Discussion for article #233537
“It’s not about Obama, or Iran—it’s about the Israeli voter”
It’s a campaign stop, orchestrated by the Republican Party and subsidized in part by the United States taxpayer.
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All of the above does not mean that Israel is not a democracy, or that we are on the verge of ceasing to exist. It does mean that we are a real country with real problems and real consequences at stake in the coming election.
Israel is not a democracy. Its not a democracy when millions can not vote.
Gerrymandered
A look at the West Bank - the Israeli states of Judea and Samaria, is reminiscent of a map of our congressional districts.
The portion of the map in Red is Area C, it constitutes 61% of the West Bank and is under total Israeli control. This is where the “settlers” live and enjoy full Israeli privileges.
One prominent Israeli openly calls for the small number of Palestinians left within the red area to be given Israeli citizenship with the official recognition of area C as being part of Israel:
The other part of the Stability Plan deals with the remaining portion of the West Bank, known as Area C, where 400,000 Israelis and 70,000 Palestinians live. Under my plan, Israel would annex this territory, much as it exercised sovereignty over East Jerusalem in 1967 and the Golan Heights in 1981. The Palestinians who live in Area C would be offered full Israeli citizenship.WSJ
As I have been pointing out, the Israelis in this area already have the same exact rights and protections as Israelis living in Tel Aviv or Haifa. This includes the right to vote in Israel’s elections.
The Joint List (the Arab combined parties) are upset that the ballot slips are being printed in Area C. I think that the response of Israel’s election authorities explains the situation quite well:
“They’re Israeli; there’s an Israeli flag there,” a committee spokesman said of the printer.
The West Bank is de facto territory of Israel. This quiet annexation brought with it a problem: what to do with the unwanted ethnicities? The solution has been to corral them, see the white crosshatched areas of the map. Palestinians live here. They can not vote. They have no rights.
These are clear facts that can only be denied through the most strenuous mental gymnastics. After a half century, the West Bank has been made a part of Israel on the down low. They can’t admit to this because then they have to admit to what they are: Israel is an apartheid state.
Gaza is another matter
Gaza comprises occupied territory. Having no natural resources, crowded with the wrong demographic, Gaza is maintained as a ghetto.
There are also important civil issues being discussed in Israel. There are no civil marriages in the country—all couples need to marry through the rabbinate, leaving tens of thousands of couples without the ability to marry in Israel. This, of course, means that LGBT couples have no chance of getting married.
Also meaning that mixed marriages are blocked.
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Change the election laws back home, and Israel never has to have another political mess like the one that keeps Bibi in power. I’m almost tempted to say that Israel has made it’s own bed, as I do with any political schmuck who gets re-elected time and again in the US.
But the problem in Israel is that Israeli Governments in general don’t face the public often enough. That’s because of all the political slight of hand that allows one Party (and often times one individual) to hang on as PM, without their party having to answer to the people for bad policies.
The ones to suffer from all this are the people of Israel. But it has reached the point where the people in Government no longer care about individual Israelis. All they care about is hanging on to power, whatever the cost may be, As long as someone else pays for it, naturally.
There are many ways in which Israel is becoming more and more like the United States. I don’t know about other Israelis. but that worries me, about as much as anything happening in the world today.
Israeli election law should be changed in the same way the law in the UK has been changed, so that there are fixed elections at a set interval of from four to five years. There should also be two tiers of election for the Knesset. In the first round, all parties appear on the ballot.
In the second round, all parties who get less than 15% of the total ballots cast are dropped from the ballot, and voting is then for the Parties which receive 15% or more of the vote The proportion of the total votes in the second round determines how many seats any party will hold.The PM would be elected by the Party or coalition which holds the majority of seats for a particular term of office between fixed elections, unless the government falls, in which case new elections would be called within 30 days. In all instances of Elections,all campaigning of any kind would be made to cease 72 hours before the polls open.
I know, I’m dreaming. But a dream is better than a waking nightmare, isn’t it?
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The Iran issue that bibi the zionist terrorist has been pushing for decades is made up…
He is a dirty little non-ally:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/02/ignatius-netanyahu-may-have-leaked-us
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Most Americans would like nothing more than to not have to give a damn about internal Israeli politics. What is the Israeli progressive solution to the Palestinian conflict, besides not being “the status quo”?
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Bibi can come and speak, let him, then when repugs lose the White House again, we can give Bibi. his comeuppance.
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If Netanyahu wins this election it won’t matter how many other issues are plaguing the Israeli people. Netanyahu has damaged relations with the US. No right winger has bested our President and Bibi certanily isn’t up to the job. In typical right wing fashion, Netanyahu has bitten off more than he can chew and is too stupid to know it.
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the only way this pathetic waste of war mongering space gets elected is if he keeps people afraid of their own shadows,just like the republicon party
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Right wingers are right wingers no matter their location on a map is what this says. The fact that Boener and company greet this hack with open arms proves that. The right wing ideology is the glue that binds.
There is no peaceful solution to ridding the masses of entrenched power. The wannabe Kings become entrenched by removing the ability to fight them first.
Bibi and Boener could care less about pissing off the majority because there is no real consequence. The next few seasons of elections are critical in this world. The right wingers are inviting Armageddon just out of lust for power not because they believe in heaven.
This is pushing insanity to its limits. Governing isn’t as hard as the right wingers make it. They apparently would rather die than help their fellow citizens and vice versa.
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If you subscribe to the notion of Shock Doctrine, the domestic issues you cite have everything to do with Iran, and vice versa. Existential external threats have always been a great cover to take people’s eyes away from domestic cronyism and the destruction of social services. (At least for those who already want to engage in those things – some political leaders decide instead that transparent government and a strong citizenry are part of how you defend against external threats.)
Recasting things like this, it makes me wonder whether the israeli right’s ultimately-suicidal hostility toward any kinds of peace initiatives in the region is really about maximizing domestic power and graft…
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Yup. Which is why the 5-minute delay Israel’s election officials ordered for broadcasting his speech is ludicrous: he won’t be sloganeering, so there’ll be no actual omissions of the speech, and that itself will be used as evidence of what a statesman he is. But as this article demonstrates, there’s a lot more going on in Israel than Iran panic, and a lot more varied political opinion than Americans who only know AIPAC and the Christianists realize.
And as the writer notes, the way Congress and Americans in general treat Netanyahu’s political ploy matters in Israel. So, one more time:
- If you haven’t yet, PLEASE contact your Dem reps about this, and ask all your friends to do the same. In particular, the non-Jewish ones need to know they’ve got cover from American Jews not to attend his speech, because most of us emphatically do not stand with Bibi.
- If you haven’t yet, PLEASE call your nearest Israeli consulate and voice your outrage about this political stunt; the last thing Israel needs is to become a partisan issue here. (Those calls are having a real impact back home.) It’s long past time they heard from American Jews who aren’t right-wingers, and realized how much Netanyahu is imperiling support for Israel among Americans in general.
- And finally, if you want an effective counterweight to AIPAC, PLEASE look into J Street – the more support they can show, the greater their influence will be on the Hill, and the sooner we can finally relegate the neocons in both countries to the fringes of our politics where we need them to be, for both our sakes.
These actions really do matter; let’s compound the pressure he’s already feeling in Israel.
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I wish Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and all the Congressional Democrats who will not boycott Bibi’s appearance would read this article first, even if they are not particularly progressive.
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