A policy forum conference today in Israel was a chance for Israel’s far-right coalition members to lay out new demands for the nation’s Arab minority, with Economy Minister Naftali Bennett demanding “zero tolerance” for Israeli Arabs having a “national identity” as a formal part of government policy.
Bennett insisted he was working “obsessively” to integrate Arabs into the Israeli economy as individuals, but that they must be forbidden any sense of identity beyond that, and that the only “national identity” Israel could ever allow was Jewishness.
Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar went on to condemn both Arabs and “leftists,” saying they had promoted school books that forwarded the idea of Israel as a state for all its citizens, and that he spent his time in the Education Ministry trying to ban such books from the classrooms.
Bennett went on to insist that Palestinian statehood would mean that if the Israeli Arabs carved out an identity they’d get “one and a half states” and that the Jews would only have half of one. Bennett did not mention his vehement opposition to Palestinian statehood in the comment.
that he spent his time in the Education Ministry trying to ban such books from the classrooms.
But surely he'd only 'pulp,' not 'burn.'
The identity game they play is more complex than he's letting on. Palestinians clearly have a national identity; best he could do is dumb it down…just like they do in the states. And possibly the worst thing that could happen to Bennett's kind is for everyone to identify as "Jews;" 'cause it won't mean to the rest of us anything like what it means to Bennett. Witness, e.g., Richard Forer and Gilad Atzmon … they're pretty much what normal humans sound like. Bennett would have to find a different word for who he means.
The Zionist are farting against thunder eventually the 5billion in lethal aid America pours out to them while its citizens scramble for their basic needs cannot be sustained and eventually demographics will determine who runs Palestine.
The weird part is that many Israelis are non-religious. So, why this big deal about Jewishness – it obviously means little to those clinging to that entitlement? This crisis has little to do with religion. Call it by its right name – tribalism and racism and wanting to keep keep stolen land.
Can this be a surprise to anyone? The media, if it covers this at all, makes it seem like these types of policies are aberrant, that only people like Bennett, Lieberman, or Netanyahu, promulgates this filth. Far from it. In the "only democracy in the middle east", there are laws that have been in place for years that give the chosen Aryans, Jews only laws, Jews only roads, Jews only towns, on land that has been brutally taken from the "untermensch" Palestinians. It is a land that denies education and even basic sanitation to the non-chosen. This relentless drive for "liebenstraum", this brutal and racist regime has had the popular mandate to carry out these atrocities for going on 70 years. This is Israel as it really is. Bennett will probably succeed Netanyahu. God help us. God help the Palestinians.
Richard…that's not true…that's what they say – it has no bearing on the reality that Israel IS a theocracy posing as a ' democracy'…
Steve,
Tel Aviv is one of the gay "hotspots" in the World – does that sound like an ultra-religious place (eg. Riyadh, the Vatican or Charlotte NC) to you?
The Canaanites/Amorites/Philistines/Midianites/PALESTINIANS were in PALESTINE long before Israel was even thought of. The PALESTINIAN’s ancestors were there when ABRAHAM passed through from Babylon/Ur …… Israel’s “claim” to Palestine is based entirely on War Crimes and GENOCIDE written in a book that THEY WROTE and PLAGERIZED from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and EVERYONE ELSE in the area..
Palestina and Palestine. These two forms appear IN THEIR OWN BIBLE in poetical passages; Ex.15:14 Isa. 14:29,31 and Joel 3:4 . The Hebrew is Pelesheth, a word found,, besides the above, only in Ps. 60:8; 83:7; 87:4; and 108:9 in all which our translators have rendered it by “Philistia” or “Philistines”. Palestine really means nothing but Philistia. The original Hebrew word Pelesheth to the Hebrews signified the long and broad strip of maritime plain inhabited by their neighbors.
The Philistine plain became sooner known to the western world than the country farther inland, and was called by them Syria Palestina, Philistine Syria. From thence it was gradually extended to the country farther inland, til in the Roman and later Greek authors, both heathen and Christian, it became the usual appellation for the WHOLE COUNTRY, and thus, the Peoples living there are PALESTINIANS.
All I can think of is All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. It is an interesting to listen to a government of a democracy talk about a large group of citizens as workers and they can never be anything but workers. The old horse looked up and saw animals will not sleep in bed and the new with sheets. Many thought animal farm was about Russia but clear it was about the democracy in the Middle East that has workers who do not exist for anything else. In our past slaves were counted as part of a person not just labor.