Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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Hope Orange Slime and the Rightwing Reptilians don’t get ideas.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is the homeland “only of the Jewish people,” in a new jab at the country’s Arab minority ahead of April’s election.

Netanyahu on Sunday addressed “slightly confused people” after an Israeli celebrity defended the rights of Israel’s Arab population. Arabs comprise about 20 percent of Israel’s 9 million residents. They have full citizenship rights but have faced decades of discrimination.

On Saturday, actress Rotem Sela denounced Netanyahu’s frequent talking point that his political rival will form a government with Arab political parties.

“When the hell will someone in this government tell the public that Israel is a country of all its citizens,” Sela wrote on Instagram.

Netanyahu responded: Israel “is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/netanyah ... 3616293db9

Our government is supporting apartheid, not surprised since Reagan supported it in South Africa.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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Bibi aligned himself with the far right parties including the Orthodox religious parties. It´s a nationalist statement, as his legal difficulties mount he´s fighting for reelection. So far Bibi´s indictment isn´t hurting Likud, it could always change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p ... e_election
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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Now Lindsey Graham is going to lobby Orange Slime to recognize the Golden Heights as part of Israel.
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said on Monday he would lobby the Trump administration to recognize the occupied Golan Heights as belonging to Israel.

Graham spoke during a tour of the plateau, captured from Syria during the 1967 Middle East War, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel effectively annexed the Golan in 1981, in a move not recognized internationally, when it adopted legislation that applied its laws to the area.

“There is no construct I can imagine now or any time in the future for the state of Israel to give the Golan up,” Graham told reporters.

Syria’s eight-year civil war has at times raged close to the Golan boundary.

Graham said he would talk to Trump about recognizing the rugged, strategically located plateau as part of Israel as it was “inconceivable that Israel could ever give it to anyone given the threats Israel faces”.

Israel says the territory is a critical buffer zone to defend its territory and has itself lobbied Trump to recognize Israeli sovereignty there.

In 2017, Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem and recognized the city as Israel’s capital, angering Palestinians who seek its eastern sector as capital of a state they want to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But Trump said he was not taking a position on the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/senato ... rt-israel/

I wonder how much money is Graham getting from AIPAC or Sheldon Adelson?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:27 pm AIPAC doesn't donate money to candidates. That's part of the anti-Semitic trope that got Rep. Omar in trouble for repeating.
I assume Omar is starting to learn that the things she has been hearing about AIPAC, etc all her life might not be true. If she had criticized Likud, it might have gone a little better.

Of course, as a Palestinian-American, she probably has a lot of emotion attached to the issue. I hope this is the start of addressing the Netanyahu problem and compassion toward others on all sides. There is a lot of anger about the acceptability of anti-Muslim speech in America, so this isn't the end of the discussion.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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K9s wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:38 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:27 pm AIPAC doesn't donate money to candidates. That's part of the anti-Semitic trope that got Rep. Omar in trouble for repeating.
I assume Omar is starting to learn that the things she has been hearing about AIPAC, etc all her life might not be true. If she had criticized Likud, it might have gone a little better.

Of course, as a Palestinian-American, she probably has a lot of emotion attached to the issue. I hope this is the start of addressing the Netanyahu problem and compassion toward others on all sides. There is a lot of anger about the acceptability of anti-Muslim speech in America, so this isn't the end of the discussion.
She's not Palestinian. She's Somali.
106+ recreational uses of firearms
1 defensive use
0 people injured
0 people killed

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:27 pm AIPAC doesn't donate money to candidates. That's part of the anti-Semitic trope that got Rep. Omar in trouble for repeating.
AIPAC is not a political action committee and does not donate directly to political candidates, but it requires its members to donate to the campaigns of certain members of Congress in order to receive exclusive membership benefits.
The New Yorker explained AIPAC’s role in the late 1980s establishing allied pro-Israel PACs, which often had AIPAC leaders in charge and “looked to [AIPAC] for direction” regarding campaign contributions. AIPAC, which has generally been allied with the Republican Party, reportedly recruited individual bundlers, who would collect AIPAC members’ donations to direct them to the campaigns of senators and representatives. “The goal was to develop people who could get a member of Congress on the phone at a moment’s notice,” wrote the New Yorker’s Connie Bruck.

