From: wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna)
Subject: Democracy (was Re: american opinion)
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: talk
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 21:59:28 GMT

Here we go again...

In article <1992Dec28.223237.27278@cs.brown.edu> hm@cs.brown.edu (Harry Mamaysky) writes:
>
>|> Americans feel generally friendly towards the supposedly Western
>|> democratic Israel that has traditionally been portrayed in the
>|> mass media. The feeling doesn't run that deeply, however, and is
>|> predicated on the image matching the reality.
>
>When was the last time you had the privilege of visiting Israel. It is
>most certainly a democratic Western country.

It is most certainly is not.  See below.

>It has all the features
>of democracy that we have in the U.S. 

It certainly doesn't; it is not even close.  True equality means the
end of zionism.  Perhaps you have a different notion of "true equality"
under the law.

>Perhaps the fact that it is an
>all Jewish country bothers you? 

No.  What bothers me are the fact that the almost 20% of Israeli citizens 
who are not Jews are treated as second class citizens, and the fact that
about 1.8 million Palestinians who have been living under brutal Israeli
military rule are denied not just political rights, but basic human
rights. 

The following is a repost of an article summarizing arguments I and others 
made in this forum regarding this issue.  All I ask is that you read it
with an open mind and respond with facts, if you can.


Israel, Democracy, and Apartheid

	Zionists and Israel's supporters continue to describe Israel as
a bastion of Western democracy and as the "only democratic state
in the Middle East."  Other states in the Middle East have made nothing 
more than farcical claims to "democracy," and amateurish attempts at denying
their records of human rights abuses, and very little additional
effort is necessary to establish their abusive nature.  Israel, on 
the other hand, repeatedly descibes itself as a democracy.  The 
reality is unfortunately very different.

	Most of us understand a democracy to be a state by and for its 
citizens, all of its citizens without any distinctions.  As such, even
from a theoretical point of view, Israel cannot lay claim to democracy 
when it understands and has declared itself to be the "state of the 
Jewish people," not the state of the Israeli citizens, 20% of whom are 
not Jews.  The US changing its constitution to declare itself a White state,
or the state of the Christian people everywhere, would be an 
appropriate analogy.  The assertions in Israeli law that "Israel is
the Jewish state" and that "Israel is the state of the Jewish people"
can mean only one thing: that non-Jews are considered second-class
citizens; that non-Jews have no place in the "Jewish state."  Non-Jews
(the Palestinians) are, by definition, regarded as foreigners in their 
own homeland.

	In practice, the Zionist state is a state where "citizenship" 
is distinguished from "nationality".  In every democracy, a citizen is 
also a national of the state.  Under Israeli law, however, there is no 
such thing as Israeli nationality.   Mere citizenship in the state of 
Israel does not bestow upon the individual equal rights.   In his book 
Facts & Myths: The Arab-Israel Conflict, Clifford Wright explains that:

	Arabs possess `Arab nationality' in Israel but cannot, of course, 
  possess `Jewish nationality'.  Since Israel is a Jewish state, Jewish 
  nationals are able to accrue special rights which non-Jews cannot do.
  Logically, an Arab national has no place in a `Jewish' state.  The way 
  in which Israel describes the differences between `Arab nationality' 
  and `Jewish nationality' in a Jewish state shows that in practice, the 
  two nationalities reduce to the distinction between `citizenship' and 
  `nationality'.  Arabs have `citizenship' in Israel but they are not 
  citizens `by return', as stipulated by the Law of Return, and therefore 
  can never be `nationals', nor take advantage of rights accorded to Jews 
  by the virtue of their being Jews in a Jewish state.

	Non-Jews in Israel, "the state of the Jewish people", are 
therefore left permanently disadvantaged.  Indeed, discrimination against 
non-Jews is institutionalized and sanctioned by Israeli laws (Israel has 
no written constitution and no Bill of Rights).  For example, the 1950 
Law of Return declared that Jews, regardless of their nationality or place 
of birth, can immigrate and become Israeli citizens automatically.  Meanwhile,
Palestinians who were expelled en masse by the Zioniosts or fled since 1948 
and now live in the diaspora, many as stateless refugees, are not permitted
to return to the land of their birth and patrimony.

	A second fundamental law, the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency 
(Status) Law of 1952 (WZO/JA Law), codifies, in practice, the benefits 
accorded to Jewish over non-Jewish citizens of Israel.  Under the WZO/JA
Law, 93 percent of the land in Israel proper, much of it confiscated
from Arab owners, is reserved for exclusive use by Jews only.  Israeli 
Arabs, and all non-Jews, are not only unable, by law, to own the land, but
they cannot either lease it or work upon it.

	This sort of open discrimination and apartness takes many other 
forms. For example, most government jobs (about 1/3 of all jobs in Israel) 
are restricted to people who have served in the Israeli army.  This excludes 
by law all non-Jews (save some Druze and a few bedouins who serve in the army)
from most government jobs.  Government aid to Arab municipalities is
minuscule compared to aid given to Jewish municipalities.  The
land of Arab (non-Jewish) Israeli citizens is regularly being
confiscated by the Zionist state to settle Jews.  Just recntly, the Israeli
Supreme Court essentially gave the green light for the expulsion of 
residents of Ramya, a village in the Galilee, and the confiscation 
of their land to build new housing for Soviet Jews.  In fact, Israel 
has an official land use plan which calls for the "Judaization of the 
Galilee!"

