simple as you do.

[King_David]

61. `Most Israelis don't think ...`

you speak for 'most' Jews as well?

[pelsar]

18. i'm sorry ken..

ever since you explained to that we carpet bombed gaza and devastated the area, (not to mention my favorite: accused israeli generals of being like all other generals and clearly implying that they're willing to sacrifice their own kids for their own promotion)....and then refuse to look at google maps/picts to explain.....

i cant really put much credit to your claims....

the massive American pressure on eastern europe?...where? your actually claiming that you "disproved it" by claiming there is pressure (with no links)? you've got to be kidding!. However, I'm open to being wrong, perhaps i exaggerated (isn't that the standard here?....so show me "this pressure." and i'll try to be patient.

_____________


and the Libya bombings? I didnt say people were not opposed, i just dont see the same outrage nor standard accusations. they've been bombing for over 100 days now..... Can you point me to some links where the US is being accused of "carpet bombings" (even some forums would be good start).

come on Ken, if you can't back up what your defending with a few links, that i guess we can conclude theres no substance behind it.

[Ken Burch]

20. The people of Gaza regard the bombings as devastation

That's proof enough. Few of them are responsible for what Hamas does and nobody who isn't actually a member of Hamas should ever have to suffer for what Hamas does.

[pelsar]

23. i recently read from a progressive post in israel...

where the write wrote:
"fact" are only ideas..

now Debbie is a nice lady and wrote a very nice book

http://www.nomoreenemies.net/

but here i disagree with her and you....facts are not ideas, facts are not emotional responses, facts are not exaggerations.....facts, like word definitions have very specific meanings that are the basis for real communication. Play with those meanings and you will not be able to clearly get you message across....at least to those who aren't emotionally tied up.

________

we both know that you have no idea what "the people of gaza think" you dont know arabic, you dont read gaza newspapers, but that is all beside the point. You used words to describe something that in fact (note the word fact, representing an actual event) never took place. Gaza was never devastated nor was their any carpet bombing....it doesnt make a difference that someone believes it happened, some believe jesus really came back down to earth....i guess according to you then we all must believe it (or was that allah? or perhaps moses or buddah?-shucks according to you I should i believe them all?)
__

btw if you ever want to really understand the actual conflict, you going to have to start by learning actual facts and history and leaving your generalizations/demonizations behind.....feel free to interpret them differently, that is the essence of free will but at least then you might have a chance at convincing us zionists that we all we have to do is "apologize" for refusing to do a repeat of 1945, and then we all hold hands and sing kumbaya....

[Ken Burch]

26. Why are you still holding a grudge about the phrase carpet bombing?

You have no reason to still be angry about that. It doesn't even matter anymore that I used that phrase and it's childish that you keep using it against me. Whatever the term you use, it's been repeatedly shown that Gaza took heavy damage in the wars and it's been shown that it was always wrong to target schools.

BTW, nothing that I've ever criticized Israel for was ever necessary to prevent another Holocaust. It's only European Christians that are capable of being Nazis. Arab and Muslim countries never turned the Jewish communities in their countries over to Hitler. Therefore, the only people you have any right to be enraged about regarding that are the Europeans and North Americans who actually aided and abetted Hitler.

I've studied the conflict for years. I just disagree with you. It's simply not true that the war is all the Arabs' fault(there's blame on both sides and this must be admitted)and it's simply not true that the 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes in 1948 could never have been allowed back. Most of them would likely have let it go if only they'd been able to return. The rank-and-file Palestinians were not in lockstep with the outside Arab leaders on that.

Face it, both sides share responsibility and the Palestinians were never the successors to the Nazis.

And accept the fact that it, after 1967, it was never reasonable or fair of the Israeli government to expect the other Arab countries to make peace without the creation of a Palestinian state at the same time. There was no excuse for the Israeli line from 1967 to 1994 that the idea of a two-state solution was anathema, or for the slander that those who supported it wanted to destroy Israel.

