Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Israeli racism (update 3): Lecturing the natives

Credit where credit is due. Israel intends to allocate NIS 700 million for accelerating economic growth in 10 Arab, Druze and Circassian communities who comprise 30% of Israel's total population of minorities. Cynics will say that similar promises made in the past were never fulfilled. But even so it's encouraging to see that the welfare of Arab citizens is present at least in the discourse of Israel's ruling coalition.

There are people in Israel, however, who oppose the plan. Where are those people, you'll ask? In the settlements? In the Talmudic academies? No: in the very same ruling coalition. As Ynet reported:

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov slammed Saturday a multi-annual aid plan for the non-Jewish sector to be debated in the cabinet on Sunday.

The plan calls for roughly NIS 800 million (about $220 million) to be invested in 10 Arab communities in the next four years.

"Government aid to minorities must not be granted to communities whose public leaders' loyalty lies with the State of Israel's enemies, while not being granted to communities loyal to Israel such as the Circassians, Druze, and Bedouins," the minister said. "This program is distorted and rewards disloyalty."

So that this Moscow-born politician has no issue with submissive natives who behave well and fight Israel's wars of aggression. His problem is with the bad natives, the ones who get assertive and dare to denounce the State discrimination against their community, and sometimes even speak Arabic over the cell-phone while on a Jewish bus. For those Arabs, he recommends the collective punishment that the State has already been inflicting on them for the past 60 years, i.e. the most absolute neglect and underfunding.

It's good that someone in the State of Israel has realized that the State needs to invest more in its Arab community. It's bad that the real test --implementation-- is likely to be failed once again by the State. It's even worse that the only concrete outcome from all this will probably be the Tourism Minister's racist outburst.

28 comments:

Anas Qtiesh said...

Can we define Arab and Druze? because I happen to be the two at the same time, just like every other Druze...
It's outrageous that Israel considers Druze to be non-Arab. Can we cut the crap there.

Anonymous said...

I find it unacceptable that you write this drivel praising Israel. You're supposed to be "busting" Hasbara. I smells a Zionist plant.

Anonymous said...

To back up the comment above, check out this great article from today's JPost: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/warpedmirror/entry/hasbara_the_islamic_tradition_posted

Money quote: "the traditional (Muslim) commentators from the eighth and ninth century onwards have uniformly interpreted the Koran to say explicitly that Eretz Yisrael has been given by God to the Jewish people as a perpetual covenant. There is no Islamic counterclaim to the Land anywhere in the traditional corpus of commentary."

So much for busting "hasbara"!

Gert said...

Ib:

"Most important of all, religious books, be they Jewish, Muslim or Zoroastrian, are not a source of international law."

Israel doesn't care about International Law: using a blatantly false and self-serving interpretation of "Never again!", Zionists can justify any exceptionalism.

Besides, the UN are a bunch of antisemites, for the most part at least... And since John Bolton's left it's really gone to the dogs... ;-)

Anonymous said...

how many Israelis are natives of Israel?

natives means in my book, having been born there - in more than 60 years that should be quite a lot

would it greatly inconvenience you, dear "Ibrahim", to be a bit more precise in your utterings? and not imply ever so slyly that Jews by definition can't be natives.

Thank you
Silke

Anonymous said...

"The Jews voluntarily emigrated from what is now Israel."

LOL!

What about the fact that the Romans only liquidated 2 (Judea and Israel) out of 52 provinces in 1,000 years of their history? They were the ones who invented the term "Palestine" as an insult to the Jews; named after their great enemy the Philistines in even more ancient times. The Romans write quite eloquently about the need to eliminate the Jewish provinces and stop the rebuilding of the temple by building a Roman one on the site.

There is simply zero evidence that the Jews left Israel "voluntarily". If you read the Roman accounts of the wars against the Jews in Israel under Titus and later Hadrian, it is evident that there were large-scale massacres and dispersions, as well as the intentional flooding of the area with Greek and Nabatean colonists.

Fortunately, mainstream history is on Israel's side when it comes to the aftermath of both the First Jewish War and Bar Kochba's rebellion of 130 AD.

You are trying to rewrite history in order to make it fit into your preconceptions because the truth about the Jews and Israel is inconvenient for your victim narrative about the Arabs. In this sense, Yusuf, you are like all antisemitic revisionists -- hell, they even existed at the time of Josephus! See his book "Against Apion" for an argument against the antisemitic revisionist Roman writer Apion who refuted the antiquity of the Jews.

But it is the Jews who usually end up with the truth of history on their side. For us, history is not merely an ideological tool to win political points. It is redemptive.

Anonymous said...

By Yusuf and Gert's definition the Jews are simply not "native" ANYWHERE!

This is the very essence of the antisemitic worldview.

