Is Israel an “Ethnostate?” Is it Apartheid?

ethnostate: /‘eTHno,stat/. A sovereign state of which citizenship is restricted to members of a particular racial or ethnic group. —Oxford Dictionary.

apartheid: /‘ə-ˈpär-ˌtāt  -ˌtīt /. specifically a former policy of segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the non-white majority in the Republic of South Africa

NOTE: The extreme racial segregation of apartheid lasted from 1948 to 1994 and included such restrictions as where people of certain races (see RACE entry 1 sense 1a) could live or own land, what jobs they could hold, and who could and couldn’t participate in government.

By these definitions, Israel doesn’t qualify. Unlike the policies once in place in South Africa,. Palestinian citizens of Israel (Israeli Palestinians) have the same civil rights as Israeli Jews. They vote, they can marry whomever they wish (including Jews), they can be doctors (Lina Qasem-Hassan, Izzeldin Abelaish,
Note: 47% of healthcare workers at Israeli Hospitals are Palestinian Israelis,  Lately, there has been news footage from hospitals inside Gaza shown on television. One interesting thing to note is that there are no women healthcare workers in Hamas controlled Gaza. Only men are allowed to serve as doctors or nurses.
Palestinian Israelis also serve as lawyers, teachers, and Supreme Court Judges (Khaled Kabub), Kenesset Members, (Yasser Hujirat, Aymen Odeh and 6 more),

 The IDF(5,000 Palestinian Israelis have volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Force. They are legally exempt from conscription.)

That’s the short list. There are many, many, many examples. Also, this list includes only names or people currently serving and does not include retired or historical members.

For more of my insights regarding Israel and “Palestine,” click HERE.


ownership in israel

 

As I have pointed out ad infinitum ad nauseum, every square inch of the land in Palestine that was acquired by Jews was bought and paid for (meaning that cash was exchanged with the owners of the time, and deeds were drawn up etc.), by the Jewish National Fund  starting circa 1901. It happens that that land included all of Judea/Samaria (AKA “the West Bank”) which, during the Arab-Israel War of 1948, was taken over and occupied by Jordan. The thing is, wealthy Arab landowners were only too happy to sell “worthless desert land” to the “foolish Jews,” at exorbitant prices. When the “worthless desert land” was proven to be very airable (thanks to science and irrigation), the cry “Jews stole our land” was heard around the world.

Were some Arabs displaced by these purchases?  It happens that a good portion of the lands purchased by JNF were at the time rented out to poorer Arabs. As happens here in the US, when a landlord sells property that tenants are living on, sometimes the tenants have to live elsewhere. This is exactly the situation in Jerusalem in Sheikh Jarrah. Jewish landlords who owned those properties prior to the Jordanian occupation were restored to the ownership. They attempted to collect rent from the Arab residents. Those residents refused to pay (having been instructed to do so by Palestinian leadership) and were subsequently evicted (which is what happens in the USA when tenants don’t pay their rent). The thing is, this situation went on for many years before the landowners appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, and were granted permission to evict their tenants.

History sucks don’t it? Oh wait! I forgot! Progressives are all socialists who don’t believe in legal ownership so no landlord anywhere in the world has the right to expect they can collect rents. How foolish of me..

For more of my insights regarding Israel and “Palestine,” click HERE.


My T-Shirt design

I created this t-shirt:

 

CafePress rejected the design. They claimed it was anti-Semitic. Really, they did. Here is the dialogue I had with them:

CafePress reeplied:

 

Then I replied:

And then they said:

So, it sounds like actual people reviewed it.

Now we know why don’t won’t let me use it.

On the “Jews are Tired” FB group, I was told my design was “anti-Semitic, that it called for genocide, Makes me think that the people who are posting such utter tripe are members of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that the ADL has identified as terrorists sympathizers.

Yet, there are worse designs on CafePress:

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess it all depends on who you are.  Now, for sure I got the same kinds of treatment on the FB group “Humboldt Progressives,” but I expected it there (it got so bad I left the group). There are only a handful of Jews on that group, though, they at least were sympathetic, unlike the Progressive trolls that dominated the conversation.

Here’s a use of “From the river to the sea” that I think is even more clever than mine. This is a screen shot from a Pro-Israel rally held in Manhatten this past weekend.