Finally, I never said anything as naive as the "just apologize and sing Kumbaya" crack. Both sides need to make amends. What I said was that one of the things that needs to happen, in addition to compensation for any Palestinians that won't be allowed to return to their homes, there needs to be an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that they had and have just as deep a connection to these lands as do those that self-identify as Zionists, and that there needs to be an an admission that they didn't deserve to lose what they lost in 1948. Both of these could easily be done without endangering Israeli security in the slightest. What can never work is to keep saying to them that they got what was coming and that it was never their land. That was wrong for the British to say in Ireland, it's wrong when my ancestors said it to Native Americans(and equally wrong when those same ancestors said that God entitled them to take the land), and it's wrong here.

There also needs to be compensation and a Truth and Reconciliation commission as they established in South Africa. The only way to end the war is to heal the wounds. Peace through victory isn't possible here. Understood?

[pelsar]

27. because i dont like demonizations.....or exaggerations...

and yes it matters...i am only too familiar with the concept of keep on throwing up lies and exaggerations whether true or not to demonize a group..and when one is called upon it, just move on to the next one...as you did (I believe it was calling my neighbor someone who would be willing to sacrifice his daughter for his career...)

Your pretty insistent that we acknowledge our mistakes...how about you?....are exaggerations and lies permissible?


Whatever the term you use, it's been repeatedly shown that Gaza took heavy damage in the wars and it's been shown that it was always wrong to target schools
of course gaza was "damaged" thats what happens when bombs are dropped....but terms do matter, carpet bombing is mass murder, targeted bombing is not... you simply accused us of attempted mass murder

(btw saying its always wrong to target schools pretty much ignores the reality that sometimes people shoot from schools, you should stop using such terms as "its been shown or its been proven---these are not your strong points.....)
____

oy ken....you say you studied the conflict?...then surly you know about the pogroms/blood libels in the arab countries? yes?

[Ken Burch]

30. In World War II, the Arab and Muslim countries PROTECTED Jews from the Holocaust

It would have been perfectly easy for those countries to put the Mizrahi on tramp steamers and float them over to Marseilles(under Vichy rule)or Italy once Mussolini was dependent on Hitler or Greece under the Nazi occupation and those groups would be dead.

Yet, unlike Europe, the Jews of North Africa, of the Arab and Muslim world, survived the Nazi era largely unscathed. This, to me, is proof that Arabs and Muslims are not the successors to the Tsar and Hitler that Ben-Gurion and Begin insisted on labeling them as being.

There have been antisemitic events in Arab and Muslim countries, but never on the scale of those of Christian Europe. There was never an Arab Auschwitz...never a Muslim Inquisition...

The relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Arab world have been varied and ambiguous...they've not always been utopian...but they've been far more humane than the ones that existed in places like Germany, Poland, Russia, France and even England(a country that was Judenrein for centuries).

So one of the great injustices in all of this is that Arabs have had to suffer for what Europeans did. This simply should not have happened. They should not have been demonized or collectively labeled as antisemitic savages...many, if not most of them weren't and even today a lot of them aren't. There are many reasons for the Arab/Israel enmity...it's simplistic, inaccurate and totally unhelpful to insist on reducing it all to "they hate the Jews"(or, in shira's gratuitously annoying misspelling, "the jooozzz"). Some of them did. Some of them do. But that's not the root of all of it...and insisting on acting as if it is does nothing but make it more and more difficult to create the reconciliation program that has to occur.

The Arabs need to admit that Israelis have had grievances in this...and equally, the Israeli side needs to take responsibility for its share of the blame. This simply isn't asking too much.

