So early this morning in Israel, the Knesset essentially superseded their founding laws 62 to 55, redefining the nation officially as an ethno-religious state. Even the Jerusalem Post is doing a wtf: So this bill downgrades Arabic as an official language, codifies settlement building as a national priority, also troubling is that it says Israel will "work in the Diaspora to improve the affinity between Israel and the Jewish people" -- this amid reports that a Conservative America rabbi has already been arrested for being hired to perform a wedding, with a possible two year penalty in prison. It also allows housing discrimination and removes all the protections of ethnic and religious minorities and any mention of equality or democracy. As a cherry on top, after promising support to the LGBT community earlier this week in a bill that would permit same-sex adoption rights, Bibi helped kill that bill as well last night at the request of the coalition of ultra-orthodox and far-right that are now his best friends. There's absolutely no way to spin this. Netanyahu caved in to demands by the ultra-nationalists and ultra-religious to discard Israel's founding documents in order to build a ethno-theocracy. For all his talk of how awful Iran is, he just re-created his own nation in its mirror image just to stay in power. This is unprecedented, should be harshly condemned, and is not going to end well.
I agree wholeheartedly: difficult to spin and probably not to end well. The legislation also had language elevating the settlement process as a priority and right. Lord help us. When the species gets these fits of tribalism, it seems to hit everywhere at once.
I don't think I see anything actually changing, but this is certainly a symbolic disaster. The mullahs will absolutely be rejoicing at the opportunity to turn around and say "we don't have that explicitly stated in our constitution" - although we all know in practice discrimination is rife in Iran. The extremist right has been in control for some time and this won't increase that control or make more court decisions OVERALL go in their favor imo. I'm sure selected social incidents will be highlighted to make it seem as though everything is proportionately changing but in reality the ship has been headed in this direction at this exact pace for almost 2 decades now. Palestine is brutal, and only the most brutal people will be able to form any semblance of a governing institution. When those people are picked as lesser evils, everything can be blamed on them. Also, don't expect an uproar from Arab governments except a few. Most are now bff's of Netenyahu or under financial dominance by those who are bff's of Netenyahu.
They are now officially what I've long thought they were unofficially. Some credit has to go to Trump for his unequivocal support. Three years ago, I think they'd have been too worried about condemnation from the USA to do this.
It is surely a pubic acknowledgement that Israel is fundamentally different than the United States where we have no state religion. Quite backward from a civil liberties or Western democratic viewpoint.
I'm glad I got to visit the West Bank, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other fascinating places while they were still under Jordanian control. I don't think I want to visit this "new Israel," where bigotry is codified. It's the curse of their political system that tiny extreme parties can have influence all out of proportion to their numbers. This "new Israel" also goes against what large numbers of the Israeli people would prefer, in my opinion. This reminds me far too much of what is happening in our own country, where a minority of extremists are having influence all out of proportion to their numbers. They are dividing, weakening, and polarizing the electorate to an extreme I haven't seen before, with a lot of help from Putin's Russia, of course. I wonder if Putin has exerted his influence in Israel, as well.
I missed this one too: In recording, Netanyahu boasts Israel convinced Trump to quit Iran nuclear deal If you click on the link scroll down, they actually have the whole clip of him bragging about it.
At least 2/3 of the country is secular, as were it's founders. As Hitchens onced said, "Tel Aviv might be the world's most atheist city." Since the founding of the country, Ben-Gurion had his status quo agreement with the haredim political parties to stay out of religious affairs if they stayed out of non-religious ones, and Begin honored it as well.They've always collected their bribes from whatever party needed them to form a government to have their draft exemptions, yeshivas and soup kitchens funded and they stayed in their religious neighborhoods. That appears to be over. The good news is, since they don't have a Constitution, if Israel can elect a secular coalition to form a government, they should be able to change it. I don't love Yair Lapid, but he would be less of an embarrassment to the world.
It's just a variation of the Westminster system. It just has more than 30 parties on the ballot in all at-large seats, so while everyone has a party to vote for, Netanyahu has managed to pivot (or bribe if you prefer) between nearly all 17 of them with seats besides Meretz and the Arab List to stay PM. I think he'd partner with anyone to hold on to power.
