Yitzhak Laor: “This bill truly intends to create a democracy for Jews only. If it were passed, no Arab – whether resident of the territories or Israeli citizen – would have access to the law.”
Israeli law
On Friday, Dec 9, 2011 thousands of Israelis marched through Tel Aviv for international human rights day. While Israelis are subject to Israeli civil law, Palestinians are subject to a set of military orders. Order 101 effectively bans political protest of more than 10 people.
Likud MK Ofir Akunis, who sponsored the bill to limit foreign funding to Israeli human rights organization, stood behind Senator Joseph’s McCarthy’s actions in the 1950s… Akunis said McCarthy – who in the 1950s presided over a committee that investigated Americans suspected of harboring Communist views – “was right in every word, the fact is – there were Soviet agents.”
IOA Editor: Two of a kind…
In recent weeks, a spate of anti-democratic measures have won support from Netanyahu’s rightwing government, justified by a new security doctrine: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil of Israel. If the legislative proposals pass, the Israeli courts, Israel’s human rights groups and media, and the international community will be transformed into the proverbial three monkeys.
Report shows the military appeals courts decidedly favor the prosecution, with judges accepting 67 percent of prosecution appeals, as opposed to only 33 percent of appeals filed by the defense.
The disingenuity of the Israeli government’s international comparisons is evident when one compares politicians’ rhetoric for audiences within Israel with the diplomatic discourse abroad.
We must not dismiss the NGO Bill – it truly intends to create a democracy for Jews only; if it were passed, no Arab – whether resident of the territories or Israeli citizen – would have access to the law.
The decision to close down the station is part of a general attack on left-wing organizations. The station provided a platform for left-wing groups that are now under attack by a new law that would curb their foreign funding. “Of course there is an attack here that is not only on us. If someone came to the conclusion that this isn’t legal, then after seven years there are different ways to go about it.”
The recent forced closures of Palestinian nonprofit organizations in Jerusalem is an example of the Israeli authorities’ continued attacks on the city’s Palestinian identity and their attempts to maintain control over occupied East Jerusalem, according to local human rights groups.
I don’t see how any person can here find objectionable the demand to ‘enforce the law’. I cannot believe you couldn’t reach 80 percent of the British people on that slogan. Of course Israel’s defenders will say ‘oh, the law is ambiguous’, but we can very easily show that it’s not. The law is very clear. There is no respectable institution or organisation in the world today which says that the settlements are legal. You go from the International Court of Justice to human rights organisations… you can’t name one.
On Tuesday six Palestinian activists boarded Israeli buses in an attempt to challenge the system of segregation in the West Bank. They were arrested at Hizmeh checkpoint, interrogated by Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shabak [Shin Bet], and released. In the West Bank, segregation is both visible with the separation wall, fence, and separate cities for Israelis and Palestinians and invisible with separate legal and security systems for the two peoples.
One day not long from now we will wake up to a different kind of country, the country that’s now in the making. It won’t look like the country we know, which already has its share of flaws, distortions and ills. And when we become aware of this, it will be too late. At that point, the old Israel will be described in glowing terms, a model of democracy and justice, compared to the new version that is taking shape as we close our eyes to it, day after day, new law after law.
Israeli soldiers should kill terrorists ‘in their beds’ following Shalit deal, former IDF rabbi says
Former IDF Chief Rabbi: “When you arrive to arrest terrorists like the murderers of the Fogel family, they should just be shot, exterminated. They were terrorists that murdered people and should be killed in their beds.”
Why list religion [on Israeli national IDs] at all? Isn’t the reason for the tremendous importance of the ‘religion clause’ the need to distinguish between Jews and Arabs, in order to discriminate simply by defining the difference? Of course.
IOA Editor: Important review of the role of official religious identification (indicated on national IDs) in Israel: a tool devised by the mainstream (secular) Zionist leadership around 1948 to distinguish between Jews and Arabs in the new state.
One proposal would allow police to use force against those being detained – and not only against those being arrested, as they are now authorized to do. While currently the law mandates that a person arrested must be brought before the court in 24 hours from the time of arrest, the proposed regulations would allow the police to extend that to 48 hours. This would mean that for two full days there would be no judicial supervision of the police actions or decision to arrest.
Bedouins in the Negev continue to be targeted by Israeli efforts to displace them. The Israeli government has now approved a plan that would uproot 30,000 Palestinians and place them in “recognized villages.”
Although the Zabeidats’ petition raised the issue of the legality of the committees in general, the court in its ruling on the case chose not to address the issue directly and instead is awaiting the attorney general’s opinion on the issue. The step was also taken because there is a case pending before the court challenging the propriety of the committees.
IOA Editor: The admission-committees system enables hundreds of Israeli Jewish towns and villages to reject individuals seeking to reside in them based on “incompatibility” – a sufficiently general term used to reject Palestinian citizens of Israel. The Israel Lands Administration’s reversal of a long standing policy of systematic discrimination against Israel’s Palestinian citizens, in this instance only, is merely a tactical move designed to deal with this potentially precedent-setting legal case: All discriminatory laws and practices remain unchanged, continuing a long history of ethnic cleansing efforts on the part of all Israeli governments, “Right” and “Left” alike.
Israel Harel does not deal with the simple fact that the land on which his son and his friends are living is private land, registered properly in the name of Palestinians, who have submitted to the High Court the deeds that prove their family’s ownership of the land. The petitioners’ documents are unequivocal, and the State of Israel is not denying their ownership.
Unprecedented ruling states that Migron must be razed by April 2012; Israeli government had admitted outpost was built on lands belonging to Palestinians, but has thus far failed to dismantle it.
Because I believe in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948, I support boycotting — and calling on others to boycott — all Israeli companies that help perpetuate these injustices.