[oberliner]

32. 1945 Tripoli pogrom

The Tripoli pogrom of 1945 was the most violent rioting against Jews in North Africa in modern times. From November 5 to November 7, 1945, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in a pogrom in Tripoli. Together with previous persecutions of Jews by the pro-Italian Libyan government during World War II, the Tripoli rioting became a turning point in history of Libyan Jews. Shortly, the Jewish community of Libya ceased to exist, with most of its members fleeing to Israel and Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Tripoli_pogrom

Farhud

Farhud refers to the pogrom or "violent dispossession" carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1-2, 1941 during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. Before British and Transjordanian forces arrived, around 175 Jews had been killed and 1,000 injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud

[Ken Burch]

34. A total of 315, versus millions in Europe.

Again, it's obscene to even begin to compare the acts of Arabs to the Nazis. And it also bears noting that, prior to 1948, almost no one in the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world supported Zionism(they did after they ended up leaving the Arab countries, an series of events that still needs much fuller historical examination since there were probably groups on both sides of the early Arab/Israeli dispute that helped incite it).

And the casualty counts in those were comparable to the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin(after which, for no good reason, the surviving residents of that town were never allowed to return to their homes) and the Gaza Massacres of 1956.

(Having said that, obviously I also deplore what occurred in Tripoli and Bagdadh-as you should have already known, since you know me to be a decent human being).

[oberliner]

37. You claimed that: "In World War II, the Arab and Muslim countries PROTECTED Jews from the Holocaust"

This is not true.

Some countries did, some countries didn't.

[pelsar]

38. sorry ken wrong again....(should i start keeping score?)

Nov 1945

One day after rioting in Egypt subsided, much more extensive and devastating anti-Jewish violence erupted in Libya. A minor altercation between Arabs and Jews near the electric power station outside the Jewish quarter of Tripoli was followed the next day (November 5th) by an anti-Jewish pogrom (p. 158):

...mobs numbering in the thousands poured into the Jewish quarter and the Suq al-Turk (the bazaar where many Jewish shops were located) and went on a rampage of looting, beating, and killing. According to one confidential report, weapons were distributed to the rioters at certain command centers, one of which was the shop of Ahmad Krawi, a leading Arab merchant...only Jews and Jewish property were attacked. The rioters had no difficulty in distinguishing Jewish homes and businesses because prior to the attack, doors had been marked with chalk in Arabic indicating "Jew," "Italian," or "Arab." Mob passions reached a fever picth when a rumor spread that the Chief Qadi of Tripoli had been murdered by Jews and the Shari'a Court burned. The terror then spread to the nearby towns of Amrus, Tagiura, Zawia, Zanzur, and Qusabat.

------

Zachino Habib, Tripoli's Jewish community president, provided this eyewitness account of what transpired in Tripoli, Zanzur, Zawia, Qusabat, and Zitlin on November 4-5, 1945 (p. 158):

...the Arabs attacked the Jews in obedience to mysterious orders. Their outbursts of violence had no plausible motive. For fifty hours they hunted men down, attacked houses and shops, killed men, women, old and young, horribly tortured and dismembered Jews isolated in the interior...In order to carry out the slaughter, the attackers used various weapons: knives, daggers, sticks, clubs, iron bars, revolvers, and even hand grenades

[Shaktimaan]

42. you do realize...

that Deir Yassin occurred during a war. The thousand+ Jews who were killed across the Arab world during this time frame were not involved in any kind of war whatsoever.

(they did after they ended up leaving the Arab countries, an series of events that still needs much fuller historical examination since there were probably groups on both sides of the early Arab/Israeli dispute that helped incite it).

Yeah, a million people all decided to leave their property, bank accounts and everything they owned to immigrate to Israel because of Zionist incitement. That makes sense.

[Ken Burch]

43. I didn't say it was all down to "Zionist incitement"-although some of that clearly did happen

A variety of factors were clearly involved. If we can rule out the idea that it was all due to that, we must equally rule out the idea that every Arab/Muslim country suddenly decided to deliberately drive out its entire Jewish population, even though they knew that said population in most countries had never had anything whatsoever to do with Zionism.

