The duality of Israel regarding the treatment of Arabs?

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jc6chan
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19 Nov 2009, 7:58 pm

While I've read that Arabs living inside the State of Israel are not treated with equality, people say that they are treated better than the citizens of neighbouring Arab countries. In fact, they have the right to vote and there are even Arab parties in the Knesset (i think that means government) although I heard that they weren't allowed to run in the Feb. 2009 elections for some reason. Maybe i'm wrong about this so don't take my word for it.

That being said, what is the reason behind the poor treatment of Arabs living in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip?

The following are some of the ways Arabs are being treated poorly in the occupied West Bank:

-Many farmers suddenly lose their jobs/home/property because it is deemed as "Jewish Land" and Jewish settlements need to be built there.

-There are many walls that divide Jewish and Arab areas in a fashion that Palestinians can't move freely from place to place.

-There are so-called "Jews only" or "Israelis only" highways in which Jews get to drive on nicely paved highways and can travel from one place to another efficiently. On the other hand, Palestinians are not allowed to drive on these highways and they need to drive on narrow, winding, bumpy roads that are not always nicely paved.

-Palestinians have very little access to water while Jews on the other side of the wall perhaps only 100 metres (sorry, i'm Canadian) away get to enjoy a nice day in a swimming pool.

-Jewish settlements get lots of funding by the Israeli gov't while palestinians have crappy houses and live in poverty.

In the Gaza Strip, palestinians are now even denied of materials to build houses and infrastructure that was destroyed during the war. Only the most basic humanitarian supplies are getting through. In 2008, Israel imposed a total bloackade and it wasn't until the border with Egypt was breached that the blockade ended.

So why does Israel treat Arabs from Israel and Arabs living in the Palestinian Territories so differently?

My only theory is because Israel has this prejudice that Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories are "a bunch of terrorists who's goal in life is to either blow themselves up or kill as many Jews as possible." I think statistically, Arabs living in Israel are less radical or extreme for the very reason that they have a better quality of life.

Thanks for reading.



jc6chan
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19 Nov 2009, 8:01 pm

In fact, I think this is the very reason why there is a huge spectrum of views on Israel ranging from describing Israel with words like "democracy" to words like "apratheid", "oppression".



John_Browning
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19 Nov 2009, 10:47 pm

If you remember old news stories, when Israel lets up on the Palestinians, the Palestinians thank the Israelis with terrorist attacks and start smuggling weapons. The Israelis have to restrict the Palestinians access to all but the most basic supplies or else those supplies would be used to wage war against them. If the Palestinians would mellow out, the Israelis could let their living conditions improve.


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jc6chan
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20 Nov 2009, 12:14 am

John_Browning wrote:
. The Israelis have to restrict the Palestinians access to all but the most basic supplies or else those supplies would be used to wage war against them.


Let me just say that there will be no peace if this is the way things are done. No civilization will just let a superpower get away with controlling them. The Palestinians will not just accept the things the way they are. The Resistance will prevail. Not that I'm condoning every aspect of the Resistance.



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20 Nov 2009, 12:35 am

jc6chan wrote:
John_Browning wrote:
. The Israelis have to restrict the Palestinians access to all but the most basic supplies or else those supplies would be used to wage war against them.


Let me just say that there will be no peace if this is the way things are done. No civilization will just let a superpower get away with controlling them. The Palestinians will not just accept the things the way they are. The Resistance will prevail. Not that I'm condoning every aspect of the Resistance.

Resistance will prevail if they use passive methods. The Israelis would respect that more. Considering that Palestinian children look up to suicide bombers, I don't think that they will be using passive resistance any time soon so the Israelis will continue to crush them.


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jc6chan
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20 Nov 2009, 12:39 am

Oh ya, another thing I wanted to add here. I always don't understand why Israel is complaining so much of terrorism but at the same time they don't take a hard look in the mirror and see what they are doing towards the palestinians:

-The ever expanding settlements in the West Bank, the PM Netanyahu always boasts about how israel has "left every square inch from Gaza and Lebanon", yet he doesn't mention a thing about displacing Palestinians from there homes in the West Bank to make room for settlements.

-They are setting up an apartheid system in the Occupied West bank.

-They have bombed over 50 hospitals (if i remember right) during the Gaza War (hamas firing rockets from hospitals does not justify it)

-It was reported that they purposely bulldozed down homes in Gaza so they can "get a clearer view of the battlefield"

-White phosphorous spreads over a huge area, and the have used it.

