Civil and Human Rights
Looking Deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Israel is portrayed as a democracy that shares American values. Is this true? Do all its citizens enjoy the same civil rights before the law? What about the human rights of those under occupation?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Israeli Democracy or "Jewish Democracy", you be the judge
Quiz Yourself on 'Israeli Democracy' | Post Your Comment (4 comments) eMail to a friend | Return to Zionist FAQ | Posted on April 22, 2002

Is it Israeli Democracy or "Jewish Democracy", you be the judge. Are you aware that:

* Prior to the 1948 war, Palestinian Christians and Muslims were a two-third majority of the population of Palestine, who owned and operated 93% of Palestine's lands?

* Prior to the 1948 war, most Israeli Jews were persecuted and dispossessed European Jews who made a one-third minority of the population?
* Prior to the 1948 war, only on third of the Jews in Palestine were legal citizens of the country?

* For Israel to become a "Jewish majority" it opted to expel and dispossess the two-third Palestinian majority?

* 80% of the Palestinian people were dispossessed from their homes, farms, and businesses and have been kept out for the past 54 years?

* 95% of Israel's lands (which is mostly owned by Palestinian refugees) is open for development to Jews only?

* Only one of the 45 Zionist Jews who sign the Israeli "declaration of independence" on May 14th, 1948 was born in Palestine. The other 44 were mostly Jewish refugees who escaped their anti-Semitic Europe countries, such as Tsarist Russia, Germany, and Poland.

* Israeli-Palestinian citizens live almost in segregated communities (or ghettos) because development is strictly limited outside their villages? Ironically, the word "ghetto" was invented to describe the living conditions of Eastern European Jews in Tsarist Russia!

* For just being "Jewish" you gain an automatic citizenship in Israel? Plus tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies too.

* Palestinian Muslims or Christians refugees, who were born in the country and later expelled, cannot gain Israeli citizenship? Of course, unless they convert to Judaism first!

* Pretending to be Jewish in Israel is punishable by law with up to one year's imprisonment? On the other hand, if you pretend to be a Muslim or Christian the law does you no harm!

* When the Palestine problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than 92% of the population of Palestine were Arabs and there were at that time no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine? That Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians at that time lived in peace with each other?

* Palestinians in the early 20th century owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of the land?

* Close to 4 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians are being subjected to Israeli laws that are different than the laws governing the 4.5 million Israeli Jews? Is this a "democratically" elected apartheid, or not, that is the question?

* In the occupied West Bank there are "Jewish Roads" and "Non-Jewish Roads"?

* Israel issues national identify cards where the religion of the card holder is clearly shown in bold type?

* Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza drive vehicles with license plates that have different coloring than the cars driven by Israeli settlers?

* Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza hold ID cards that are of different colors than the cards held by Israeli settlers?

* The only form of Judaism recognized by the "Jewish state" is Orthodox Judaism, so most US Jews could not get married in Israel. Furthermore, the only conversion to Judaism recognized is Orthodox, so most US converts aren't Jewish enough.

* Just prior to the 1948 war, Jews owned under 7% of Palestine's land, and to increase their share after the war, they passed the "Absentees' Law" which dispossessed the Palestinian majority land owners who later became "absent". What is even more tragic was the passage of an oxymoron law, called "Present Absentees' Law," which dispossessed the Palestinian-Israeli citizens who became internal refugees in Israel. It is worth noting that the internal Jewish refugees were not dispossessed as a result of this racist law.

* The U.S. funneled into the Israeli economy over 130 billion dollars, which is almost twice the amount devoted to rebuilding Western Europe after WW II!

* Israeli democracy is a facade for "Jewish Democracy?"

* Israel has nuclear weapons, and it was close to dropping one on Cairo in 1973?

* Israeli soldiers use human shields in battle to minimize their casualties?