For more of my insights regarding Israel and “Palestine,” click HERE.


My dream

 

 

My dream, as an American Progressive, would be to see the Republitarian Party to just become extinct, and the Green Party ascend to take it’s place.  Imagine what it would be like if the Democratic Party (even as Progressive as it is) would become the conservative (Right) party, and the Green Party would be the liberal (Left) party.  That would bring in a much much more progressive American future. Perhaps a true universal health care system. Perhaps a return to the dominance of the American public school system, and the establishment of free tuition from Pr-School to a Doctorate degree. Perhaps the eradication of poverty and illiteracy in our lifetime.

The first thing would be to eliminate the elements of Congress that embrace conspiracy theories, nut-job religion, and misogyny, the three dominant charateristics of MAGA Republi-tarianism.  (Republitarian being the present day marriage of  conservatism and Ayn Rand libertarianism).

 


The problem with Islam

 

I would be the first person you would expect to state that everyone has the right to practice whatever religion they choose. That, even after what I am about to reveal here, is still true. I am not an Islamaphobe.  When I lived in Israel (about 11 months, Kibbutz Nahsholim), I knew some Moslem people. They lived in a neighboring village and amongst members of our Kibbutzim and residents of that village, we held many joint diners and other events. We traded with them, collaborated with  then and some of our members even married into their families and theirs into ours.  They were nice, good people and very good neighbors. So what I am about to reveal is not something I am particularly happy about sharing.

In all of the countries that are ruled by Moslems, practically all of them are dictatorships. None of them abide by basic human rights and some of them have some especially heinous practices.

Misogyny:  All of the Abrahamic faiths have elements of misogyny. In fact it is mainly the most fundamentalist examples that practice it.  But this article is about Islam so let’s go into it:

Following is a list of things that Muslim girls are taught:

  • Women can’t speak during prayer to correct an Imam (men can) because their voices are too “distracting.” (This is based on the hadith, see “From Hadith – Regarding Concealment Of Voice During Prayer“)
  • Women should lower their eyes in the presence of men.
  • Women shouldn’t wear tampons, to preserve their “purity.”
  • There are passages in the Quran that advocate beating disobedient wives (see this paragraph“In fact, the word in the Quran in 4:34 used for “beat” is “idreb.” It is a conjugate of the word “daraba” which primarily means “to beat, strike, to hit” – Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, page 538”).
  • Polygamy is legal and practiced in many Muslim countries and permitted by the Quran

Saudi Arabia, where the laws and regulations are for the most part drawn from edicts in the Quran and where “religious police” (note that they aren’t called the cultural police) patrol the streets, harassing women for showing their ankles, preventing women from driving, enforcing the laws that prevent women from working or travelling without permission from a male guardian, and oh, don’t forget “beating young girls” to prevent them from escaping a fire because they weren’t wearing proper religious dress.

Women in some countries are expected (or required) to wear the hijab which is similar to the way Catholic Nuns used to cover their heads. Other countries require the burqa which totally covers a woman, and in extreme cases allows only their eyes to be seen.

In Saudi Arabia, until very recently, women were not allowed to drive a car.

In the Taliban’s Afghanistan, women are not allowed to go to school (at all) nor can they pursue a profession.  In the Palestinian state of Gaza (yes, it actually is a country and is self governing) women are not allowed to be doctors, nurses or work in any healthcare profession (this is evident from recent news feed video taken at hospitals in Gaza).

There are other things too, minor things. But probably the very worst practice is Female Genital Mutilation. Among some conservative Muslim communities  women are regarded as “unclean” and “not ready for marriage” unless FGM – the deliberate cutting or removal of a female’s external genitalia – is performed. Even though Egypt officially banned the practice in 2008, it is still practiced there.  Other Muslim (or predominantly Muslim) countries where FGM is practiced are Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Indonesia, Djibouti, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, among others.

Anti LGBQT laws: In Iran today, lavat (sodomy) is a capital offence and people are frequently executed for it. In Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania, sodomy is also punishable by death.

In Gaza members of the LGBTQ community are (when discovered) thrown off the tops of buildings.

