The `demographic scarecrow'

[newyorican]

We must continue to oppose the "right" of return, and persist in our efforts to prevent the creeping return both of illegal aliens and of other people through family unification.

Last week, a report was presented to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee stating that the number of Palestinians in the territories is far lower than the number accepted by Palestinian and Israeli demographers. In response, MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash-Ta'al) said, according to Globes: "Use of the demographic scarecrow for good or for bad has the smell of racism. ... Solution to the conflict must come from the need for peace regardless of the number of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line."

It is easy for Tibi to scorn Jewish involvement with the "demographic problem" and to be condescending out of a desire for peace. He can do that knowing that demography works in Arab Israelis' favor, because although they are Israeli in citizenship, they are Palestinian in national identity, and their affinity for their brothers in the territories is stronger than their affinity for their Jewish partners-in-citizenship. But Jews in Israel are not just entitled, but obligated, to pay attention to what Tibi calls the "demographic scarecrow," but looks to them more like a threatening demon because it is based on statistics.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/530924.html

Demons, eh? Avraham, that isn't simple racism. It a shoe fitting so well, you are ignorant to it's existence. But you are not alone.

un.defend.able

[Violet_Crumble]

1. Yep, and bugger the civil rights of Israeli-Arabs....

Further down in the article, talking about the withholding of Israeli citizenship from the Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens, he says: "But considering the demographic threat, civil rights and liberal considerations must be suspended in an effort to act according to the rules"

Un.fucking.believ.able! Now there's a true progressive!!

Violet...

[Djinn]

2. I am eligible to live/work in Israel

based on my jewish heritage (I have never practiced, my father never practiced, my grandfather didn't from the age of about 13) I have never lived in or even been to (say) Haifa, neither have my ancestors (unless you go back maybe a few thousand years) yet someone who fled Haifa in the late 1940's in the face of Zionists terrorists blowing up marketplaces, buses and playgrounds and razing villages, can not EVER legally return.

Yep...makes sense