Now it's a basic law: The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people

[Coyote]

But Israel has embedded a religion, thereby excluding a portion of its population. Segregation, apartheid.

Religion has always been "embedded", if one can call it that, in Israel's nationality law, and, rather than doing it now, it enshrines that principle in the "basic law", protects it against changes by the Supreme court, and makes the whole thing explicit. Here is what I found to be a good summary of the situation, which the basic law immunizes against court review:

The Law of Return and the Citizenship Law are two of nearly 70 Israeli laws – the number is growing – that explicitly discriminate based on whether a citizen is Jewish or Palestinian. A legal group, Adalah, representing Israel’s Palestinian citizens, has compiled a database of such measures.


State-sanctioned racism

But Netanyahu’s Basic Law threatens to expose the deeper significance of this bifurcated citizenship structure.

Israel’s 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, observed Zeidan, are discriminated against in a way that goes beyond that practiced against minorities in democratic states: that is, by the arbitrary, informal or unregulated decisions of officials and state bodies. In such democracies, officials are usually breaking the law when they discriminate against minority groups.

But in Israel, Zeidan pointed out, “officials are often breaking the law if they do not discriminate. It is their job to discriminate.”

This state-sanctioned racism is achieved by establishing “nationalities” separate from citizenship. The primary nationalities in Israel are “Jew” and “Arab”. The state has refused to recognise an “Israeli nationality”, a position supported by the Israeli supreme court, precisely to sanction a hierarchy of rights.

Individual rights are enjoyed by all citizens by virtue of their citizenship, whether they are Jews or Palestinians. In this regard, Israel looks like a liberal democracy. But Israel also recognises “national rights”, and reserves them almost exclusively for the Jewish population.

National rights are treated as superior to individual citizenship rights. So if there is a conflict between the two, the Jewish national right will invariably be given priority by officials and the courts.

National rights trump citizenship

How this hierarchy of rights works in practice is neatly illustrated by Israel’s citizenship structure. The Law of Return establishes a national right for all Jews to gain instant citizenship – as well as the many other rights that derive from citizenship.

The Citizenship Law, on the other hand, creates only an individual citizenship right for non-Jews. Israel’s Palestinian minority can pass their citizenship “downwards” to offspring but cannot extend it “outwards”, as a Jew can, to members of their extended family – in this case, the millions of Palestinians who were made refugees by Israel in 1948 and their descendants.

This privileging of Jewish national rights is equally clear in the way Israel treats its most precious material resources: land and water.

The commercial exploitation of these key resources is treated effectively as a national right, reserved for Jews only. In practice, noted Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, access to these resources is restricted to Jews through hundreds of rural communities across Israel, including the best-known – the kibbutz.

These rural communities are the places where Israel has made available vast swaths of land and offers subsidised water. As a result, almost all commercial agriculture and much industry is located in these communities.

Arabs ‘socially unsuitable’

But these resources can be exploited only by the Jewish population because each community is governed by an Admissions Committee, which blocks entry to Israel’s Palestinian citizens on the grounds that they are “socially unsuitable”.

“The committees govern entry to 550 communities in Israel, ensuring that the resources they control are available only to their Jewish populations,” Zaher told MEE. “These committees are one link in a chain of racist policies, segregation and exclusion by the state towards Palestinian citizens.”

The primary purpose of these rural communities is to enforce Israel’s “nationalisation” of 93 percent of its territory. This land is “nationalised” not for Israeli citizens – as no Israeli nationality is recognised – but for a global Jewish nation.

Meanwhile, the fifth of the population who are Palestinian are confined to less than three percent of Israeli territory, after most of their lands were confiscated by the state and are now held in trust for Jews around the world.

No new Palestinian community has been built since Israel’s creation 70 years ago, while dozens of Palestinian villages have been “unrecognised” by a 1965 Planning and Building Law. The 120,000 inhabitants of these villages, criminalised by this planning law, cannot build a home legally and are denied public services.


‘Landlords’ of Israel

Observers say that Netanyahu’s Basic Law risks exploding a seven-decade-old myth about Israel: that it is a liberal democracy where Israeli citizens, Jews and Palestinians alike, enjoy equal rights.

The combination of the Law of Return, which entitles all Jews around the world to instant Israeli citizenship, and Israel’s land laws, which reserve ultimate ownership to Jews as a global nation, has emptied citizenship of its accepted meaning.