Among other Arab countries, the penalty in Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia and Syria is imprisonment – up to 10 years in the case of Bahrain. In those that have no specific law against homosexuality, gay people may still be prosecuted under other laws.

Freedom of Religion: Twenty-one of the Muslim-majority states are religiously repressive, meaning that the state governs according to an Islamist ideology through which it promotes and enforces a strongly traditional form of Islam and often violates the religious freedom of religious minorities and Muslim dissenters.

Slavery:  In the following countries slavery is lawful and practiced:  Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates,  Afghanistan, and Kuwait.

Torture:  Muslim countries who routinely torture dissenters are Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Egypt.

Reading over this list, I am astonished that there are so many American Progressives who support Islamic causses, and especially the Palestinian cause, which it left to fester, would surely produce an Islamic government that would practice many, if not most, or these practices.

 
For more of my insights regarding Israel and “Palestine,” click HERE.


Balancing act

 

 

 

 

These days, what with the Hamas-Israel War happening, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. I want to show compassion for the suffering that Arabs in Israel have endured, but I also want to support the Jewish state. On the one hand, HAMAS, the terrorist group, committed a heinous act of war against Israeli citizens this past 7 October. One thousand four hundred  unarmed Israeli citizens, men, women and children were murdered wholesale.  Children were decapitated. Women and girls were raped.  Over two hundred were taken hostage and spirited away to Gaza.  There, we presume, they fact torture and rape.

Israel responded using their far superior air and military forces.  They began with air strikes against Gaza, quite possibly the most densely populated place on our planet.  Collateral damage is an obvious result. Eight thousand five hundred twenty five “Palestinians” have died. We can safely assume that at least half of this number were children.  This is true even though the IDF is very surgical with it’s operations, and they go to great lengths to try to avoid killing children or other civilians.  The IDF routinely makes phone calls to civilians in the war zone, and air drops fliers warning them to take cover or to evacuate.

The difference between the two warring parties is that Israel bends over backwards to save civilians, and HAMAS targets them, and even uses women and children as human shields.  They also set up their strike basses in schools, Mosques and hospitals.

In other words, HAMAS does not play fair. Israel does. Israel always has.

I’m a dad.  I grieve every time a child is hurt.  Children should not be caught in the cross fires of any military  conflict.  They deserve (no matter who their parents are) to live out their childhood in peace.  For that matter, we all deserve to live out our lives in peace.

So I find myself between the rock and the hard place.

On the one hand, I sympathize with Arab children and their parents, the victims of Israel’s defense, as well as the Jewish victims of HAMAS.  Both sides deserve our compassion.

On the other hand I don’t honestly know what else Israel can do. This is a grim situation which will not get better with the passage of time.

The one thing I do know is that heinous lies have been told and spread about Israel. Lies like Israel has been committing genocide against the Arabs for the past seventy five years.  That Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing. That Israel is an Apartheid state.  That Israel stole the land from the Arabs.  That Zionism is a colonialist endeavor.  I have addressed these elsewhere on this blog, so i won’t use up ink to do so again.  But this is all propaganda. Lies told to elicit an emotional response.  In some cases the actual definition of words has been changed or flipped on their ear in order to bludgeon the Jewish state with words.

Israel’s greatest sin?  The possession of superior fire power. Because of this, in the end Israel will be triumphant and Palestine will be left in the dustbin.  This is a shame, because there is no logical reason why the two sides cannot live side by side as neighbors and friends.  The fact is that Jewish and Arabic people would prefer this.

There are of course radicals and zealots on both sides, both spewing their propaganda. “War is Peace.” ‘Love is Hate.”  “Lies are the Truth.”

I wish both sides would just shut the fuck up.

For more of my insights regarding Israel and “Palestine,” click HERE.


Six Lies about Israel


There is a lot of propaganda circulating these days concerning Israel. 
Much of it is mostly just hateful, blood libel types that have been going around for three thousand years against Jews, but now are applied to Israel.  Some are just conspiracy theories, the type of thing that guys wearing tin foil hats repeat. Others are just designed to evoke an emotional reaction.  All of them represent the worst hatred toward Jews.

