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All Israeli citizens have equal rights, protections and opportunities under the law,and Israel has an independent judiciary that has fiercely defended those rights whenever some politicians have tried to violate them.
Not in practice. I agree that many Arab Israelis after decades of discrimination and inequality have found that the Supreme Court has secured their rights though Jeff Harper points out that that does not happen in the area of housing. What I think you miss is that there are ways to avoid equality. Some of them are pointed out here.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXa_luFgZQ]YouTube - ‪Targeted Citizen‬‏[/ame]
There are some who claim they have been discriminated against in housing or employment in every country - I'm sure we could find an African or Pakistani who has made such a claim in the UK - but in Israel when such a claim is brought to the attention of the courts, if they are true, the discrimination is disallowed. You may wish to believe such discrimination is worse in Israel than it is in the US or UK or France, etc., but you have no reason to believe it is.
In fact, there is every reason to think that less discrimination is allowed to stand in Israel than in the other great democracies. From it's first days of statehood, while it was still under fire from Arabs within the new state and from without, Israel guaranteed equal rights, protections and opportunities to all of its citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, religion,etc., and no country has been more self critical than Israel concerning its performance in this area. Not only does the intense competition between political parties keep issues of social justice constantly on the table in the Knesset, and the courts and AG constantly issue their own advisory opinions, but the universities issue study after study criticizing the government and recommending remedial actions. Both right wing and left wing governments have been responsive to these criticisms throughout Israel's history.
No country has a prefect record in the area of social justice, but no country works harder at than Israel has.
While many Arab Israelis have become successful, even prominent, in the professions, the arts, business and politics, substantial numbers lag behind the national averages in education and income, but these are nearly all from all Arab towns and villages that have insisted the schools provide instruction in Arabic and teach Hebrew only as a second language.
In a country where 80% of the population speaks Hebrew as its first language, lack of proficiency in Hebrew puts these students at obvious disadvantage in terms of future education and earnings, but Arab Israeli politicians, all of whom have arrived at their present positions by mastering Hebrew and passing through Israeli colleges and professional schools, who have their voter bases in these towns have urged their constituents to shun all things Israeli or Jewish, including the Hebrew language, in order to affirm a Palestinian identity.
What can be taught in Arab schools is under Jewish supervision. Now I can understand Arabs wanting to keep their own language as part of their heritage. My own language was forbidden for a few decades and most people forgot it and now 3 century's later we are learning it again and changing our street signs and so on. It would be sensible for everyone to be bi-lingual. Good for the intelligence too as language covers ideas. As the video says, Palestinian or Arab citizens do not have a strong sense of their own identity. This partly comes from not learning their own history in school. A sense of identity is crucial for feelings of self esteem. Self esteem is crucial for achievement.
Arab schools receive far less money on education than Jewish.
I appreciate what you say about Arabs not wanting to learn about Jews but it goes both ways and I am not certain everything Jews are taught in their schools is accurate. This is clearly a big social problem and one that does need to be addressed for social cohesion. It goes back again to the need for honesty and recognizing what has happened in the past. This may be hard but is necessary to move on.
In fact, the Ministry of Education allocates exactly the same amount of money for each Israeli student, Arab or Jewish. and in terms of regular classroom hours, Arabic language schools and Hebrew language schools have the same amount of money for each student. The claims of discrimination come from the way the part of the budget intended for special needs students is distributed. Again, the money is allocated according to how many students are in each school, without regard to whether they are Arab or Jewish, but the Arabic language schools had so many more special needs students than the Hebrew language schools that there was less money to spend on each Arab special needs student than there was to spend on each Jewish special needs student.
In 2009, Hebrew University issued a study that claimed the effect of the method of distribution of special needs money was discriminatory despite the fact that the same amount of special needs money was allocated for each student, and the Netanyahu government immediately changed the method of distribution by phasing in a plan under which all special needs money will be allocated according how many special needs students each school had, rather than how many total students the school had, so that the same amount of money would be available for each special needs student, Arab or Jewish. Of course, this will mean that there will be less money available for Jewish special needs students than there is now unless the education budget is increased and that per capita Israel will be spending more money on its Arab students than on its Jewish students.
No, that is not true. It really isn't. An enormous amount of work has gone on in this country to work on racism and where it is still found that work continues. It is because of this work that the disadvantages in Israel are noticed.
Virtually, all the democracies have put an enormous amount of work into fighting racism and the discrimination it can engender despite laws forbidding it, and no country has worked harder at this that Israel has, yet large segments of some minority populations remain disadvantaged in education and employment in all the great democracies. The fact is that under the same circumstances some minorities succeed and some minorities fail, and part of the reason hs to be the cultures within the family and the respective communities either encourage success or encourage resignation and defeat.
I know that Arab students used to receive grants to study abroad, believed by critics to be because of a hope that they would like it better or meet someone to marry but I am unaware of them receiving special assistance in Israel. Indeed I am sure I read a while back about some new rule which amounted to having to have done military service to meet the requirements for University admission and that of course would rule most of them out.