Instead, according to Israel’s existing legal structure, the state belongs to Jews collectively around the world rather than to the country’s citizenry. The Jewish state is “owned” by world Jewry, even if many individual Jews have failed to actualise their citizenship by coming to live in Israel.

As Israeli scholars have noted, Israel should be classified not as a liberal democracy but as a fundamentally non-democratic state called an ethnocracy.​

It's easy enough to see, that sordid, racist state of apartheid needs a whole river of hasbara floating around to conceal the inner workings contributing to segregation, inequality, rampant legalized discrimination, with large sides of whataboutery and dozens if not hundreds of "Sqirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!" You may also have recognized a large dollop of invincible innocence working in exactly the same way as it does in the U.S.

This long post is nothing more than the usual diatribe against Israel with few actual facts and a lot of deliberate misinformation.

It conflates Arab Israelis with Palestinians, makes blanket statements about "laws" that have no basis in actual Israeli law and makes claims about racism and apartheid with no factual information.

There are absolutely no "rights" in Israel arising from being Jewish as opposed to being Arab. Both Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis are equal under the law.

Another useful idiot.

I thought the article interesting, though the paragraph at the end tainted it.

Is it that wrong regarding land rights?

 

[Coyote]

There's no way of putting Israel in that category, without exercising the discrimination mentioned in the accusation.

Mandla Mandela calls Apartheid Israel worse than Apartheid South Africa
“Never before in my life has the reality of Apartheid Israel stared me so bluntly in the face as it did today on my visit to Al Aqsa, Bethlehem and Hebron. Standing in the Sacred Sanctuary on the very place that Apartheid Israel installed metal detectors and surveillance cameras against which we protested a few months ago made me realize just how intimidation, illegal occupation and brutality is meted out daily to Palestinians. We cannot be complicit by our silence.”

Noam Chomsky: Israeli Apartheid ‘Much Worse’ Than South Africa
Famous American linguist Noam Chomsky has described the actions of the Israeli occupation in Palestine as “worse than South African apartheid”.

Israel Just Dropped the Pretense of Equality for Palestinian Citizens
The so-called “Jewish nation-state” bill formalizes in Israeli law the superior rights and privileges that Jewish citizens of the state enjoy over its indigenous Palestinian minority, who comprise roughly 20% of the population.
​

So lets cut the foreplay and bullshit, just tell it for what it really is.

​

The Land belongs to the Jewish People, fatboy.

No. It belongs to multiple groups of people, with long historical ties to the region, including but not limited to the Jewish people, the people who are now known as Palestinians, Druze and others.

 

[Billo_Really]

You can have equal rights, especially if the people of the place called You for help, in demanding those equal rights.

This is what this Basic Law is all about in what You call the "area".

I don't have a problem with equal rights.

Maybe we should be arguing whose leader is more nuts?

We seem to have elected a fruit loop! I know that's off topic, but that's where my head is at right now.

 

[Billo_Really]

Israel has Arabs. Abbas has declared several times that the “ Palestinian State “ will not have one Israeli in it. There are many Arab Countries who don’t have a Jewish Population. You don’t see anything wrong with that, do you??

Iran has a Jewish population and they love living there!

 

[Billo_Really]

RE: Now it's a basic law: The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people
※→ Billo_Really,

I'm pretty sure that you don't understand the meaning of apartheid or the elements of that offense.

This is just ridiculous. Translation: Israel is apartheid because someone else said so.

Israel is apartheid because of the shit Israel is doing.

(COMMENT)

As you can see for yourself. Israel is many more time diverse than the Arab Palestinian population. There is no attempt to systematically oppress and dominate one racial group over any other racial group. Jews are a matter of religion, where as the term "Arab Palestinians" describes an ethnic tribe.

Israel is attempting to protect its sovereignty from Arab League conventional warfare assaults and Jihadism, Fedayeen Activism, Hostile Insurgency Operations, Radicalized Islamic Behaviors, and Asymmetric Violence. The Arab Palestinians utilize threats to use force designed to bring about political change. These Hostile Arab Palestinian (HoAP) activities exercise the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. What the HoAP passes-off as oppression by the Israelis are Article 43 (Hague Regulation) attempt to establish law and order, and at the same time utilizing Article 68 Authority (GCIV) to protect against the HoAP acts solely intended to harm the Occupying Power, seriously damage the property of the occupying forces or administration or the installations, and defend against espionage, of serious acts of sabotage against the military installations of the Occupying Power or of intentional offences which have caused the death of one or more persons. Security countermeasures in-depth to separate the HoAP from those they would openly attack, are attempts to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety. There is no true domination or oppression.

