Just 2 items below. The initial one gives the results of a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, released on Tuesday, which shows that Israel is not overly democratic. Not surprising, considering the education and propaganda.
The 2nd item is my response to Maurice Ostroff’s response to me. His is available at http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id303.html . Perhaps some of you will find elements of my brief response useful.
All the best,
Dorothy
Jerusalem Post,
December 2, 2010
‘53% of Israelis say Arabs should be encouraged to leave’
Israel Democracy Institute poll shows only 51% think Arabs, Jews deserve equal rights; Israel ranked least-stable democracy in the world.
The Israel Democracy Institute released the results of its Israeli Democracy Ranking and poll on Tuesday, revealing that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis say the government should encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel, and only 51% believe Jews and Arabs should have equal rights.
The poll showed that the more religious respondents were, the less they believed Arabs should have equal rights, with 33.5% of secular Jews opposing rights for Arabs, as opposed to 51% of traditional Jews, 65% of religious Jews, and 72% of haredim. In addition, 86% of Jewish Israelis believe that important decisions should be made by a Jewish majority.
The institute’s findings were presented to President Shimon Peres, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, Minister of Justice Yaakov Neeman and High Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch.
Nearly half (46%) of Jewish Israelis polled said that they would not want to live near Arabs, and 39% would be opposed to living near foreign workers or people with mental illness. One-fourth would not want to live near a homosexual couple, and 23% opposed having haredi neighbors.
Arabs had different preferences, with 70% opposing living near gays, 67% against haredi neighbors and 65% against former settlers. About half (46%) would not want to be neighbors with foreign workers.
The Israel Democracy Institute polled Jewish and Arab Israelis as to their views on and satisfaction from democracy in Israel. The survey showed that most Israelis said Israel should remain a democracy, while claiming that democracy in Israel is weak and inefficient.
More than half (55%) of Israelis support the statement “Israel’s situation would be much better if Israel considered the rules of democracy less, and focused more on keeping law and order.”
Most (60%) Israelis advocated a more concentrated government, with strong leaders that “solve problems efficiently.” In addition, 59% prefer rule by experts who make decisions based on professional opinions, and not because of politics.
Israelis are also disappointed by the lack of influence their opinions have on government policy.
As in last year, 81% of Israelis have faith in the IDF.
In a ranking of democracies around the world, separate from the poll, Israel was rated least stable.
Israel received this low score due to major socioeconomic gaps, which have not improved since previous years. There is also less gender equality in Israel then there was in the past.
Israel’s democratic rating is the same as last year’s, placing it with new democracies in Eastern Europe and South America.
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Dear Maurice,
I appreciate your having taken the time to reply to my letter. I particularly appreciate this, because obviously we will continue to see things through very different glasses.
Nonetheless, your efforts deserve a response.
My former response to you was not, strictly speaking, over whether or not Israel is or is not an apartheid state. As you yourself saw, I did not maintain that it is. And the reason that I left that aside is because my focus was on Rabbi Goldstein’s statement, with which you agree, that “In the State of Israel all citizens – Jew and Arab – are equal before the law.”
Your response to me does not, surprisingly, touch this issue at all. Instead, you bring evidence that Israel is not the sole discriminatory state in the world. Maurice, I hardly needed you to point that out to me. And you yourself foresaw my response: just as 2 wrongs do not make a right, so also 20, 30, or 1000 wrongs do not add up to a single right. Thus Israel being as appalling or less appalling than another country or countries has no bearing on the issue. My yardstick regarding discrimination is not what others do, but ‘not doing unto others what I would not have done unto myself,’ to paraphrase Hillel.
In any event, discrimination was not the main issue at hand. The issue was Rabbi Goldstein’s statement: “In the State of Israel all citizens – Jew and Arab – are equal before the law.” This is what I focused on so as to show that it is false. To this end I pointed out 4 areas in which Palestinian citizens of Israel are not equal before the law with Jews: the Law of Return, the unrecognized villages, land laws, and the Reunification law. While these are not the sole areas in which equality before the law does not exist, these alone suffice to show that Rabbi Goldstein is incorrect to maintain that equality before the law does exist.
As for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in the West Bank apartheid is obvious—separate roads, road signs that contain names solely of the Jewish colonies (road signs that named Palestinian communities were dispensed with during Ariel Sharon’s premiership), a fence/wall that is often referred to as the ‘separation barrier,’ separate laws (Jews obey Israeli law, Palestinians are under the thumb of a military government (COGAT), check points for Palestinians only, a system of passes for Palestinians, Israel dictates who may and may not reside in Palestinian communities, who may live in the West Bank, who in Gaza.
The division of Palestinian communities into a/b/c to create Bantustans, and more. The fact that the means used by Israeli apartheid are not identical to those of South African apartheid doesn’t indicate that the aims are not alike—Separation. Apartheid indeed, exists in the West Bank, as it indeed must in any society that wishes to be demographically ‘pure,’ be that ‘pure Aryan,’ or ‘pure Jewish,’ or pure anything else. Blockaded Gaza is an open-air prison totally separated from the West Bank and all other parts of historic Palestine.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was not the first (nor the last) to insist that Israel is an apartheid state. Many years before Archbishop Tutu, another South African said as much when in 1963 he “emphatically stated . . . that Israel is an apartheid state.” Note please that this is prior to 1967, so the reference was to the state of Israel. Ronnie Kasrils continues, “Those were not the words of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu or Joe Slovo, but were uttered by none other than the architect of apartheid itself, racist Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd” (http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/347).
I have not responded to every point that you made–e.g., your opinion of the wall being a security measure—if it had been, then why wasn’t it built on the internationally recognized 1949 Armistice line (often called the ‘green line”)? Why was it located in areas that stole great chunks of agricultural land from the Palestinian villages and uprooted thousands of trees?
But you also did not respond to my question of why Israel has not grabbed with open arms the Arab League offer. My concern, mind you, is not only about how we treat Palestinians, it is also about what Israel’s policies do to the Jews who live here. In short, they have made Israel the least safe place in the world (excepting war zones, as Afghanistan) for Jews to live in. But this is a whole different subject.
Wishing you all the best, but believing that neither of us will convince the other. You are welcome to have the last word, if you wish. I have decided that this will be my final response.