On its website, AIPAC details its “Congressional Club,” a group of members who commit to donate at least $5,000 per election cycle “in a clearly pro-Israel context” to “pro-Israel politics.” “The Congressional Club is designed to recognize politically active members of AIPAC who support pro-Israel candidates for the House and Senate,” the group says.

Progressive activist Ady Barkin wrote a Twitter thread on Monday, describing an instance in which AIPAC’s political spending “was definitely about the Benjamins.”

AIPAC is a central pillar of the occupation. Without Congressional support, the Likud/anti-Palestine/pro-occupation project would be radically undermined. AIPAC is the anchor of that support, and its money and Sheldon Adelson’s money are indispensable to the work.

— Ady Barkan🔥🌹 (@AdyBarkan) February 11, 2019
It’s difficult to quantify how much money going to political campaigns each election cycle comes from AIPAC members. But prominent AIPAC booster Haim Saban is one of the United States’ biggest political donors, having given considerable amounts of money to congressional campaigns and millions to super PACs and other outside groups that spend heavily on elections to support or oppose political candidates. Saban, who funds AIPAC’s semi-annual Saban Leadership Seminar, donated $3.3 million to Democratic outside political spending groups during the 2018 election cycle. In the 2016 cycle, Saban and his wife, Cheryl Saban, donated $13.8 million to outside political spending groups.

Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson split with AIPAC in 2007 after the lobbying group supported an increase in aid to Palestine, but as recently as 2014, AIPAC’s fundraising arm was in business with an Adelson-controlled company. AIPAC now supports ending aid to Palestine.

Adelson and his wife, Miriam, spent $123 million on the 2018 midterm elections, all of it benefiting Republicans, by far the biggest total of any American family, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Most of that total went to two GOP super PACs, the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund. The couple’s prodigious donations benefiting Republicans earned Sheldon Adelson direct access to President Trump and Miriam Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
https://readsludge.com/2019/02/11/heres ... -congress/

It is just a legal loophole for the donations in the political arena. This is a way to avoid the claims of a foreign country’s citizens or government donating to an American election campaign.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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The LA Times is out with an editorial condemning Netanyahu's anti-democracy tactics.
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments on Israel and its American supporters were dumb and offensive, and they deserved to be called out for their use of ugly anti-Semitic tropes. Donald Trump’s response to Omar’s comments — that the Democrats are an “anti-Jewish party” — was cynical and divisive and patently untrue. It deserves our contempt.

But the real prize for repugnant, mean-spirited and undemocratic speech on the subject of Jews and Israel in recent days goes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s not terribly surprising that the long-serving, right-wing prime minister, who faces reelection next month as well as a looming indictment on charges of taking bribes and trading favors, should be pandering to his base. But this time, he outdid himself. On Sunday, Netanyahu demeaned the status of the nearly 2 million Arabs who live in Israel, saying that although they are welcome to live there and are entitled to equal rights, it is not, in fact, their country.

“Israel is not a state for all its citizens,” he said in a post on Facebook. “According to a basic law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people — and the Jewish people only.” Netanyahu was referring to an enormously controversial law passed by the Knesset last summer that declared the country to be the “nation-state” of the Jewish people. The measure downgraded Arabic from an official language to one with a "special status" and took other steps to make it clear just whose country it was. Though opponents called the law racist, Netanyahu hailed it as a major achievement.

That law was perhaps more symbolic than meaningful. Everyone already knows Israel is a Jewish state, don’t they? But it was nevertheless troubling and unnecessary — a provocation that sent an unmistakable message about Jewish primacy and the contempt Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition hold for Palestinians and their rights. It omitted the promises of democracy and equality that are included in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. And it followed on the heels of right-wing efforts to exclude Arab legislators from important votes and to require Arab citizens to take loyalty oaths or be stripped of their citizenship.