Anonymous said...

Dear dear dearest Ibrahim,
shouldn't you confess to your readers that you have done some "forbidden" commenting on the site of Dr. Yaacov Lozowick once again and kind of been lauded by Yaacov to boot.
- last time they "caught" you on that they seemed to be very interested and disapproved strongly
- you shouldn't deprive them of such a juicy dose of the kind of blood pressure enhancement they crave so much by not mentioning such a - to them - noteworthy fact.
Silke

Gert said...

Anon:

For all I care Jews can live anywhere in the world, including Israel, WB and Gaza. Why can't the same courtesy be extended to Muslims (and Christians and Druze and Bedouin) who were living there at the time?

And how is Yehudi from Brooklyn native to Israel? Because G-d told him so?

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

shouldn't you confess to your readers that you have done some "forbidden" commenting on the site of Dr. Yaacov Lozowick once again and kind of been lauded by Yaacov to boot

Silke, why are you doing this to me? Releasing information about my forbidden activities?

Now I'll be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal and given the maximum penalty -- eating matzoh for the duration of Passover.

Anonymous said...

And how is Yehudi from Brooklyn native to Israel? Because G-d told him so?

Because G-d told Muslims so.

Peter H said...

Anonymous,

On the subject of Jews and exile, I recommend you read this post by Jerry Haber.

Anonymous said...

Chapeau to you Ibrahim
other than the majority of your commenters you seem not to be an irony-illiterate
- I have never eaten Matze so I don't know whether it is good for punishment purposes
- as I am German and you are of Arab descent I would vote for Apfelschmalz (and not from chicken fat grrr) as appropriate punishment.
Silke
PS: but when I think how you enjoy cheering injury and death I think Blutwurst would be more adequate

Anonymous said...

Peter H
having been through Anon's comments in this thread he/she reads very much like somebody who is very well equipped to LECTURE on Jewish history
and more than that I'd be willing to bet that there are not many creative re-writings of Jewish history he/she doesn't know how to debunk should he/she chose to do so.
Silke
PS: Let me tell you a secret:
not everybody who manages to get a book published knows what he/she is writing about and the even more secret secret is: this also applies to bloggers.

Gert said...

Anon:

What if G-d was One of Us?
Just a slob like all of us?
A stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?

Anonymous said...

Peter H:

Jerry Haber represents the most retrograde and ideological strain of the Orthodox anti-Zionist movement within Israeli society. Views like his are certainly not taken seriously in the field, whether in Israel, Europe or the States. It's a bit like quoting Norm Finkelstein on political science, frankly. When people like Yusuf rely on such pseudo-scholarly dreck it just shows how alienated their views are from mainstream scholarship and academic research i.e. reality) in the subject.

Gert said...

Anon:

"It's a bit like quoting Norm Finkelstein on political science, frankly."

The Finkelstein case shows how the 'Land of the Brave, Home of the Free' has its own methods of suppressing opinion without resorting to direct censorship. Slander a man into the ground (because he's critical of Israel AND a scholar) and practically deprive him of a livelihood (we all know how important cash is to you guys) and then you can claim he's 'discredited'. In reality these tactics are quite reminiscent to for instance the former Soviet Union's methods of controlling the information 'flow'. Chomsky warned him that would happen but Finkelstein just plowed along.

In Europe, Finkelstein's standing is largely intact but hey, who are we but a bunch of sub literate antisemites, eh?

I believe the day of Finkelstein's rehabilitation in the US is nearing: more and more Americans are seeing the Zionist Entity for what it is: a banal project of colonisation and the source of tremendous suffering of a people that just happened to be in the wrong place and was born into the wrong religion...

andrew r said...

Jerry Haber represents the most retrograde and ideological strain of the Orthodox anti-Zionist movement within Israeli society.

This is a joke going by the last paragraph of his post. Haber is a Zionist who feels Zionism does not have to be based on myths. In fact, when Benni Morris exposed the brutality of the nakba, anti-Zionism was the least of his motives.

Views like his are certainly not taken seriously in the field, whether in Israel, Europe or the States.

You really didn't read Haber's post, did you.

"I will follow pretty closely the first part of a comprehensive article on the subject by Hebrew University professor, Yisrael Yuval...

"Yuval summarizes the sources as follows: 'In other words, it seems that the triple expression—destruction of the House, burning of the Temple, exile from the land—originally (in the sources from the Land of Israel) referred to the First Temple and were applied to the Second Temple only in Babylonia.10 In the Tannaitic and early Amoraic sources, Rome is accused only of destroying the Temple, not of exiling the people from their land.11 A broad historical and national outlook, one that viewed the “Exile of Edom” (Rome being identified with the biblical Edom) as a political result of forced expulsion, did not survive from this period. Nor would such a view have been appropriate to the political reality and the conditions of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, which were certainly very well known to the members of that generation.'"