It's absurd to assume that every other country in the region just suddenly, for no logical reason, decided to get in touch with its inner moustache-twirling villain.

We can also assume that the Palestinians themselves would never have wanted the Mizrahi to be forced out of their homes either, and thus can't be held responsible for that event's occurrence.

[Shaktimaan]

45. why not?

We can also assume that the Palestinians themselves would never have wanted the Mizrahi to be forced out of their homes either, and thus can't be held responsible for that event's occurrence.

The Palestinians participated in anti-Jewish riots, ethnic cleansing and massacres themselves. Why would they have been against it occurring elsewhere?

If we can rule out the idea that it was all due to that, we must equally rule out the idea that every Arab/Muslim country suddenly decided to deliberately drive out its entire Jewish population, even though they knew that said population in most countries had never had anything whatsoever to do with Zionism.

Well, there WERE massacres in several Arab countries, against their Jewish citizens, at around the same time, even though they knew that said population in most countries had never had anything whatsoever to do with Zionism. Massacres are usually pretty deliberate.

It's absurd to assume that every other country in the region just suddenly, for no logical reason, decided to get in touch with its inner moustache-twirling villain.

Ummm, OK, I'll bite. What IS the logical reason for them doing so then?

[Ken Burch]

46. Why Not? You'd really ask that question?

If the reason for Palestinian opposition was(as it was)not wanting to be reduced to a minority in their homeland and then, inevitably, be driven out as a result, then the last thing they would want, using pretty straightforward logic, would be to have a larger group of non-Palestinians suddenly show up in said homelands to make them an even smaller minority.

The natural thing for Palestinians to want would be for the Mizrahi to stay where they were.

And Palestinian actions were mainly anti-Zionist, not "anti-Jewish".

And as to why the Mizrahi population transfer of the 1940's and 1950's occurred, I don't think there was one single cause...a combination of factors were involved...but clearly, it serves no purpose at all to pretend that it was just the Arabs getting collectively evil and driving out people they'd lived with side-by-side, in at least relative amity(compared to Christian Europe)for centuries, simply because they decided to obligingly serve the Zionist narrative by doing evil for no reason.

It could never be that simple and pretending that it was serves no positive goal.

Both sides did major crimes in this conflict. It was never all the Arabs' fault-any more than World War One was all Germany's fault.

[Shaktimaan]

47. for being anti-zionist...

and not anti-Jewish they certainly spent a lot of time and effort attacking and expelling the local indigenous Jewish population. Why is that again?

[Ken Burch]

48. Most likely confusion and I don't defend those attacks.

They were on the same moral plane as Deir Yassin and the Gaza Massacres in the Fifties.

It should be an absolute rule that civilians are not attacked in war, but at this point it's not.

Why are you so fixated on pretending that it was all the Arabs' fault anyway? It clearly wasn't...no dispute is ever totally the fault of one side in it...so why not admit that both sides contributed to the problem?

The "Israel was always the innocent victim" meme isn't even believed by most Israelis anymore.

[Shaktimaan]

51. killed in war?

what war was happening then exactly? Deir Yassin was a strategic point in the siege of Jerusalem, we KNOW why the massacre there happened.

What war was going on in Libya or Iraq, etc. that resulted in these deaths? There were a lot of them.

Most likely confusion

Oh, there were CONFUSED! OOOHHHHHH! Yeah, you're going to have to explain that. Confused how?

---

on edit: sorry, mixed up the posts. We are talking about the Palestinians here. OK... post edited below.

what war was happening then exactly? Deir Yassin was a strategic point in the siege of Jerusalem, we KNOW why the massacre there happened.

What war was going on in Hebron or Jerusalem or anywhere in the 20's that resulted in these deaths? There were a lot of them.

Most likely confusion

Oh, there were CONFUSED! OOOHHHHHH! Yeah, you're going to have to explain that. Confused how?