Article 7(2h), Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those
referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized
regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any
other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining
that regime;"​

Article 7 (1j), Elements of Crimes, International Criminal Court

Crime against humanity of apartheid
Elements

1. The perpetrator committed an inhumane act against one or more persons.
2. Such act was an act referred to in article 7, paragraph 1, of the Statute, or was an act
of a character similar to any of those acts.
3. The perpetrator was aware of the factual circumstances that established the character
of the act.
4. The conduct was committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups.
5. The perpetrator intended to maintain such regime by that conduct.
6. The conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against a civilian population.
7. The perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct to be part
of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.​

Most Respectfully,
R

I'm sure you don't know the meaning of the word 'succinct'.

 

[Coyote]

However, it also now seems that Israel will continue to establish settlements as a means of pressure to bring the Arab Palestinian Leadership to the table.

Israel at least last 20 years doesn't establish new settlements in the West bank.

And this is why we must differentiate between the perception and the reality, and why the double standard, the propaganda and the irrational fears should not be given weight when discussing the reality. Everyone "knows" that Israel's continued settlement building is a "problem" and an "obstacle to peace" but the reality is that Israel froze settlement-building for 20 years in hopes of negotiated secession agreement or two.

Did they really freeze it? They have legalized hundreds of illegal settlements and outposts. That does not sound like a freeze to me.

 

[Coyote]

“ Right of Return” isn’t going to happen . What I think is hilarious is that. Pro Pal Kool/Aid drinkers post links which claim that Israel can’t be both Jewish and Democratic but yet it’s O.K. To have a No Israelis Allowed Palestinian Country”.

If by "right of return" you mean to flood Israel with 7 million Arabs -- nope. Never going to happen. Never. Never. Get over it.

IF by "right of return" you mean that BOTH peoples have the right to return to settle in their homeland and develop their self-determination and cultural uniqueness in that place, then YES it should happen. What will that look like? The majority of Palestinians will settle in Palestine and the majority of Jews will settle in Israel. This will allow each culture to develop fully as a nation with a unique and special culture. Each state will have a minority of the other living in it, which poses absolutely no problems whatsoever (after all Palestinians constantly brag that Arabs and Jews lived in peace for centuries and Israel has proven it poses no problem).

Exactly...wish more people support your vision here.

 

[Coyote]

RE: Now it's a basic law: The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people
※→ ILOVEISRAEL, et al,

I think this is, at present, the bottom line.

That’s what they want. If they can’t destroy Israel externally their goal is to do it internally. That will never happen!!!

(COMMENT)

The Arab Palestinians are becoming more violent, and less respectful for the Rule of Law; most of which the Arab Palestinians have lost along with any 21st Century moral discipline. The Arab Palestinians are trying every new technique available to them to incite violence and disrupt the peace.

Most Respectfully,
R

Do you think it is because now they have nothing left to lose? The US has now shown itself to be incapable of being an honest broker, they were punished for going directly to the UN. They are under a blockade. What peace are they disrupting?

 

[Indeependent]

Who are we to judge the reality of the fears though? Do all the Palestinians really want to kill all the Jews? Do the Jews really want all the land for themselves? In the end it is what people believe that matters, whether it's real or not. For example the Palestinians see Jewish settlements popping up in areas they feel are for their own future state. They see moratoriums on settlement expansion constantly flouted. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant, it's the perception being fed that Israel really wants all the real estate for Jews that then feeds the fears that there will be no room for them. Likewise, actual attacks on Jews from Palestinians reinforce their belief that Palestinians seek their eradication. How real are each one's fears depends on where you stand and what you have to lose.

Respecting people's irrational fears leads us nowhere. Irrational fears need to be addressed, not fed. How real one's fears are depends ONLY on the actions of the people whom you are afraid of.

As an example -- what is the "fear' with Jewish people living in a place? Why can't Jewish people live in a future State of Palestine? Where is the "fear" in having Jewish people live in Palestine. Israel can do it. Why can't Palestine. So, objectively, is that a rational fear or an irrational fear?

