| The hysteria over the Israeli government is far worse than anything the government is remotely likely to donoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 05 Feb 05:4 | |  |
From Time, in a two page print story:
Israel is no longer a liberal democracy. As Benjamin Netanyahu's new government took office on 29 December, its illiberalism was evident. No longer a matter for debate or polite embarrassment, the contempt for liberal ideas brings all the disparate factions together: against the media and intellectuals and increasingly against the old Western-inspired Israeli political system and the existing Israeli constitution, including its Basic Laws.This is really getting crazy.
Nothing has happened.
The government is not going to reduce the rights of gay people. It is not going to impose a theocracy on Israel. It is not becoming a dictatorship.
Wikipedia defines a liberal democracy as:
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under a representative democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United...Read More |
From Ian: Netanyahu looks to cover West Bank with highway tunnels, in vision laid out by Musk Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed building underground highway systems across the West Bank to connect both Israeli settlements and Palestinian towns in order to maintain territorial continuity, The Times of Israel's sister site, Zman Yisrael, reported Saturday. Netanyahu is aiming for high-speed tunnels designed ostensibly to address the problems of traffic jams and congestion, per the vision of the billionaire Elon Musk, and his engineering firm Boring Company. Netanyahu presented his plans during a conversation Friday with French investors in Paris at the hotel where he spent the weekend. According to Netanyahu, the tunnels could refute Palestinian claims that they have no territorial continuity in the West Bank, as their communities would be linked underground. He also said they would make it possible to travel between settlements in a matter of a few minutes, which would solve the settlement issue as in practice they would be annexed to Israel through a system of tunnels and highways. Additionally, the tunnels would provide Israeli motorists in the area with safety from Palestinian attacks. During the conversation with the French investors, whose total wealth was estimated by the prime minister at $150 billion, he asked who would be willing...Read More |
From Ian: Dara Horn: A More Meaningful Way to Remember the Holocaust Last week, an editorial in Kentucky's Courier-Journal newspaper went viral for its sheer absurdity. In it, a group of noble public servants explained to primitive dolts like me that International Holocaust Remembrance Day is not, in fact, a day to remember the Holocaust. Instead, it is a day when we must "remember all the hate speech and all the violence that is perpetuated against religions, races and genders, all those acts committed in the past and those that continue to this day," because "for one group, for one person, to claim that the hate and violence towards them is more important than another's, only encourages more acts of violence against others." Most of all, as the authors put it in their middle-school-worthy topic sentence, "Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities." I don't need to do the work of shredding this deeply antisemitic take, because the good people of the internet did it for me—pointing out that Genocide Prevention Day already exists, for instance, or that "with Black History Month coming up, it's good to remember there are more races than black," or "This September 11, we should also remember all those other plane crashes over the years." This low-rent spectacle, part of a genre of stupidities that tend to pop up like early groundhogs every Jan. 27...Read More |
From Ian: Caroline Glick: What Blinken refuses to see In other words, the Biden administration thinks that permitting Jews to lawfully build and buy homes and communities, to buy land or lease government land in Judea, Samaria or unified Jerusalem is unacceptable. Furthermore, as far as he is concerned, Israelis living in Judea and Samaria should be compelled to receive government services from incompetent military officers employed by the military government rather than from Israeli government ministries. This includes, for instance, sewage treatment and environmental protection, protection of antiquities and archaeological sites, building rights and licensing guidelines. Another step the U.S. opposes, Blinken said is "disruption to the historical status quo in Jerusalem's holy sites." Here, Blinken sides with the Palestinians in insisting that Jews should not be permitted to freely access–much less pray at–the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred site. Blinken went on to say the U.S. opposes "demolitions and evictions." But he wasn't referring to demolitions and evictions of Jews—that's fine. He was referring to demolition of illegal Palestinian construction and eviction of Palestinian squatters from state land and from apartments and buildings owned by Israeli Jews. In short, Blinken set out a policy of antisemitic discrimination and demanded that Israel abide by it on behalf of a society organized...Read More |
The Forward has an op-ed by David Enoch, a professor of philosophy and law at Hebrew University:
If you want to support Israel, boycott its new government ....Even if the justification of boycotts has in the past been questionable, I think that American Jews owe it to Israel, and to Israelis like myself, to promote such measures now. After the disproportionate Israeli military incursion into Jenin, and the predictably tragic cycle of violence it engendered the next day in Jerusalem, Israel's far-right government is using this as an opportunity to further their own political goals. We cannot allow this kind of illiberalism to continue.
Yes, boycott Israel out of love!
As you can tell from this paragraph, Enoch has no love of Israel.
And Enoch's desire to boycott Israel includes an academic boycott.
Im Tirtzu summarizes David Enoch's supposed love of Israel: Signed a petition calling on EU member states to boycott "organizations and companies if they are active, directly or indirectly, in the occupied territories."[1]
Draft-dodger.[2]
Compared the IDF's activities during Operation Protective Edge to that of Hamas.[3]
Signed...Read More |
This morning's article at the official Palestinian Wafa news agency is pretty much identical to articles written every Friday for months: Tens of thousands performed Friday prayers at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, despite the strict military measures imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities at the gates of the mosque and the entrances to the Old City in occupied Jerusalem . The Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem estimated that about 60,000 worshipers performed Friday prayers in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, from Jerusalem and the West Bank, and within the lands of 1948 [how Palestinians refer to Israel.] Our correspondent reported that the occupation forces deployed in the streets of the city and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and stationed at its gates, and stopped the worshipers and checked their identity cards . I read these every week, with the only difference being the number of estimated worshippers - 70,000 last week, 75,000 two weeks ago, 55,000 three weeks ago. But what I hadn't noticed is that the worshippers are coming from the West Bank as well as Jerusalem and Israel. I thought that Israel didn't allow West Bank Palestinians to enter the compound. That's how things used to be, except for Ramadan. Apparently, Israel eased the restrictions...Read More |
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