Here are the top six:

    1. Israel is conducting a military occupation.
      Usually this one is just applied to Judea/Samaria (aka, “the West Bank”).  But I’ve also seen it applied to the whole of the land of Israel, “from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean).”
      Let’s examine some history:  Jews have lived in this part of the world continuously for over four thousand years.  Even after their last expulsion (by the Roman empire, circa 70 CE) there were always a few families that carried on in the land.  Between 1881 and 1924, with the beginnings of Zionism (1897) Jews began returning to their homeland in greater numbers, culminating at the end of World War II and Shoah (Holocaust). All of the land settled by Jews from 1901 onward, was purchased by the Jewish National Fund from wealthy Arab land owners who were only too happy to sell “worthless desert land” to the “foolish Jews.”  When the Jews began farming the land and utilizing science, irrigation and modern agricultural techniques, all of sudden charge that “the Jews stole our land” began to made,  One thing, the land had inhabitants that weren’t the owners.  Arab farmers had attempted to cultivate the land before it was sold out from under them by those Arab landowners. Nonetheless, the land was bought and paid for. Money changed hands. Deeds were written and transferred. None of the land of Eretz Israel was stolen from anyone.But, what about the West Bank? Didn’t Israel steal that land in the 1967 Six-Day-War?  Israel did not steal that land.  Prior the 1948 Arab-Israel War,  Judea/Samaria (it’s true name) had been purchased by the Jewish National Fund, and was settled by Jews.  But during the 1948 war, Jordan ceased that land, and it was Jordan that occupied it from 1948 until 1967.  That land was liberated by Israel in 1967, and returned to Israel.  It had always belonged to the Jews.  Further proof is that there are dozens of Jewish historical places throughout the “West Bank,” including Rachel’s Tomb, Eshtemoa Synagogue (4th-5th Century CE), Tombs of Joshua and Caleb, Hebron, Safed, Jerusalem, Cave of Machpeah, Cave of the Patriarchs, Jacobs Well, and scores of others.
      There is also the matter of the cemeteries.  There are some really ancient burial yards throughout Eretz Israel. Most date back three thousand years or more.  All of them have grave markers inscribed with Hebrew lettering.  The most prominent is in the Kidron Valley, the Silwan Necropolis, which lies outside of ancient Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate, and runs from the city wall and up the Mount of Olives. It has been in use since 1500 BCE.
      Bottom line, Israel does not illegally occupy Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) because it belonged to Israel prior to 1948.
    2. Israel is conducting Genocide (AKA “Ethnic Cleansing”) against the “Palestinians.”
      If this true, then the population of “Palestinians” would be dropping wouldn’t it?  Or, maybe this is something Israel is just not good at?  In 1948, at the end to the first Arab-Israel war, Arabs numbered 156,000. Today, (October 30th  2023) Arabs number 7.503 million.
      Genocide? I think not.
    3. Israel is an Apartheid nation.
      Under Apartheid, there are certain rules that are applied to the minority population.  They cannot intermarry outside their own group.  They cannot study abroad. They cannot become Doctors, Nurses or Teachers. They cannot vote.  They cannot have a job in the government, or even serve as representatives in Congress.
      Now, there are two classes of Arabs living within the boundaries of Israel. There are citizens of Palestine, and there are citizens of Israel.  None of the aforementioned restrictions apply to the Arab citizens of Israel. Many of these are Doctors, Nurses, and Teachers. All of them can vote in Israeli elections. Quite a few serve in government. Some are even members of the Knesset.  They can even marry Jews if  they can find a cooperative Jew to marry. As for the citizens of Palestine, they cannot vote in Israeli elections, not can they serve in the government. Other than that, they can still be Doctors, they can marry Jews.The charge of Apartheid mainly comes from the presence of the Security Wall that runs across Judea/Samaria, which restricts movements (of both Arabs and Jews) between parts of the area.
      Yes, it is ugly. And yes, it is very inconvenient for everyone. But it was built in an attempt to deter suicide bombings of Pizza Parlors, bus stops and schools, and frankly it has worked.  Suicide bombings are almost down to nothing since the wall was built.
    4. The Jews are white European Colonialists, who have displaced the indigenist Palestinians, much like what happened in America with the tribes there.133.5 million (74%) Jews came from the countries surrounding Israel in the Middle East and Africa. 45.5   million (25.3%) came from Europe, and there were an additional 1 million that were already living in Eretz Israel prior to any of these other immigrations.   Genetically, all Jews have carry genetic markers noting their origin in the Middle East.  Also, Jews are not white. They are a brown race, even though a few can pass as white.
    5. Israel stole ”Palestinian” land.
      As I have mentioned elsewhere in my blog, not one square mm of land was stolen from anyone.  All the land was purchased prior to 1947 by the Jewish National Fund from wealthy Arabic land owners who were only too willing to sell “worthless desert land” to the hapless Jews. Now it is true that some Arabs were evicted. This happens when land is transferred from one owner to another and it happens that tenants are dwelling there. It happens everyday in America. Why make a big deal out it happening in Israel?  Oh yeah. Jews.
    6. Gaza is an open air prison.
      That’s just stupid. But it’s also a kind of half-truth. A detailed article that goes into why this is not true can be found a this url: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-770411