[Shaktimaan]

50. I wasn't talking about transfer.

I was specifically asking why the Arabs of Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen decided to attack and kill their indigenous Jews at about the same time. OK, so it wasn't for no reason... it was because those societies were already xenophobic and there was a backlash against Jews living there coinciding with the rise of anti-semitism throughout the region.

Note: Saying that something happened because of bigotry, (a poor reason), is not the same thing as saying it happened for NO reason.

Why? What other "combination of factors" do you think were involved leading to these riots and deaths?

Both sides did major crimes in this conflict. It was never all the Arabs' fault-any more than World War One was all Germany's fault.

I notice you didn't say WWII there or mention the Holocaust. Anyway, let's see, the local Jews were an oppressed minority killed during xenophobic riots... how was it their own fault that they were killed? What do think happened? Were the local Arabs afraid of them using their blood to make matzoh? See, THAT'S a reason! It's just a shitty one.

[Ken Burch]

54. I didn't mention the Holocaust in that post because Arabs had nothing to do with it

That atrocity was solely the work of European Christians and the British and North American capitalists who enabled it by trading with the Reich.

[Shaktimaan]

57. I meant...

the parallel you chose to make was with Germany via WWI. Germany via WWII was most certainly at fault. Sometimes one side is significantly more at fault than another. Israel is not blameless, but to pretend it is equally culpable is a fallacy. Let's face it, Zionists did not go to Palestine and start attacking and displacing Arabs, despite what the Arab narrative might have you believe. The violence was entirely instigated by the Arab side. Now you can make excuses for this, but the reality is still what it is.

[Ken Burch]

49. My point is, the Arabs did NOT put the MIzrahi on boats and send them off to Europe for to be killed

It would have been easy for them to do that...or even to set up their own death camps to exterminate the Mizrahi...yet they did not...and yet, despite the inexcusable acts that you've mentioned, it was far safer to be a Jewish resident of North Africa than of Germany, Poland, the Baltics or France. That is a crucial bit of information to consider.

It shows that, unlike Christian Europeans, Arabs and Muslims were not pathologically obsessed with creating a Judenrein world. It showed that(along with the relative amity that existed between Jews and Muslims in the Islamic world for a long period time)it was and is clearly possible for Arabs and Muslims to interact in a civilized manner with their Jewish neighbors. And it shows that the "they just want to kill ALL of us" meme that some Israelis use is not unchallengeable at all.

This matters a lot. It shows that there are possibilities of reconciliation and civility that can be explored...that it isn't fair to cast all Arabs as not only villains but the inevitable parents of future villains.

It shows that it isn't as simple as hateful zealots like Ben-Gurion, Begin and Netanyahu want us all to think it is. And it shows that the status quo is not the only possible choice.

[Shaktimaan]

52. I don't see how this supports your argument.

That they EVEN managed to refrain from setting up death camps is hardly an example of what magnanimous benefactors the Arabs were. "Relative" amity is exactly that. Relative. The fact is that Jews were relatively OK in Arab states sometimes. While sometimes they were not. They certainly weren't when they were looking to create a national home for themselves in a tiny sliver of land in the vast Arab kingdom. They certainly aren't now.

Since when is Ben Gurion a hateful zealot?

[AverageJoe90]

53. If it wasn't for the Likudniks..........

.....chances are, this wouldn't be happening right now. Israel, WAKE UP!

[King_David]

58. Umm no .

How did you get to that conclusion?

,Eliyahu "Eli" Yishai (Hebrew: אליהו "אלי" ישי‎, born 26 December 1962) is an Israeli politician and head of the Shas party. He currently serves as a member of the Knesset for Shas, and as both one of four Deputy Prime Ministers and Minister of Internal Affairs..


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Yishai

[AverageJoe90]

62. The Shas Party seem to be a bunch of assholes........

.....but do they wield even a tenth of the power that the Likudniks do?