I'm not saying that Israel shouldn't feel sorry about the victims of terrorism but if Israel thinks that this war is about Israel=Good and Palestinian armed groups=bad they are DEAD WRONG.



xenon13
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20 Nov 2009, 1:56 am

Israeli Arabs were under military rule until 1965. They also to this day have no right to return to their homes if they were expelled from one town in what's now Israel to another. If their village was destroyed, it must remain destroyed and they planted pine trees to try to hide the ruins permanently, even though pines are not indigenous to this land.

The reason they are differently treated has to do with the fact that as they live in Israel proper, ostentatious abuse of the Arab population would carry a large propaganda cost... those in Israel proper are citizens of the state and there are advantages to that. As for those in the occupied territories, they are not citizens, they are enemy people who are to be subject to a regime tastefully described by Moshe Dayan. After comparing the Palestinians to a woman being raped by Israel, he said "they can live like dogs and whoever will leave will leave."

Israel proper is majority Jewish and there are few Arab population concentrations that are deemed to be a threat yet at times they often see threats. The Bedouin of the south are subject to horrific policies such as the unrecognised villages and the spraying of crops because of a policy to concentrate them in camps so that most of the desert can be officially under Jewish control.

The West Bank and Gaza are overwhelmingly Palestinian and these are subject to a long Israeli war... the civilians are the enemy to be destroyed. They have not ceased in this. Not for one second.

The Israeli Arabs are a propaganda showpiece to show that Israel is progressive - they can vote, after all. Never mind that there is a policy by the Zionist parties never to make any deals with Arab parties, and as they can't form a majority, as a result Arabs have no choice but to vote for a Zionist party that hates their guts or vote for a party that can never come close to power. The Zionist parties will join up with neo-Nazis before they allow an Arab party any influence at all. They have. Rabin, for instance, joined up with "The only good Arab is a dead Arab", "When we are through settling the land all they can do about it is scurry about like drugged cockroaches in a bottle" Rafael Eitan and his Tsomet movement.



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20 Nov 2009, 2:29 am

jc6chan wrote:
-They have bombed over 50 hospitals (if i remember right) during the Gaza War (hamas firing rockets from hospitals does not justify it)

Shooting rockets from hospitals is a propaganda stunt. If they don't want their hospitals bombed they shouldn't shoot rockets from them. The rockets have to be destroyed no matter where they are being launched from.


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jc6chan
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20 Nov 2009, 10:42 am

John_Browning wrote:
jc6chan wrote:
-They have bombed over 50 hospitals (if i remember right) during the Gaza War (hamas firing rockets from hospitals does not justify it)

Shooting rockets from hospitals is a propaganda stunt. If they don't want their hospitals bombed they shouldn't shoot rockets from them. The rockets have to be destroyed no matter where they are being launched from.


-But its not worth it to bomb it. First of all, it doesn't save lives overall, as one bomb could potentially kill as much as the number of people killed over the course of the last 8 or 9 years by Hamas rocket attacks.

-second of all, Israel would be sending a message to the palestinians that they don't care how many civilians they will kill in tyhe process of fighting Hamas.



jc6chan
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20 Nov 2009, 10:45 am

xenon13 wrote:
Rabin, for instance, joined up with "The only good Arab is a dead Arab", "When we are through settling the land all they can do about it is scurry about like drugged cockroaches in a bottle" Rafael Eitan and his Tsomet movement.


Really? I thought Rabin was the one who got assassinated by Yigal Amir for being "too moderate"



history_of_psychiatry
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20 Nov 2009, 11:32 am

The Israelis are treating the arabs almost as bad as the nazis treated them. I don't support the arab nations AT ALL but America would have no enemies in the middle east if it wasn't for israel. Besides, who is going to take judeophobia seriously when the israelis are acting like that??

btw, I'm an ex-jew and i've done my homework.


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20 Nov 2009, 12:14 pm

history_of_psychiatry wrote:
The Israelis are treating the arabs almost as bad as the nazis treated them. I don't support the arab nations AT ALL but America would have no enemies in the middle east if it wasn't for israel. Besides, who is going to take judeophobia seriously when the israelis are acting like that??

btw, I'm an ex-jew and i've done my homework.


How do you explain all those live Druse who live and vote in the State of Israel?

Also, no one who is a citizen of Israel is forbidden to practice Islam, or Christianity or to be an atheist.

The question then, is not whether one is an Arabic speaker or a practicing Muslim, but whether one is an enemy of the State.

ruveyn



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20 Nov 2009, 2:07 pm

The Druze believe in popularist assimilation, for survival as they don’t accept converts. They don’t hold permanent loyalty to a nation. They don't view themselves as Arabs and Israel considers them a distinct group too.

