From: Center for Policy Research <cpr> Subject: rejoinder. Questions to Israelis   Dear Josh  I appreciate the fact that you sought to answer my questions.  Having said that, I am not totally happy with your answers.  1.   You did not fully answer my question whether Israeli ID cards identify the holders as Jews or Arabs. You imply that U.S. citizens must identify themselves by RACE. Is that true ? Or are just trying to mislead the reader ? Do you know of any democratic country where people are asked to reveal their ethnical or religious identity to any public official who so requests ?  2.  The answer to the second question is evasive. There are all kinds of maps issued.  They are not equivalent to State policy. You did not respond to my question.  3.  Your answer to the third question (Israeli nuclear arsenal) is interesting. You say that Israeli 'probably' stocks nuclear weapons. What evidence have you for maintaining that ?  4.  My fourth question was answered by someone else who posted a Ma'ariv article documenting such cases. I did not ask about cases like Vanunu (everybody knew he was tried and imprisoned) but about those about whom nobody even knows that they have been tried and imprisoned.  5.  Thanks for clarifying the question concerning the legal status of the inhabitants of the occupied territories. From it I understand that there are two sets of laws in these ares, one for the occupier (civil law) and one for the occupied (military law). The law allows Israeli Arabs to settle in Hebron, it seems. If so, why doesn't it allow Hebron Arabs to settle in Israel ?  6. Your answer to the question concerning rights to return conflicts with what I was told, namely that hundreds of thousands of non-Jews who left for some reason or other the area under Israel control during the war of 1947-8, were prevented from returning for the sole reason they were not Jews. Jews who also left, for example to Europe, to avoid the clashes, were allowed to return. How can you justify such discrimination, if this is true ? Is the mere fact of a person leaving area of combat to seek refuge somewhere else a reason for stripping him of his right to live in his homeland ?  7.  Somebody answered my 7.question regarding Y. Rabin signing an order for ethnical cleansing in 1948. According to that information, Y. Rabin signed the order for the expulsion of all inhabitants of Lydda and Ramleh, about 50,000 people.  These expulsions were helped by massacres of civilians and other atrocities which remind Bosnia. I was referred to a book by Israeli journalist Benny Goodman called The Origin of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, published by Cambridge University Press. Is this book available in your library ?  8.  You maintain that there are some Israeli Arabs living in Israeli kibbutzim. I wonder how many and where. There is very little evidence available about that. As much as I know, many Arabs are working *for* kibbutzim, even for many years, but are not accepted as members. Could it be that kibbutzim do not want Arabs ?  9.  My question about the lack of civil marriage in Israel was whether it is true that the Israeli legislator intended to discourage intermarriage. You did not address this question but evaded it by saying that the 'entire religious establishment wants to keep it what way'. I am certain that if only religious communities in the U.S. would be asked, they would gladly abolish civil marriage so that people would depend upon rabbis and priests to officiate marriages. But Israel has always been ruled by a secular majority. Your answer is not satisfactory.   I would be glad to have some more input from you after these comments.