Legislators in the Knesset gave initial approval to a law that would make it a crime to deny the right of Israel to exist — mandating a year in prison for such an exercise of free speech.
The new law introduced by conservative legislators makes it a crime for anyone to “call to negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, where the content of such publication would have a reasonable possibility of causing an act of hatred, disdain or disloyalty” to Israel. The vote was 47-34 to approve the bill.
MK Zevulun Orlev with the right-wing Bayit Hayehudi party introduced the bill.
Citing a controversy over former MK Azmi Bishara’s flight from the country after visiting Syria and Lebanon (where he praised Hezbollah), Orlev insisted that words “very quickly leads to actions.” It is the traditional excuse for cracking down on free speech: free speech can lead to criminal conduct.
The bill is particularly problematic for Arabs who live as law-binding citizens but continue to challenge the right of Israel to exist. Journalists, academics, activists, and politicians would all be subject to the law, which is clearly designed to chill and silence critics. Israel’s right to exist should be defended by logic and history, not preserved through state censures or prosecutions. What is astonishing is that the law will only succeed in forcing the debate underground and confirm the view of some critics that there must be something illegitimate about the status of Israel to justify such draconian measures. Free speech and free press are the inherently the best defense for any free nation.
Yet, the law is part of a disturbing trend in the West in cracking down on free speech, here and here and here. For a prior column, click here
For the full story, click here.
Well does a country have the right to exist outside of its inhabitants rights to exist? If you abominate the people what will soon be left?
Over the last 40 years or so there has been great debate about what the long term demographics will be in Israel. Some think that the Jewish birthrate is going to be higher, and thus the Arab minority will decrease by percentage. However others think that the Jewish birthrate will be smaller, and that the Arab minority will become a majority in critical areas such as East Jerusalem, and possibly eventually a majority in the whole country.
This means that the eventual existence of Israel as a Jewish state is not just a political issue, but also a matter of genuine academic debate.
Has any country ever benefited when it tried to suppress academic debate?
Alex wrote:
“Has any country ever benefited when it tried to suppress academic debate?”
________
Hitler’s Germany was one failed example.
FFELO,
An even more prolific killer of the academics was Pol Pot. Hitler liked scientists as long as they weren’t those pesky Jew scientists like Einstein. Pol Pot thought everyone with an education needed to die.
Is Israel a democracy? The crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinean people are becoming well known. The public isn’t fooled any more. They take land illegally…it is not their property….should they exist on that property? Israel was given land in Palestine after WWII but the Palestinean people had nothing to say about it. They were chased from their homes, had their homes taken from them and to be sure that they could not claim their property the Israeli government burned down the building that held all the deeds. On film it has been shown how an Israeli got into a Palestinean home, locked the doors so the Palestinean couldn’t even get his personal effects, and just took the home. The Palestinean people have not had a leg to stand on. The Israeli lobby in the USA keeps info away from the American people. They do not want a Palestinean State. They do not want live Palestineans in Israel. Their aim is to kill them all or chase them out.Like it says in the bible about the Canannites: God commands they kill “every living thing”. Why did the Bush administration want to go into Iraq so badly…even before 9ll. Because Israeli influence in this country wanted that war to protect Israel. How many Israeli soldiers were sent to help us in Iraq? How many have been sent to help us in Afghanistan? How much do we give Isarel in Aide….BILLIONS….and for nothing in return except to instigate wars that they don’t have to fight. Now Israel wants it to be a crime to be against the ‘existance of Israel’…..You better start building a lot of jails. After you remove freedom of speech what will be next….? As an American citizen I will say that Israel does not have the right to exist…on stolen land.
What does J. Turley have to say about the State of Israel? In a court of law how “firm a ground” does Israel stand on? Can Prof. Turley defend Israel?
“Why did the Bush administration want to go into Iraq so badly…even before 9ll. Because Israeli influence in this country wanted that war to protect Israel. How many Israeli soldiers were sent to help us in Iraq? How many have been sent to help us in Afghanistan?”