The fear is there because that is not how they see events unfolding and there is some legitimacy in those fears. Land loss and confiscations through absentee landowner laws look VERY DIFFERENT to an Arab than to a Jew. Where as Israeli Jews are seeing a society where Arab citizens have the same “rights” as Jews, Arabs see a society where they are discriminated against, despised, do not have the same land rights. They have seen some of their political parties banned, make a fraction of the income their Jewish counterparts do and receive a fraction of the investment in their communities but by the Israeli government. Are the fears really irrational? I don’t think so.

Jews being alive pisses off Arabs.

 

[USAF 2023]

RE: Now it's a basic law: The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people
※→ ILOVEISRAEL, et al,

I think this is, at present, the bottom line.

That’s what they want. If they can’t destroy Israel externally their goal is to do it internally. That will never happen!!!

(COMMENT)

The Arab Palestinians are becoming more violent, and less respectful for the Rule of Law; most of which the Arab Palestinians have lost along with any 21st Century moral discipline. The Arab Palestinians are trying every new technique available to them to incite violence and disrupt the peace.

Most Respectfully,
R

Do you think it is because now they have nothing left to lose? The US has now shown itself to be incapable of being an honest broker, they were punished for going directly to the UN. They are under a blockade. What peace are they disrupting?

You say the U.S. has shown itself incapable of being an honest broker. In order to do that both sides have to negotiate; it can’t be “ my way or the highway” If the U.S. were an “ honest broker” , seriously what could they have done?

 

[Shusha]

But Israel has embedded a religion, thereby excluding a portion of its population. Segregation, apartheid.

Religion has always been "embedded", if one can call it that, in Israel's nationality law, and, rather than doing it now, it enshrines that principle in the "basic law", protects it against changes by the Supreme court, and makes the whole thing explicit. Here is what I found to be a good summary of the situation, which the basic law immunizes against court review:

The Law of Return and the Citizenship Law are two of nearly 70 Israeli laws – the number is growing – that explicitly discriminate based on whether a citizen is Jewish or Palestinian. A legal group, Adalah, representing Israel’s Palestinian citizens, has compiled a database of such measures.


State-sanctioned racism

But Netanyahu’s Basic Law threatens to expose the deeper significance of this bifurcated citizenship structure.

Israel’s 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, observed Zeidan, are discriminated against in a way that goes beyond that practiced against minorities in democratic states: that is, by the arbitrary, informal or unregulated decisions of officials and state bodies. In such democracies, officials are usually breaking the law when they discriminate against minority groups.

But in Israel, Zeidan pointed out, “officials are often breaking the law if they do not discriminate. It is their job to discriminate.”

This state-sanctioned racism is achieved by establishing “nationalities” separate from citizenship. The primary nationalities in Israel are “Jew” and “Arab”. The state has refused to recognise an “Israeli nationality”, a position supported by the Israeli supreme court, precisely to sanction a hierarchy of rights.

Individual rights are enjoyed by all citizens by virtue of their citizenship, whether they are Jews or Palestinians. In this regard, Israel looks like a liberal democracy. But Israel also recognises “national rights”, and reserves them almost exclusively for the Jewish population.

National rights are treated as superior to individual citizenship rights. So if there is a conflict between the two, the Jewish national right will invariably be given priority by officials and the courts.

National rights trump citizenship

How this hierarchy of rights works in practice is neatly illustrated by Israel’s citizenship structure. The Law of Return establishes a national right for all Jews to gain instant citizenship – as well as the many other rights that derive from citizenship.

The Citizenship Law, on the other hand, creates only an individual citizenship right for non-Jews. Israel’s Palestinian minority can pass their citizenship “downwards” to offspring but cannot extend it “outwards”, as a Jew can, to members of their extended family – in this case, the millions of Palestinians who were made refugees by Israel in 1948 and their descendants.

This privileging of Jewish national rights is equally clear in the way Israel treats its most precious material resources: land and water.

The commercial exploitation of these key resources is treated effectively as a national right, reserved for Jews only. In practice, noted Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, access to these resources is restricted to Jews through hundreds of rural communities across Israel, including the best-known – the kibbutz.

These rural communities are the places where Israel has made available vast swaths of land and offers subsidised water. As a result, almost all commercial agriculture and much industry is located in these communities.

Arabs ‘socially unsuitable’

But these resources can be exploited only by the Jewish population because each community is governed by an Admissions Committee, which blocks entry to Israel’s Palestinian citizens on the grounds that they are “socially unsuitable”.