	Thus, what makes Israel patently undemocratic is not just the absence of
legal instruments guaranteeing equal rights, but rather the PRESENCE of 
apartheid-like laws institutionalizing discrimination.  Further, the 
Jewish exclusivist nature of the state cannot be changed through 
normal democratic processes.   A 1985 amendment to 'Basic Law: Knesset' 
includes the following text:

   "Clause 7 (a): A list of candidates shall not take part 
   in the Knesset elections if it entails one of the following, in its aims 
   or its actions, explicitly or implicitly:
   - NEGATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AS THE STATE OF
   THE JEWISH PEOPLE [emphasis added];"

	As we can see, a party calling for Israel to be simply a 
liberal-democratic-style state of its current citizens (both Jews and 
non-Jews), giving no special status to Jewish immigration, say, would 
be excluded from running in Israeli elections.

	Israel's appearance as a democracy is an illusion because it is 
a democracy for Jews only.  If one is to consider Israel to be democratic,
one has to also consider Apartheid South Africa to be democratic too, for it 
is a democracy for Whites only.   Any state which specifies its citizens 
and codifies the differences in law, so that advantages accrue to 
one segment of the population and not the other, is patently undemocratic 
at best and racist at worst.

	Sure, Palestinians who are Israeli citizens can vote in Israel, but
they cannot form parties that challenge the Jewish exclusivist character of 
the state, and since many of their brethren were expelled in 1948, their
numbers are not alrge enough to tip the balance in elections.  Their right 
to vote pales in comparison to their treatment as second class citizens and
to the instituionalized economic apartheid under which they suffer.  
Those that Apartheid South Africa calls Asians and Coloured 
are a good analogy for Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.
The so-called Asians and Coloured are able to vote too, though not for 
the white parliament so they cannot (or could not) have apartheid 
repealed.  Yet, their land has been confiscated by the apartheid state 
for exclusive use by whites, just like the land of Arab citizens of 
Israel has and is being confiscated by the "Jewish state" for exclusive 
use by Jews.

	Apartheid South Africa also rules over millions of Blacks who are
still being denied citizenship and voting rights, just as zionist Israel
rules over 1.8 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, who
are denied all political and national rights, not to mention basic individual
human rights.

	Israel is not a democracy for all its citizens; it is a 
Jewish exclusivist state that discriminates against its non-Jewish 
citizens.  Israel's form of government, an exclusivist form that has 
institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews, resembles more South 
Africa's apartheid than a western-style, modern, liberal democracy.

	Indeed, Zionists' arguments against equality, human rights for the 
Palestinians, and genuine democracy, and their defense of the Jewish 
exclusivist system in Israel are virtually identical to those the 
Afrikaner make in defense of South Africa's Apartheid.  The parallels are 
there for anyone to see.  The difference is 
that Apartheid has become a symbol which people around the world take for 
granted as being evil.  No one gives the time of day to assertions that 
white security must take precedence over Black (et. al) political rights,
that there is no democracy in most African countries, that S.A. is surrounded 
by hostile non-democratic states, that Blacks kill more Blacks than Whites,
that Blacks are "really recent immigrants", that the mostly European 
settlers are naturally superior to the indigenous inhabitants who do not 
know "democracy", that the resistance of the indigenous oppressed people 
is nothing more than "terrorism", and so on.

	All these arguments are treated as bunk (many are patently racist). 
Instead, the world is virtually united in insisting that the situation in 
South Africa must improve and that full, equal political rights be guaranteed
for all.  Yet, all the above arguments are casually and regularly made by 
Israeli supporters in defense of Israel's
Jewish exclusivist nature and its 25 years of repression in the
occupied territories.  So in the name of the 
Zionist "ideal" of a Jewish exclusivist state, the 20% of Israelis who 
are not Jewish are condemned to a life as second class 
citizens.  Generations of Palestinians (1.8 million people now)
are also condemned to a life of suffering and brutal repression under 
Israeli military occupation.

I. F. Stone, the award-winning American Jewish journalist, observed 
in an article in August 1967 in The New York Review of Books that:

  Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world
  Jewry.  In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the
  maintenance of  secular,  non-racial,  pluralistic societies.
  In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed
  marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and
  exclusivist.  Jews might fight elsewhere for their very security 
  and existence -- against principles and practices they find
  themselves defending in Israel.

	Historically, many Jews have in fact opposed political Zionism.  
Today, there are many Jewish critics of zionism and of Israel's 
cruelty and immoral policies towards the Palestinians.  It is 
those Jews who are, in my humble opinion, upholding the Jewish 
tradition of ethical dissent and moral leadership.  

	South Africa is finally closing the book on apartheid.  It is time
to press for an end to apartheid in Israel.  Perhaps Israel will have its
own De Klerk soon.

Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:24529 talk.politics.soviet:10146 soc.culture.greek:11983 soc.culture.europe:10944 soc.history:10477 soc.culture.soviet:11733 soc.culture.turkish:13734