The Bush Administration wanted to go into Iraq because they wanted the oil and because the Saudi’s, who really ran Bush’s ME policy didn’t like Saddam as competition. The Bush family has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Saudi’s for many decades and despite the crap handed to the Fundamentalist Christians, never liked the Jews or Israel. Bush’s grandfather Sen. Prescott Bush was a principal in a bank that helped finance Hitler. His partners were the Dulles Brothers, who became Secretary of State and CIA Director under Eisenhower. An administration deeply unfriendly to Israel.
The myth that America or the UN created Israel is just that. The Israeli’s created it to the complete astonishment of everyone. This is true about the myth of the US being Israel’s number one ally. The US has been keeping Israel in check for the Saudi’s since Israel began. Why. Because the Saudi’s want Israel to exist so that their own people will have something external to hate and not look at their own oppression. Yet they need Israel in turmoil, or its’ technological capabilities might demonstrate new possibilities for the ME’s indigenous peoples that would destabilize their despotic governments. This tactic has also worked well for some of the other Arab oligarchies.
Your point about how many Israeli soldiers helped us in Iraq or in Afghanistan shows unbelievable ignorance of history since the first Iraq war. George H.W. Bush was specifically told, publicly by the Saudi’s that no Arab States would take part in the first Iraq War if the Israeli’s played a role. This was why George H.W. Bush pleaded with Israel not to retaliate when Saddam’s SCUD missiles rained down on Israel.
The Israeli’s reluctantly agreed, a position which is unheard of in world history when a nation is attacked and has the wherewithal on its’ own to destroy its attacker. The same issue kept the Israeli’s from Iraq II and Afghanistan.
You ask: “Is Israel a democracy?” Well compared to every other nation surrounding it and to most of the countries in the world, it damn well is more democratic. Now the real issue here is whether this is a good law and I would personally say it isn’t and it was stupidly conceived. However, recently we’ve discussed similar laws on this site that have been passed in Britain, France, elsewhere in Europe and in all the Islamic States. That doesn’t justify Israel’s passage, but it does contextualize it as a disturbing governmental trend around the world and even in our own country. I’m not a fan of recent Israeli governments, but I also don’t make them out to be quite as evil, stupid yes, as their detractors would have it. The current PM is an incompetent and corrupt fool and won’t be in power for that long.
Now I’m not going to engage in debate with you, because frankly by your comments you’ve shown you lack more than superficial knowledge of the issue. I’ve no doubt that you’re probably a good person, who feels for the oppressed of the world. So am I. What differentiates us is that I don’t follow the leads of anyone’s propaganda and try to really investigate the subjects I write and talk about. If you really do see yourself as a champion of the oppressed than I suggest you do further research on the subject. All might not be as you seem to think it is.
However, research alone is not the true judge of a critical mind. What is far harder than research is the facility to examine your most deeply held beliefs and subject them to honest criticism. Many highly intelligent people find themselves unable to do that and so can be extremely intelligent, yet hold ignorant views. Reading you out of context I really can’t say where you are in this continuum,
but I give you an A for empathy.
Is this model we are adopting here in the US? It seems like it. We seem to be in lockstep with a nation that is willing to go to any end in the name of security. To what end? The Patriot Act has kept us safe from Eliot Spitzer’s philandering; however, it is not known how effective it was in keeping the public safe. Have we crossed over to the point of no return?
Alex.
If Israel allowed the Palestinian standard of living to rise to Israeli levels their birth rate would probably drop. Of course this is out of the question so other methods will have to be used. But then they are, every young Palestinian rock thrower killed by Israeli troops with assault rifles is one little victory in the demographic struggle.
Diane Oliver.
“Is Israel a democracy”.
Just before the declaration of the state of Israel, the majority of the population in the area that later became Israel was Palestinian. Obviously the Israelis were unwilling to create a democratic state in which they were a minority so in the inevitable war they ethnically cleansed enough Palestinians to create a Jewish majority.
Apartheid South Africa was technically a democratic state, since black residents were not citizens entitled to vote.
I note that my country, Australia, allows descendants of the unlawful occupants who were here before the arrival of the rightful owners to vote, but even in those places where they form a substantial proportion of the population such as The Northern Territory, the franchise does them no good since they are still outnumbered by the minority of whites who react in a racist manner to the presence of Aborigines and Territory governments of either party are extremely hostile to Blacks.