“The committees govern entry to 550 communities in Israel, ensuring that the resources they control are available only to their Jewish populations,” Zaher told MEE. “These committees are one link in a chain of racist policies, segregation and exclusion by the state towards Palestinian citizens.”

The primary purpose of these rural communities is to enforce Israel’s “nationalisation” of 93 percent of its territory. This land is “nationalised” not for Israeli citizens – as no Israeli nationality is recognised – but for a global Jewish nation.

Meanwhile, the fifth of the population who are Palestinian are confined to less than three percent of Israeli territory, after most of their lands were confiscated by the state and are now held in trust for Jews around the world.

No new Palestinian community has been built since Israel’s creation 70 years ago, while dozens of Palestinian villages have been “unrecognised” by a 1965 Planning and Building Law. The 120,000 inhabitants of these villages, criminalised by this planning law, cannot build a home legally and are denied public services.


‘Landlords’ of Israel

Observers say that Netanyahu’s Basic Law risks exploding a seven-decade-old myth about Israel: that it is a liberal democracy where Israeli citizens, Jews and Palestinians alike, enjoy equal rights.

The combination of the Law of Return, which entitles all Jews around the world to instant Israeli citizenship, and Israel’s land laws, which reserve ultimate ownership to Jews as a global nation, has emptied citizenship of its accepted meaning.

Instead, according to Israel’s existing legal structure, the state belongs to Jews collectively around the world rather than to the country’s citizenry. The Jewish state is “owned” by world Jewry, even if many individual Jews have failed to actualise their citizenship by coming to live in Israel.

As Israeli scholars have noted, Israel should be classified not as a liberal democracy but as a fundamentally non-democratic state called an ethnocracy.​

It's easy enough to see, that sordid, racist state of apartheid needs a whole river of hasbara floating around to conceal the inner workings contributing to segregation, inequality, rampant legalized discrimination, with large sides of whataboutery and dozens if not hundreds of "Sqirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!" You may also have recognized a large dollop of invincible innocence working in exactly the same way as it does in the U.S.

This long post is nothing more than the usual diatribe against Israel with few actual facts and a lot of deliberate misinformation.

It conflates Arab Israelis with Palestinians, makes blanket statements about "laws" that have no basis in actual Israeli law and makes claims about racism and apartheid with no factual information.

There are absolutely no "rights" in Israel arising from being Jewish as opposed to being Arab. Both Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis are equal under the law.

Another useful idiot.

I thought the article interesting, though the paragraph at the end tainted it.

Is it that wrong regarding land rights?

Not sure what you are asking. What about land rights?

 

[Shusha]

Did they really freeze it? They have legalized hundreds of illegal settlements and outposts. That does not sound like a freeze to me.

Well, I'll argue that there are NO illegal "settlements", of course. Though there are illegal outposts (as in outposts built in Area C without the permission of Israel). But Israel did actually freeze all "settlements" for twenty years in the anticipation of a negotiation which never came. Israel is done playing that game.

 

[Shusha]

Do you think it is because now they have nothing left to lose?

Oh, the Arab Palestinians have a LOT more to lose. A LOT. It can get much, much worse for them.

The US has now shown itself to be incapable of being an honest broker,

I disagree, though I suppose it depends on what you mean by "honest broker". I think one of the roles of an honest broker is to acknowledge simple reality.

 

[Shusha]

The fear is there because that is not how they see events unfolding and there is some legitimacy in those fears. Land loss and confiscations through absentee landowner laws look VERY DIFFERENT to an Arab than to a Jew. Where as Israeli Jews are seeing a society where Arab citizens have the same “rights” as Jews, Arabs see a society where they are discriminated against, despised, do not have the same land rights. They have seen some of their political parties banned, make a fraction of the income their Jewish counterparts do and receive a fraction of the investment in their communities but by the Israeli government. Are the fears really irrational? I don’t think so.

I think maybe you are in some respects conflating Arab Palestinians and Arab Israelis. We are speaking here strictly of Arab Israeli citizens.

Confiscations happened to BOTH Arabs and Jews. Internally displaced absentee landowners should be restored where possible, and compensated where not. For BOTH Arabs and Jews. Sorting it out is a mess, but Israel's court system appears to me to be fair and if anything slightly discriminatory towards Israeli Jews rather than Israeli Arabs. If you have specific examples you want to discuss, I'd be glad to go into more detail.

