bananabrain
awkward squadnik
i would add b'tzelem, adalah, yesh gvul, yesh din, rabbis for human rights, anarchists against the wall, the women in black and machsom watch, not all of whose views and policies i endorse, but their existence is part of a healthy democracy. the same goes for women in green, the yesha council and arutz sheva, whose views i disagree with even more.KarimK said:The fact that Ilan Pappé is allowed to publish his provocative book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine ...goes a long way to show that free speech exists in Israel. Same thing for newspapers such as Ha'Aretz.
i think you probably mean a demographic threat, as most israeli arabs vote for a mainstream party as opposed to hadash or the UAL. basically it's code for "arabs have too many babies". i personally find it not just revolting, but entirely hypocritical given that an arguably larger threat exists to israeli democracy with regards to the birth rates of the ultra-orthodox.In fact, they're considered as a democratic threat (god, I love that expression...
i thought it was lieberman or benny elon someone else like that. i loathe all of them. bibi in particularly chills my blood with his populism and, unfortunately, he's the only one that comes across on TV as not being an inarticulate, mumbling banana-republic embarrassment. "eeeah, ze terroristeek eenfrastructure, eahhhhh..." and so on. sheesh, can't they afford english lessons?I think it was Netanyahu who used it a couple of years ago
as i think i've already pointed out, subtlety is not generally recognised as being the israelis' strong suit in interpersonal or political matters, which is very sad when you see what they're capable of in science, technology and academia, to say nothing of the religious disciplines.And the Israeli Govt really isn't subtle in the way they try to rid themselves of the Arabs in Israel.
a pair of my cousins and their kids live in m-s; they seem to have succeeded in alienating most of the rest of the family - isn't it often the way... as for my relatives in the north, my auntie is well known on her moshav for refusing to go into the shelter, because if her number's up, it's up and if not, then she'll be fine - besides, my uncle can't smoke in there. she is kind of a hard-arse though.Do you visit often? It mustn't be easy for your relatives (well, except for the ones in me'ah she'arim... my school's right next to me'ah she'arim... I'll never get how a neighborhood can be both so ugly and bee-oo-tiful at the same time! )
you're not the only one.Although it's not excusable, and I sometimes feel revolted when some stupid kid humiliates an old, blind guy
i wish i could wave this quote at all the idiots in europe who think that israeli soldiers are the devil incarnate and wake up in the morning wondering how many children they can shoot. the anti-israel propaganda bandwagon is very strong. i sometimes wonder why i haven't gone and given the palestinian who works four desks away from me a good kicking if i'm like that.I also feel sorry for those guys. Most of them had no idea what the army is, who the Palestinians where (I bet you most of them thought we were some sort of myth before going to the army), etc. And they're just kids. My age. They're my age, and they have to do this horrible three-year stupid army sh*t.
people just don't *think*, do they?There are those who really are excited to go to the army (in the words of one of my *former* friends, "I want to kill a lot of Palestinians so I can get promoted!" Yeah. Imagine that.)
it's not offensive. i just don't think these guys understand what the concept of eretz yisrael is supposed to be. the state is a different beast entirely. look, i had an excellent zionist education, i'm a graduate of the institute for youth leaders from abroad in jerusalem, i'm pretty religious by most people's standards (if not by that of right-wing loonies) but messianic delusions have caused us no end of pain over the centuries. and who said the nation-state of all things was a religious entity? until people start seeing "eretz yisrael" as a religious concept for the purposes of halakhah and not a political one (which would allow jews to live all over the middle east, presumably anywhere between the nile and the euphrates) and count themselves as if they were living "ba-aretz" *REGARDLESS OF THE POLITICAL AUTHORITY OF WHICH THEY ARE A CITIZEN* we are locked into a stupid political endgame whch requires hebron, shechem/nablus and tekoa to be ethnically cleansed of jews and means arabs can't get a fair deal in tel aviv, ra'anana or carmiel. the separation wall is a symptom of our inability to find solutions, for all that it is effective in preventing attacks. i'm not suggesting that we remove it, but i would rather make it obsolete, like the berlin wall and, hopefully, the nation-state itself.to defend (sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but I HAVE to roll my eyes here) "Eretz Israel"
hur, hur, hur, "maniak!!"As for politeness... yup. I don't have anything else to say. I don't get that either. Ever try driving a car in Israel?
the advertising and PR industries in israel are dominated by english people and americans. my wife and i have a joke about this which is basically around how an israeli ad campaign would go:I'm glad that the Jews of the diaspora stay true to (beware, stereotypes ahead)(but good stereotypes, so it's fine, right?) their sense of humor and their unmatched skill to make fun of themselves.
"buy eet. ees good. if you don't like, don't buy. i don't care. you're an eediot."
*cough* klal yisrael *cough*.We want to give to the world this ideal picture of Muslim and Christian Arabs being united (very much like this other illusion some still believe in of a unity of the Arab Nations) but it's just not true.
there was rather a lot of ironic amusement over here about that.Oh! Except in one case! Oh god, how beautiful it was, when the THREE representatives of the THREE religions spoke out against homosexuality together on the occasion of the Gay Parade in Jerusalem! How lovely, united in intolerance.
although i note that yasser abd rabbo said the whole thing was a put-up job in order to enable hamas to gain a propaganda victory - although, let's face it, he would say that. but i don't think i'd put it past them.As for Johnston... I was also delighted, because BBC is one of the really rare TV stations that I respect and actually like.
just a small thing FYI - "semitic" is a term from comparative lingustics. there's no such thing as "semites" in an ethnic sense - you only have to look at the ethnic diversity of both jews and arabs to see it. obviously, i am not suggesting for a moment that you are doing this, but most people who talk about "semites" are doing it in order to say "i can't be anti-semitic, i'm a semite myself" - to which i always reply, ok, then, does the term "jew-hater" work for ya?Or until the world really gets sick of us bickering Semites and decides to bomb us all
if you have the time and are interested, i encourage you to visit Pickled Politics, a so-called "progressive" (that's code for "left-wing") blog where there are quite a lot of daft opinions about israel and palestine, although it's really about topics of interest to anyone brown - as an indian/iraqi jew i appear to qualify, he said, tongue-in-cheek. i'm a regular poster there. the same goes for you, muslimwoman.
you can take the girl out of london, but you can't take london out of the girl, eh, mw? next you'll be saying mubarak says "poo-arrrrrr" in front of all his sentences.muslimwoman said:I live in Sheben el Kom, which is a farming town but bizarrely has produced 3 presidents now......wonder if that explains the state of Egyptian politics???
b'shalom
bananabrain