Diane Oliver.
It is not true that World war II was the cause of the establishment of Israel. It may have hastened its formation but the intention to establish a Jewish state in lands confiscated from Palestinians was there since the nineteenth century.
By that time Jews had truly got the message that Christians hated them and they knew that living among Christians posed a risk that their Christian neighbours might turn on them, murder them and divide their property. If there is a Christian nation that did not discriminate to some extent against Jews, please tell me its name.
The German Jewish holocaust served as a string of exclamation marks reinforcing the message.
Of course well deserved Christian guilt about failure to do anything effective to hinder the holocaust may have made UN agreement on the establishment of Israel easier to obtain.
Diane Oliver.
When does a state built on stolen land achieve legitimacy so that any struggle against its existence becomes illegal.
Everyone seems to accept that the USA, Australia and Brazil (as examples) have achieved this legitimacy but why is that so if Israel is not. The only difference between Israel and these other examples is that in Israel the necessary ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population has not been completed.
As someone has pointed out in a previous thread, it is hypocrisy for a citizen of any of the colonial settler countries like Australia, Brazil or the US to criticize Israel for behaving now in the same way as their countries did in the forgotten past.
Mike.
Your right in saying that fundamentalist Christians have no love for the Jews. Their support is because of their loopy religius beliefs in the end times and its requirement for the Jews to return to the Holy land before God can send all unbelievers including the Jews who do not convert to hell.
Mike.
“The myth that America or the UN created Israel is just that. The Israeli’s created it to the complete astonishment of everyone.”
The UN may not have created Israel but it concurred, except for the minor point that the area the UN allocated to Israel was smaller than that that which Israel staked out after the 1948 war.
A real myth is that the Arabs started the war. As far as the Arabs were concerned the mass immigration into Palestine and the declaration of the state of Israel were acts of aggression. I believe that ttheir interpretation is correct.
Mike.
I think that it is a matter of opinion not fact as to whether the US is favouring Israel or Saudi Arabia. You perceive it as being closer to the Saudis, I think it is biased more towards Israel.
I think that America’s affections are mainly with Israel, but its need for gooey black stuff to fuel hummers means that it has to pander to the Saudi kleptarchs and this to some extend puts a limit on its overt favoritism to Israel.
Mike.
“Well compared to every other nation surrounding it and to most of the countries in the world, it damn well is more democratic.”
Israel ensured a Jewish majority by expelling a sufficient number of Palestinians. This made it safe to be a democracy. Israel’s refusal to allow a “right of return” to the Palestinians who fled beyond Israels later established borders and the confiscation of their property is in my view a serious crime.
It is an Israeli myth that the Palestinians were told to flee in radio broadcasts from the surrounding Arab countries, but why this even if true should justify confiscating their property and preventing their return is a mystery to me, Someone please explain. Incidentally the term “present absents” describes Palestinians who fled but remained within the borders of Israel when it was established. These were allowed to remain as second class citizens but they were considered to have abandoned their property and it was confiscated.
Israelis seems to think that their is something culpable about fleeing a war when told to by the enemy radio broadcasts. If there were such radio broadcasts I would assume that they were simply relaying threats from the Israeli ethnic cleansers. Fleeing a war zone seems to me to be sensible behaviour, and Israel’s revisionist historians are turning up evidence of deliberately planned terror campaign to forse Palestinians to flee. The Palestinians who fled were doing so because they had a well founded fear of being killed, just as Kosovo Albanians did more recently. To start a refugee exodus one does not necessarily need to kill a huge number, just enough to start the others leaving.
Mike.
Most evil is done by good people.
CM:
a guy I know says Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Had Palestinians played the martyr and gone Ghandi they would have had their state years ago.
The progeny of Abraham are a fiesty bunch.
Bron.
If the Palestinians had tried nonviolent process it would have got them exactly nowhere.
India was a special case where passive resistance actually worked.