"In fact, Chaim Milikowsky, professor and past chairman of the Talmud department at Bar Ilan university, has argued that in 2nd and 3rd century tannaitic sources, the Hebrew term rendered as 'exile' has the meaning of political subjugation rather than physically being driven from the land (cited in Yuval, p. 19, n.1)"

Anonymous said...

Gert
you are so uninformed and just to let you know how curtailing of free slandering speech is done in Germany look this up - I am sure the story will delight you no end.
when some groups or was it a party recently tried to rent premises to have a get together where they could listen to brillant enlightened Norman Finkelstein's presenting the results of his "scholarly" endeavours they were turned down by several landlords.
I don't remember whether they found a place in the end but if so it must have been a meager affair or maybe they didn't find enough sponsors to come up with the cash for his expenses. After all who'd want to listen to the stuff well known from his "oh having sold so badly" books in person. And no it wasn't the "Israel-Lobby" who refused to rent - it were people with some taste and decency and capability of judgment left who didn't want their premises dirtied by letting in people who get a high out of listening to such filth.

You know there are some people left who do not think that lauding Hisbollah thugs is adequate behaviour in polite society.
Silke

Gert said...

Andrew r:

All this squabbling over Jewish origins gets us nowhere IMHO.

Suffice it to say had the Zionists chosen Uganda, Argentina or the US for their home land, the overall outcome would have been no different.

Many have written about that but few as convincingly as Lawrence of Cyberia, in The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Too Complicated For Our Beautiful Minds.

Clearly written with the Beautiful Minds of 'polite society' like Silke in mind, she might want to ponder it...

Anonymous said...

Lawrence of Cyberia
another blogger - really Gert - is that all you can come up with?
- and BTW as a general rule I don't take reading advice from guys who are into astrology
- are you aware that there are things like books?
- if you are capable of reading on a screen only you may find some great stuff for getting the mind into shape at gutenberg.org and it's even for free.
and you know doing a bit of reading of the immortal greats is really quit conducive to learning to recognize the likes of Finkelstein for the trash they are
Silke

andrew r said...

Silke doesn't care about the argument, she just wants to throw taunts at Gert. I understand.

Fuck "polite society", Silke. Screw it. Burn it down for all I care...

Righteous.

Anonymous said...

andrew r
if I could recognize a valid argument I'd be very willing to care about it - ask Ibrahim! (fake)
I took him serious for a very long time before I realized that all he was after was a more than one-sided "fact"-publishing at a most likely more wide-read place (in polite society) than this one - remember Al-Durah - that's where I have Ibrahim's facts filed by now and I don't care one bit whether one of them is true or not. The way they are presented is what puts them in that category.

and pray why should I refrain from taunting Gert or any other guy who throws invectives at me?
Remember I am no angel I am a mean vicious member of the teutonic tribes.

on the other hand you may be fully justified in concluding that I am probably just too intellectually challenged and/or limited to find any subsance worth debating in the dreck of what you guys consider worth to be read and believed.

Silke

Gert said...

Silke:

I've already broken my previous pledge of ignoring you once. This will be the second time but also the last.

A member of the 'vicious teutonic tribes' and a 'mean' one too... We're all quaking in our slippers now. 'Threat level Amber: member of the no-punctuation-brigade ahead!

Now pleaeaease dear, go hang out in some places that consider you to be a 'cool babe', cos' this place ain't IT.

Anonymous said...

Bravo Gert
your manners have improved - say thank you to me for that
Silke

Peter H said...

Anonymous,

Rather than make any arguments refuting Jerry Haber's research, all you can do is make an ad hominem attack. And, even on those grounds, your attack fails: Jerry Haber's ideology owes much more to Judah Magnes (hence the name of the blog, "Magnes Zionist")than to Neturei Karta.

thankgodimatheist said...

"What about the "bad natives" in Argentina? Oh wait, they were all killed.
European countries (e.g. Jews who had lived there for over 2,000 years)? Oh wait, they were all killed."
Anonymous
---------------------
Ha ha
I take note that you're not denying that Israel is a genocidal enterprise, you're just saying that other countries have done it too!
But you forgot to mention that those genocides took place in the past when colonial enterprise were a "fad" among the nations. Nowadays we know better and genocide will not be tolerated my friend..The times of the colonies are over. Get on with our era and stop living in 19th century type of fascistic ideology.

thankgodimatheist said...

"By the EU definition antisemites: "Apply double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation."
Anonymous-March 26, 2010 6:36 AM
--------------------
Evidently, genius, other democratic nations cannot get away with genocide either. Accountability apply to Israel too. Your point is moot