For more of my insights regarding Israel, click HERE.


About Hate

 

Hate is hate.  The same hate that drives a gunman to shoot school children also drives terrorists to attack innocents just going about their business. The same hate drives a Prime Minister to declare war against the Palestinians. The same hate drove Hitler to murder 6 million Jews (and an equal number of others). The same hate. The same hate ferments wars across our entire planet. The same hate ferments discrimination and denies rights to women and minorities.

Hand in hand with hate is profiteering. The profiteer manipulates group A to hate group B, so that they go to war with each other, and so he can make a boat load of cash selling arms to both sides. The profiteer manipulates gun laws so that anyone can buy a gun and he doesn’t really care how that gun is used. The profiteers are the cause of all war, all killing all hatred. The profiteer does not care about politics or religion, but he uses both to create his world of profit. He makes up lies and convinces the Right Wing, and then he makes up different lies and convinces the Left Wing, and he convinces fundamentalist religious nutjobs to fly passenger planes into buildings, or convince the “righteous” that their way needs to be imposed on everyone, so they start passing laws banning books, and make women wear burqas, or take away their right to regulate their own healthcare. The list goes on and on and one. But the driving force is PROFIT. All these activities are very profitable.

But, heaven help us if people everywhere where to recognize that we are all really the same, that we basically want the same things. That all we want to do is to have meaningful work, and raise children in freedom and dignity. <sigh> But, we can’t have those things. Because we get convinced that those bad people over there have stolen our land, or are imposing their religion on us, or they are the wrong color, or they have too much money, or … whatever. What the world needs now is love. But love won’t line the pockets of the profiteers (aka, capitalists, aka Ferenghi), so we’re taught to hate. There is no reason to hate. You and I and your neighbor and the Jews and the Palestinians and the Russians and everyone who lives on this planet have a very important thing in common. Something that should be obvious, but most religions deny:

WE ARE G-D.

And we need to treat each other like we are. There is a Guru who runs an Ashram down near Garberville: Stephan Gabriel. He says that if only 10% of the population of Earth were to embrace the idea that each and everyone of us (those you like and those you dislike) is, in fact, G-d, we would achieve a critical mass and an end to War, to poverty, to illiteracy, to just about everything that plagues society. YOU ARE G-D. Think about it. Choose love. Stephan’s wisdom can be found at https://urgod.org


On being “Woke”

 


The Repubs don’t like “woke.”
That’s because they want everyone to be asleep. If you are asleep you won’t be able to stop them from imposing their totalitarian agenda. You won’t be able to stop them when women and minorities are deprived of their rights. You won’t be able to stop them from imposing fundamentalist values on everyone. You won’t be able to stop them from destroying the whole planet, which is the real agenda.

You see if the planet can no longer sustain life then that will force King Jesus to return. That is the real goal you see.  They’ve embraced authoritarianism (what I called “totalitariianism

” above) – the strong man, as a desired political function because they want a king. Everything will be so very much better when we have Jesus in power to just tell us what to do. In the meantime they’ll impose all the other bull shit they believe in upon everyone because – that’s just the right way. At least in their view.

Happily, I don’t think Americans are going to buy this. I think there are a whole lot of us, a critical mass in fact, who are in fact “woke.”

SO SAY WE ALL!!