Surprise, surprise. There you go again looking for a Jewish conspiracy to disenfranchise Arab Israelis. You seem to believe that anytime a Jew seems to do something nice for an Arab, there must be an evil motive behind it. In fact, many Israeli students, Arab and Jewish, study abroad, mostly in Europe or the US, and because Israel has such generous social welfare benefits, many of them have scholarships. Military service does carry a large bundle of social welfare benefits, but no preferment in education or employment. If you spent some time trying to learn what is actually going on in Israel or with Arab Israelis instead looking for anti Israeli gossip on racist hate sites, you would know this.
In employment they are really discriminated against. Firstly the need of so many jobs to have served in the military. This includes things like engineering, textile work, police work as many other things as well as the more obvious things.
After all that they still face discrimination. Most Palestinians end up in low paid manual work. I suspect Israel does not have the motivation to properly deal with these issues as she is hopeful to get the Arab citizens to leave.
Still more racist hate speech from you. Military service has never carried preferment in education or employment and if you followed the news instead looking for racist hate gossip about Israel, you would know that an attempt to make military service or the completion of National Service a tie breaker between two people applying for a civil service job has sparked outrage among most Israelis who have berated it as discrimination.
Rivlin: Public service shouldn't favor ex-soldiers - Israel News, Ynetnews
AG to Netanyahu: Stop bill giving preference to IDF veterans - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
Regarding the police. For social cohesion it really is important that Israel gets Arab citizens in the police force. You believe Israel is the same as countries like my own. No, we have made a conscious effort to get our minorities represented in the police force. It is very important for people to see that the law is represented by everyone.OK, I was possibly getting confused with this and the reality that some Arab Israelis are having their Israeli citizenship withdrawn.Yet again, you seem determined to demonstrate how vast and profound your ignorance of Israel and Arab Israelis is. There are currently about 400 Arab Israelis serving on the police, some in high ranking command positions, and last year the Netanyahu government announced an outreach program aimed at doubling that number within the next few years.
It may feel good to you to think that the UK is doing so well with regard to racism, but apparently you are as ignorant about your own country as you are about Israel and Arab Israelis.
Although various anti-discrimination legislation do exist. According to some sources most employers in the UK remain institutionally racist including public bodies such as the police [5] and particularly the legal profession.[6] It is also nearly impossible for persons subject to such institutional racism (who are normally economically disadvantaged) to seek legal redress, as in the UK public funding (legal aid) is not available at employment tribunals.[7] The situation with the implementation of Human Rights law is similar. The Terrorism Acts, which came into law in 2000 and 2006, have caused a marked increase in racial profiling and have also been the basis to justify existent trends in discrimination against persons of Muslim origin (or resembling such) by the British police.
Racism in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaReality seems to be an alien concept to you. No one has had their citizenship withdrawn. What do you get out of posting all this racist hate gossip? Is this your way of admitting you don't believe the facts support your excited emotional state or any of your positions?
Do not Arab politicians as well as Jewish ones have to pledge allegiance to a Jewish state?Only in your racist imagination.
There is. This is a massive difference between Israel and my own country and I would think all western countries. In the UK you are a British citizen and a British National. In Israel you are an Israeli Citizen and then either a Jewish National or an Arab National. You can have been born and descended for eternity in Timbuktu but in the UK but once you become a citizen, nationality is inclusive.
Even for you, this is stupid. As far as the state of Israel is concerned, if you are an Israeli citizen, your nationality is Israeli. Some Arab Israelis may claim their nationality is Palestinian, but then there are probably some Palestinians who have emigrated to the UK for economic or political reasons and still claim their nationality is Palestinian.
Well as above it is not the same. And my argument has nothing do to with their being any problems with Jews. Half the Jews in my country have similar views to mine. It has to do with asking people to pledge for a Jewish state. The simplest way to see how this is to the other is to show you how it would be if it were done in the UK. We would ask people to pledge allegiance to the UK as a white state. Obviously people would think they were subservient. It just doesn't work. If you have people of different ethnicities, they state has to include them all. Only with inclusion can people feel part of the state, can people feel that it is theirs and that they belong. If people are being asked to pledge allegiance to a white or Jewish state and they are not white or Jewish then clearly they are being asked to pledge allegiance to something which does not include them, something to which they are not equal. Whatever your motivation for your belief in this, there is no way out of what I said. You ask some people to become citizens of a state that is not inclusive of them.
Yet again, you demonstrate how profoundly ignorant you are about Israel and Israeli Arabs.
In a 2004 survey by Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa Jewish-Arab Center, 84.9% of Israeli Arabs stated that Israel has a right to exist as an independent state, and 70% that it has a right to exist as a democratic, Jewish state.[70][234] A Truman Institute survey from 2005 found that 63% of the Arab citizens accepted the principle that Israel is the state of the Jewish people.[70][235]
....
An Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) poll in 2007 showed that 75% of "Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, while 23% said they would oppose such a definition."[237] Another survey that year showed that 62% of Israel's Arabs would prefer to remain Israeli citizens rather than become citizens of a future Palestinian state. The figure rose in a 2008 poll: 77% would rather live in Israel as Israeli citizens than in any other country in the world.[238][239]
Arab citizens of Israel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The overwhelming majority of Arab Israelis don't seem to share your concerns about Israel being a Jewish state and would rather be citizens of Israel than any other country in the world, 77%. That would include the UK, I suppose.