The reason that it worked was that the Indians outnumbered their conquerors many time over. Even if all able bodied British persons that could be spared were recruited into the army of occupation it would not have been enough to control India.
If the Palestinians tried passive resistance, it would only mean that the carnage would be completely one sided instead of mostly one sided as it is.
CM:
World opinion would have condemned Israel, can you imagine the nightly news casts? It would have been settled long ago.
Carlyle,
While you and I disagree on much regarding Israel, it is always a pleasure to read your comments. Your responses to Ms. Oliver displayed thoughtfulness on your part and a sense of intellectual fairness. While I believe it would be fruitless to argue our differences, we are quite evenly matched and neither of us will convince the other, despite open mindedness on both our parts. The reason this is so is that there really is no right answer, so the argument devolves on who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys.” I think that in both our minds that answer is not clear cut, though for different reasons.
Then too, as a proud Jew and a lifelong supporter of Israel, I admit that I’ve got more investment in the game than you do and so there is probably an element of pre-judgment at work in my beliefs. Then too, I think of myself as an American and I do have deep feelings for my country, despite the many blights on its’ history.
Where I think we are of common bond is that we both hate the oppressions of this world that drive humanity apart and allow so many to live in poverty, disease and misery. The answer to Israel, the ME and to the inhumanity of humanity to itself, lies I believe not in politics but in an evolution that would free ourselves from our “lizard” brains. How this would come about I have no idea, but in its’ necessity humanity hangs in the balance.
Mr. Spindell,
Because I AM ignorant and uninformed, I feel the need to ask you personally… It seems to me that what the two parties need and lack are thus: the Israeli’s a temple and the Palestinians civil rights. Couldn’t the Israeli’s build a temple in the weeping wall plaza in exchange for giving the Palestinians civil rights?
Mr. Moulton,
Having inherited Christian parents and the subsequent upbringing, it turned my world upside down to discover and personally believe that Christians did indeed play a tremendous role in the Holocaust. A personal confession here which probably mirrors at least partially the oft unspoken and unconfessed realities… My “Christian” upbringing had me believing that the Jewish race was responsible for the death of my personal God. It took a great deal of personal growth to accept that Jesus forgave everyone during his death.
It is my understanding that those Christians that haven’t accepted Jesus’ forgiveness of the Jews imposed a great deal of pain and suffering upon them through the centuries.
Personally, I only wish the U.S. would have welcomed the remainder of the
European Jewry here. As you have pointed out, we had simply taken this land
from others. Perhaps blindly, I wonder to myself if had we done so, might
not we both have prospered so much so that the Jews could have gone forth in the greatest real estate land transaction purchase in history?
I find it difficult oftentimes to be completely truthful and to apologize for my personal failures…
How do we fix it from here?
One last thing. I’ve got this quote from Albert Einstein that I wrote down after watching a documentary on his life.
“If we don’t find a way of honest cooperation and dealings with the Arabs, we have not learned anything during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve any fate that will hit us.” – Albert Einstein: How I See the World
In rereading my post, I realized that my comment “I only wished the U.S. would have welcomed the remainder of the European Jewry here” can be taken out of the context I intended.
I wish that Christian wrongdoing towards Jews (and everyone else) in all its myriad forms had never taken place. After the abhorrent evil we Christians contributed to in WWII, I wish the remainder of the European Jewry would have been offered a welcome home here in the United States.
The last time I stated my shock at “Christian” wrongdoing on a public board and apologized for it, the beat-down I received (inevitably from Christians) ensured I never returned. Still, pointing fingers at others without looking inward will ensure the problems we’ve created will continue to be the problems our future generations will be afflicted with. All while diminishing our own relevance in the here-and-now.
I found a set of documentaries that helped me better understand the situation by offering me a perspective from those people living in Israel. It’s called Variations On A Theme: To Be An Israeli Woman. It documents the lives of several different Israeli women with vastly differing backgrounds living in Israel.