* Israel killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Muslims (90% of whom are civilians) with American made and paid for weapons?
Friday, February 22, 2008
To be Palestinian Arab in the land usurped by European Jews is to be considered untermensch in the territory your forefathers ...
The Untermensch Syndrome: Israel's Moral Decay | By Manuel Valenzuela

07/20/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The labeling as anti-Semitic of anyone critical of the state of Israel's policies in the continued destruction of Palestinian identity, and now Lebanese society and infrastructure, and the increasing domination into American foreign policy no longer has the sting of threat or intimidation it once mastered. For too long this masquerade has been used to silence those opposing anything Israel, shouted at anyone disseminating truth and seeking justice. Like the boy who cried wolf, this charade has lost its power or hypnotic control, and today only serves to breed more anger and resentment against the apologists and smear mongers protecting the cancerous tentacles of Zionism and the crimes against humanity it spawns.

A once powerful marketing tool used to sequester valid criticism and deny truth to millions has been eroded thanks to its overlords' continued over abuse and labeling of the term 'anti-Semite' to anyone even remotely critical of anything associated with Israel and the tentacles of Zionism. To criticize Christianity does not make one anti-Christian. To criticize Islam does not make one anti-Muslim or anti-Arab, just as uncovering truths about the Bush administration does not make one anti-American or unpatriotic. To speak truth about any government in the world does not make us racist or xenophobic to the people of that nation. Why then should criticism of Israeli and/or Sharon's policies subject us to false labeling and acts of intimidation whose only purpose is to silence truth into submission and hijacking justice from ever emerging and being served? ...
...
To be Palestinian Arab in the land usurped by European Jews is to be considered untermensch in the territory your forefathers once called home. The devastation fifty-five years of invasion, occupation and state terrorism has had on both people and land has created the conditions by which Gaza and the West Bank can today be called Hell on Earth, pockets of destitute emptiness where opportunity is extinct and any relevant future is a but a hollow fantasy.

Unearthed from the colon of the planet Palestinians dwell, the squalor in the occupied territories is beyond compare, instituted and exacerbated by the state of Israel in acts of unhindered and systemic malevolence. The intent of such inflictions of emotional distress and incessant pain and suffering is the breaking point of millions of Palestinians, the realization that it is better to leave the land you know and love rather than live in perpetual imprisonment of spirit and humanity. ...
Extermination of an entire Palestinian family while they slept in the middle of the night on the 15th of February ...
Monday, February 18, 2008 | New Fascist State: Israeli Nazism at Work | posted by CrazyComposer (aka Peter Amsel) at Monday, February 18, 2008
...
Hatred is what allowed the Nazis to thrive, survive, and drive across the continent, killing with impunity. Their hatred against anyone who did not fit into their paradigm of the “master race” was fanatical beyond comprehension, leading to the attempted extermination of not only the Jews but the Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and scores of others who fell into the category of “unter menschen”. The “sub-humans”, individuals that the Nazis deemed unworthy to share the world with, were gathered up, shipped off and slaughtered. Their rights were taken away, subjugated as slave labour they fed the war machine the weapons used to kill other innocent lives until their usefulness wore out due to sickness, exhaustion or through the mere malice of the concentration camp guards who killed with impunity.
...
... According to an article that DesertPeace posted there is a law in the State of Israel making it a criminal offence to call any act of the Israeli government a “Nazi act” of aggression. The most recent outcry coming from the extermination of an entire Palestinian family while they slept in the middle of the night on the 15th of February. Three children and their mother died when the Israeli Air Force used precision munitions to assassinate their father, Ayman Al Fayeq, who was suspected in “acts of terror”.

I was born of Jewish parents and am aware that at anytime I can travel to Israel and claim the “right of return”, but I have not done this nor do I plan to do so: in fact, until my brother, Ishmael ibn Ibrahim is granted the same “right of return”, I shall not set foot in the land that has become a model of Zionist Fascism. I am not constrained by the laws of Israel so I shall say what DesertPeace cannot: the actions of the Israeli government are no better than those of the Third Reich. They use terror tactics to control weaker individuals, they control every avenue of economic advancement of people living within the land who are not Jewish, often preventing them from earning a living by closing the checkpoints that Palestinians must pass through in order to travel from their homes to their places of employments, and they impose punishments upon people without having had the benefit of a trial.