Now Netanyahu has doubled down on these anti-democratic moves. In Sunday’s Facebook post, he not only suggested that Arabs in Israel were second-class citizens, but also that his electoral opponents Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, if voted into power, would put together a left-wing government “with the support of the Arab parties” that would undermine the security of the state. Netanyahu’s comments come just weeks after he cut a deal with a small, racist anti-Arab party known as “Jewish Power” whose leaders have called for violence against Palestinians, for the expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens from the country, for a prohibition on intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, and for a takeover of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Netanyahu, in an apparent bid to strengthen his right-wing base before the April 9 election, arranged for that faction — whose leaders are disciples of the late ultranationalist rabbi Meir Kahane — to merge into a somewhat more mainstream party of religious Zionists.

Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful organization lobbying on behalf of Israel in the United States, called the views of Jewish Power “racist and reprehensible.” Netanyahu could soon become the nation’s longest-serving prime minister. If he wins reelection next month, he will a few months later exceed the record of the nation’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. And it could happen: Netanyahu has remained firmly in control through many tumultuous years and previous scandals. It would shock no one if he pulled through again. But has he been good for his country? For years, he has manipulated fear and anger to dominate the Israeli political stage. He has been divisive and demagogic. He has been, on balance, an enemy of the two-state solution that has been the only realistic path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Not its only enemy, to be sure, but an obstacle nevertheless.

Now, in the face of the corruption indictment and the strong electoral challenge, he seems to be growing desperate. Perhaps he will go too far and be driven from office. In the end, we hope for an Israel that is secure — but one that makes peace with its neighbors. And an Israel that is not a two-tiered society, but is egalitarian, liberal and democratic, and treats all its citizens fairly.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editori ... story.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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Eris wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:47 pm
K9s wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:38 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:27 pm AIPAC doesn't donate money to candidates. That's part of the anti-Semitic trope that got Rep. Omar in trouble for repeating.
I assume Omar is starting to learn that the things she has been hearing about AIPAC, etc all her life might not be true. If she had criticized Likud, it might have gone a little better.

Of course, as a Palestinian-American, she probably has a lot of emotion attached to the issue. I hope this is the start of addressing the Netanyahu problem and compassion toward others on all sides. There is a lot of anger about the acceptability of anti-Muslim speech in America, so this isn't the end of the discussion.
She's not Palestinian. She's Somali.
That'll teach me to listen to local radio.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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Netanyahu responded:

Israel is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.
And this is exactly why the Israeli Right has aligned with the large number of Hard Orthodox. Basically, the middle class birth rate in Israel is low, but the Arab birth rate is high; the Orthodox Jewish birth rate is even higher.

In the long term, Israel needs to decide between being a Democracy OR "The Jewish Nation". On the current trend, Jews could become a voting minority. This is one reason why the smarter folks in Israel want a true two state solution: that allows a constrained Israel to more likely maintain a Jewish voting majority.

I am not Jewish. I have no pony in this race. I just think the concept of the "Jewish Nation" is a bit hard to reconcile with Democracy.
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Re: Netanyahu: Israel Is The National State ‘Only Of The Jewish People’

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max129 wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:01 pm
Netanyahu responded:

Israel is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.
And this is exactly why the Israeli Right has aligned with the large number of Hard Orthodox. Basically, the middle class birth rate in Israel is low, but the Arab birth rate is high; the Orthodox Jewish birth rate is even higher.

In the long term, Israel needs to decide between being a Democracy OR "The Jewish Nation". On the current trend, Jews could become a voting minority. This is one reason why the smarter folks in Israel want a true two state solution: that allows a constrained Israel to more likely maintain a Jewish voting majority.

I am not Jewish. I have no pony in this race. I just think the concept of the "Jewish Nation" is a bit hard to reconcile with Democracy.
They are opening themselves up to the "Apartheid" attack by saying this stuff. The argument for Arab citizenship in some areas is not a bad argument. We should be able to criticize the policies of our allies.

I am just asking this question because I don't know the answer: Why is the far-right in the US so pro-Likud? I read that some of those pro-Zionism folks aligned with the alt-right were pushing for American Jews to move to Israel. Is that the real story? I noticed that some Black Nationalists align with the alt-right for that same "race nationalist" reason. Of course, it is usually just seems like a way to make money. I don't know if they actually believe that.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

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