Israeli Arabs, by definition, have not had ANY land loss in terms of sovereignty. (And actually, Palestine has not experienced any actual "land loss" either since the territory is still disputed.)

I disagree with you that Arab Israelis see a society where they are discriminated against, despised and do not have the same rights. Again, I'd be glad to discuss any specific cases with you, but I think you are conflating Arab Israelis with Arab Palestinian rights, especially in Area C. Remember the Supreme Court has upheld the decision that there can be no such thing as Jew-only communities while there can be Arab-only communities. Its affirmative action.

Yes, I don't disagree that there is discrimination (as there is everywhere in the world) but I also see Israel working to address that discrimination for all its citizens.

To my knowledge, the only political party banned in Israel was a Jewish one, but feel free to link me.

I did a LOT of research into the economic disparity between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews and if you correct for the very small number of working Arab women (a cultural thing and not a discrimination thing) and for the Bedouin peoples (again a cultural thing and not a discrimination thing) there is not much of a wage gap between Arab and Jewish Israelis. And that wage gap can be largely attributed to education -- the more highly educated, the higher the wage. Arabs tend to go to school for fewer years than Jews. Why is that? Is it a cultural thing or a discrimination thing? Or something else at play?

 

[Shusha]

I think that is true of Arab Palestinians in general, though I'd argue that fear is largely unfounded. But not of Arab Israelis, which is what we are talking about on this thread.

 

[Shusha]

Also, with respect to "land loss" -- please no one post that tired old land loss canard map. The reality is that NEITHER Israel nor Palestine has held sovereignty over the entire territory so starting with that is just silly. Second, until the dispute is solved -- no one has lost any land, we simply do not know how much will eventually fall to Israel and how much will fall to Palestine.

(this wasn't directed at you, Coyote)

 

[admonit]

If you have specific examples you want to discuss, I'd be glad to go into more detail.

The fear is there because that is not how they see events unfolding and there is some legitimacy in those fears. Land loss and confiscations through absentee landowner laws look VERY DIFFERENT to an Arab than to a Jew. Where as Israeli Jews are seeing a society where Arab citizens have the same “rights” as Jews, Arabs see a society where they are discriminated against, despised, do not have the same land rights. They have seen some of their political parties banned, make a fraction of the income their Jewish counterparts do and receive a fraction of the investment in their communities but by the Israeli government. Are the fears really irrational? I don’t think so.

I think maybe you are in some respects conflating Arab Palestinians and Arab Israelis.

No, he doesn't. The discrimination of Arabs in Israel is his favorite song.

If you have specific examples you want to discuss, I'd be glad to go into more detail.

You already asked him. And until now he presented only one article from a left newspaper, which says nothing about discrimination. I explained it and there were no response. Instead the poster again repeats his mantra about discrimination.of Arabs in Israel.
He even didn't bother to read the OP. This person is not interested in honest debates.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Also, with respect to "land loss" -- please no one post that tired old land loss canard map. The reality is that NEITHER Israel nor Palestine has held sovereignty over the entire territory so starting with that is just silly. Second, until the dispute is solved -- no one has lost any land, we simply do not know how much will eventually fall to Israel and how much will fall to Palestine.

(this wasn't directed at you, Coyote)

Good point. Until there is an agreement, Israel has won nothing.

 

[Shusha]

Good point. Until there is an agreement, Israel has won nothing.

The point is not to see it as a zero sum game where one side had everything and will have "lost" -- but to see it as a win-win where BOTH peoples gain self-determination and sovereignty which was inconceivable for either of them 100 years ago. With that in mind, Israel has indeed "won", but the Palestinians have not.

 

[Olde Europe]

I thought the article interesting, though the paragraph at the end tainted it.

No it did not. It merely found the appropriate expressions for the situation and for the ways in which this (ultra-) right government and its shills defend, or distract from, the sordid state of affairs.

Jews have the right of "return", even if they didn't set foot anywhere near what is now Israel, and neither did 50 generations of their forebears. Arabs do not have that right, not even those still carrying around the keys to their house, which the Jews blew up or bulldozed 70 years ago. Everyone with the most superficial knowledge about Israel knows this, and none posting on this thread belongs into that category.

In that light:

"There are absolutely no 'rights' in Israel arising from being Jewish as opposed to being Arab."​

Followed by:

"Another useful idiot."​

Quite.

As much as I admire your posting style - I am not sure treating hasbara peddlers as serious interlocutors isn't a disservice to debate.