Ayman Al Fayeq and his entire family were slaughtered by the IAF in the middle of the night. How can this possibly be acceptable? Even if Al Fayeq was a terrorist, what could his children have done to warrant being immolated by a bomb in the dark of night? The Nazis did similar things to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Lodz Ghetto, through the travelling Einsatzgruppen, and other terror forces that made the Third Reich notorious for their inhuman treatment of non-Aryans. How is this different from what the Zionist Fascists are doing in Israel? ...
The matter-of-factness with which the state of Israel claims the right to treat non-Jews as lesser animals is shocking
Israel's right to be racist | 15 - 21 March 2007 | Al-Ahram

The matter-of-factness with which the state of Israel claims the right to treat non-Jews as lesser animals is shocking
and annuls any move towards peace, writes Joseph Massad*

The only thing Israel has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end the state of war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that all recognise its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law against Palestinians and other Arabs and grants differential legal rights and privileges to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews anywhere. The resistance that the Palestinian people and other Arabs have launched against Israel's right to be a racist state is what continues to stand between Israel and the peace for which it has struggled and to which it has been committed for decades. Indeed, this resistance is nothing less than the "New anti- Semitism".

Israel is willing to do anything to convince Palestinians and other Arabs of why it needs and deserves to have the right to be racist. Even at the level of theory, and before it began to realise itself on the ground, the Zionist colonial project sought different means by which it could convince the people whose lands it wanted to steal and against whom it wanted to discriminate to accept as understandable its need to be racist. All it required was that the Palestinians "recognise its right to exist" as a racist state. Military methods were by no means the only persuasive tools available; there were others, including economic and cultural incentives. Zionism from the start offered some Palestinians financial benefits if they would accede to its demand that it should have the right to be racist. Indeed, the State of Israel still does. Many Palestinian officials in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation have been offered and have accepted numerous financial incentives to recognise this crucial Israeli need. Those among the Palestinians who regrettably continue to resist are being penalised for their intransigence by economic choking and starvation, supplemented by regular bombardment and raids, as well as international isolation. These persuasive methods, Israel hopes, will finally convince a recalcitrant population to recognise the dire need of Israel to be a racist state. After all, Israeli racism only manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws that are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories.

Let us start with why Israel and Zionism need to ensure that Israel remains a racist state by law and why it deserves to have that right. The rationale is primarily threefold and is based on the following claims.

Jews are always in danger out in the wide world; ... If Israel removed its racist laws and symbols and became a non-racist democratic state, Jews would cease to be a majority and would be like Diaspora Jews, a minority in a non-Jewish state. ...

Jews are carriers of Western civilisation and constitute an Asian station defending both Western civilisation and economic and political interests against Oriental terrorism and barbarism. ... Ben Gurion once put it: "We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallised in the [European] Diaspora." ...

God has given this land to the Jews and told them to safeguard themselves against gentiles who hate them. To make Israel a non-Jewish state then would run the risk of challenging God Himself. This position is not only upheld by Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, but even by erstwhile secular Zionists (Jews and Christians alike). Ben Gurion himself understood, as does Bill Clinton and George W Bush, that: "God promised it to us." ...
...
The problem now was Hamas, who, while willing to recognise Israel, still refused to recognise its special needs to be racist inside the Green Line and to set up an apartheid system inside the occupied territories. This is where Saudi Arabia was brought in last month in the holy city of Mecca. Where else, pondered the Saudis, could one broker an agreement where the leadership of the victims of Israeli racism and oppression can be brought to solemnly swear that they recognise their oppressor's special need to oppress them? Well, Hamas has been resisting the formula, which Fatah has upheld for five years, namely to "commit" to this crucial recognition. Hamas said that all it could do was "respect" past agreements that the PA had signed with Israel and which recognised its need to be racist. This, Israel and the United States insist, is insufficient and the Palestinians will continue to be isolated despite Hamas's "respect" for Israel's right to be racist. ...

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