The ones I found most informative were that of Lea, a religious woman living with her family in a settlement. http://www.archive.org/details/IsraeliWomanLea_ISR_2004
and Aziza, an Arabic Muslim Israeli citizen whose family experienced first-hand the property confiscations under the occupation.
http://www.archive.org/details/IsraeliWomanAzizia_ISR_2004
The sixth part of the series I haven’t been able to find online (available to the public). It documents these women’s lives during the last intifidah and their coming together to try and find answers to end the madness. There was such a sense of hopelessness that it left an indelible mark on me to somehow, someway, contribute to these lives that have been marred by decisions made in part by my own people.
Each of these segments are about an hour in length to those inclined to watch them.
Nate,
You raise some interesting questions so let me try to answer them to the best of my ability, noting that while I speak as a Jew, I do not speak for Jews. We’re far too internally contentious as a group for anyone to speak for us.
1. I personally do not believe building a Temple would solve anything and as a Jew I would be against building one. The destruction of the Temple around 70CE actually save Judaism. It then fully turned into a Synagogue based, Rabbi oriented religion that grew in perspective far beyond what it was. The Temple was a place for ritual sacrifice of animals and who needs that? The gospels portrayal of the Sadducees and Pharisees was incorrect from a Jewish perspective. The Sadducees were a priestly cast, that allied itself with Rome and took the Torah literally and harshly. The Pharisees, of whom Jesus was probably a member given his teachings, opposed Rome and acted to make Jewish Law more humane.
2. There should be a separate and viable Palestinian State. This will go a long way towards healing the problems. however, as I’ve written here and on other threads I’m not convinced the Despots running the other ME governments want that really. I think they need to keep Israel around as a distraction to their people to keep them from seeing how miserable their life is under these despots.
3.From the Israeli perspective and from my own the situation wasn’t bringing the post Holocaust Jews to America, it was the idea that Jews needed their own country. America in the post war era was still largely anti-Jewish in most parts of the country and the Jewish need for a State arose out of the feeling that in whatever country they resided the possibility of being turned on was real, based on our history. I also believe that there were many Jews in Israel prior to WWII, although other believe differently. Research both sides and make up your own mind.
4. While there is much responsibility on Christianity and Islam for ill treatment of the Jews, there is a logical reason. If Judaism is true as a religion, than Christianity and Islam aren’t and vice versa. Much anger arose in the formative years in both those religions as to the Jews stubborn refusal to accept them. The Jews refusal was of course problematic because Jesus was Jewish and Mohamed saw Islam as also going beyond Judaism. To me the problem is that people of all faiths are unable to understand that the basis of all religion is “Do unto others….etc.” and instead feel threatened by people who don’t believe as they do. Almost every war in history has been caused by religion because of this and therein lies the real problem.
5. Finally, my leanings on religion is towards the Deist. I believe there is a creative force that informs the universe, but that we humans are not able to comprehend its’ true nature. Instead we hold onto our cherished beliefs and fear others who believe differently. The truly religious person is one who gains comfort and strength from their own concept of God and does not feel threatened by others differing belief.
“Because I AM ignorant and uninformed”
To be truly ignorant one must be afraid to explore new data and ideas, that may even make one uncomfortable. By that definition and your subsequent posts, I see you as neither ignorant, nor uninformed. You are like most of us humans, searching for meaning in life and seem brave enough to go beyond your comfort zone.
Mr. Spindell,
I am honored by your reply.
I personally feel similiar to Mr. Moulton in regards to the U.S. harboring greater goodwill towards Israel rather than the Saudi’s. If for no other reason than the terror that violence will erupt and engulf the world from this tiny slice of land.
I am amazed at the contributions of Jews to society at large. Their contributions proportionally far outnumber their humble numbers. At the same time, I’m saddened beyond words that peace has remained so elusive for all.
“I’m saddened beyond words that peace has remained so elusive for all.”
Nate,
So am I. As far as your agreeing with Carlyle, he is a good person who happens to disagree with me on this issue, as I see you do. Good people often disagree, what makes you both special I think is that you are both open to other viewpoints and that to me shows intelligence and self awareness.
Dissident voice has an article relevant to this thread.
Somehow I screwed up the link that was supposed to lead to the dissident voice article. It is http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/05/a-response-to-the-proposal-to-ban-commemoration-of-the-nakba-on-independence-day/.