The apartheid is in the occupied territories not in Israel proper. Separate roads, infrastructure and protection. On one side governed by military law on the other side governed by Israeli law.

On the one hand the Palestinians are told to police themselves, on the other they are prevented from doing so because they don't have access.

The West Bank is almost identical to what the “Homelands” or “Grand Apartheid” was in South Africa bar that fact the Israel doesn’t need puppet leaders because they can just take what they want. The settlements are the same, except in the WB some of the settlement communities preach that there are morally superior.

Israel is a partly to blame for Gaza and the rise Hamas, privately Israeli government supported programs to increase sectarianism in the region. On the reasoning that causing rivalries and splinter groups would destabilise serious contenders, but instead it bread a popular extremist group. Another reason is there are some in Israeli government who want to stifle the two state solution, and wanted an extremist adversary, especially on that is overtly anti-Semitic.

There was an interesting Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into the pro-Israel lobby.

The pro-Israel lobby in the UK gives more money to political parties than any other lobby. There have been more lobby funded party flights to Israel than any other nation including the US. These members then receive large sums of money soon afterwards.

This investigation into these groups, shows that money comes from various individuals, and channelled through “friends of Israel” campaign groups, in order to get round the transparency rules. They have identified major players with rather dubious pasts, and vested business interests in the conflict and the settlements themselves.

Despite an ongoing debate in Israel itself the political scene in the west makes very few distinctions if any. That is because most of the parties are paid to be lazy. The Conservative party in the UK is heavily funded by the pro-Israel lobby (as is Labour). William Hague, who usually knows which side his bread is buttered, was lambasted by members of his own party and other “friends of Israel groups”, for making a very minor criticism of Israel if you could call it that.

There are well funded group set up for the sole purpose to attack specific media outlets, which don’t portray a far right view of Israel, branding any criticism as ‘anti-semantic’. Attacks are also made on Jews, and Israeli citizens. Alleged anti-Semitism is the main (practically only) argument used.

Arabs are accused of playing the victim, and there is some truth in that, some of the time. However these Zionist groups are no different. They have tried their best to get the most political mileage out of "anti-Semitism".



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20 Nov 2009, 3:22 pm

jc6chan wrote:
John_Browning wrote:
jc6chan wrote:
-They have bombed over 50 hospitals (if i remember right) during the Gaza War (hamas firing rockets from hospitals does not justify it)

Shooting rockets from hospitals is a propaganda stunt. If they don't want their hospitals bombed they shouldn't shoot rockets from them. The rockets have to be destroyed no matter where they are being launched from.


-But its not worth it to bomb it. First of all, it doesn't save lives overall, as one bomb could potentially kill as much as the number of people killed over the course of the last 8 or 9 years by Hamas rocket attacks.

-second of all, Israel would be sending a message to the palestinians that they don't care how many civilians they will kill in tyhe process of fighting Hamas.

It's not about how many people the Israelis kill, it's about protecting national security at any cost.


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jc6chan
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20 Nov 2009, 3:47 pm

John_Browning wrote:
jc6chan wrote:
John_Browning wrote:
jc6chan wrote:
-They have bombed over 50 hospitals (if i remember right) during the Gaza War (hamas firing rockets from hospitals does not justify it)

Shooting rockets from hospitals is a propaganda stunt. If they don't want their hospitals bombed they shouldn't shoot rockets from them. The rockets have to be destroyed no matter where they are being launched from.


-But its not worth it to bomb it. First of all, it doesn't save lives overall, as one bomb could potentially kill as much as the number of people killed over the course of the last 8 or 9 years by Hamas rocket attacks.

-second of all, Israel would be sending a message to the palestinians that they don't care how many civilians they will kill in tyhe process of fighting Hamas.

It's not about how many people the Israelis kill, it's about protecting national security at any cost.


so you're saying that Hamas can fire rockets at israeli civilians all they want? Because Hamas is doing it for "national" security too. They will not let the Gazan population be deprived of houses and access to clean drinking water, and they do it to pressure israel to stop slaughtering their civilians in large numbers. I don't really see the difference here between the 2 sides aside from the fact that Israel has a powerful military that can pinpoint targets while Hamas can't pinpoint so shame on Israel for killing so many civilians despite the fact that they can pinpoint. Shame on Hamas too for purposely aiming their rockets at urban areas in Israel.



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21 Nov 2009, 11:40 am

I think that the reason for this is that many Arabs are satisfied living in a mostly Jewish country, but the Palestinians aren't and want to take over the territory and make it their own. Therefore they are currently treated as enemies to the country.