cicerone imposter wrote:I still believe in:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Need I remind you that this is simply a poem and nothing more? It may sound nice but it in no way reflects the official immigration policy of the US.
The US has had immigration laws since 1790 with many changes since then. Our government is responsible to establish immigration laws on legals and illegals that come to our country.
The statement on the Statue of Liberty still holds true - for me.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
It's up to our government to enforce the laws they create. It doesn't negate the statement on the Statue of LIberty.
CI, perhaps I can send a few in that refuge to your home. How many can you accomodate, support, etc.?
No, it is sarcasm.
But don't you give a damn about what is best for the country?
Advocate, "What is best for the country" must be established and controlled by our government. There is nothing one citizen can do to take over what is the responsibility of our federal government. They write the laws on immigration, and it's also their responsibility to "control" immigration based on those laws.
It is also my personal belief that immigration strenthens our country - economically and politcally. We are all immigrants except for the native Indians.
Israel delays UN mission to Beit Hanun (jpost.com)
Translation: there will be NO UN mission to Beit Hanun.
The problem, from the Israeli perspective, is not the deed that was done here: this is commonplace in Israel on a daily basis.
The problem is, it got caught in pictures, and was seen around the world.
It has become a public relations nightmare which exacerbates Israel's image as a consistent human rights violator, something Israel wants to blot from international public consciousness as soon as possible.
Zippo, Unfortunately, it's very easy to deceive the public at large to change truths into sound bites and fiction.
Jimmy Carter is right; the US ogvernment continues to claim Israel is the "only democracy" in the Middle East. It is no such thing; it's an aparthied state with no legal rights for Palestinians. Most people in our country prefer to remain ignorant about the realities in Israel, because our government - including both democrats and republicans - continue to support Israel over the plight of the Palestinians.
CI, you can't be so ignorant to say that Israel extends no legal rights to its Pals. You come across as antisemitic making this and other such statements.
I saw a lengthy interview with Carter about his book, and his views were nonsense. For instance, the fence does not imprison. The Pals are free to go East, North, and South -- it just keeps them out of Israel for damn good reasons.
Israel would love to help the Pals form a separate state. However, you can't deal with a people who want only your destruction and don't recognize your right to exist.
BTW, be honest, no one is saying there should be no immigration. However, you seem to want wide-open borders when you cite that cliche of a poem.
"Israel would love to help the Pals form a separate state." Thus the assassination of Rabin.
http://indaily.net/?p=2763
Carter says that Israel could have peace with the Pals should it give back all Arab lands.
This ignores the fact that the Pals attacked Israel hundreds of times before Israel basically set foot in the West Bank and Gaza.
Carter's book is stupid and tendentious.
The character assassination of Jimmy Carter
Carter makes a compelling case that if Israel does not change its policies, and continues to rule the Palestinians as it does, then the system they are using to control and segregate the Palestinians is in fact defacto Apartheid.
There is no other word for it.
But in the United States, as Carter also argues, the American media is afraid to challenge Israel's policies.
The proof is in the immediate assault against Carter by Stein and by Ross. It also is in the confrontational nature of the reviews, the interviews and the writings in the media about Carter's book.
Yes, Carter is getting coverage. But it is a negative, haphazard coverage that is more intellectually dishonest than the worst alleged "errors" that Stein and Ross claim are in Cater's book.
Advocate, most Israelis and most Palestinians want a 2 state solution using 1967 borders. You side with radicals, fundamental religious fanatics and imperialists. "Israel Education Minister Orders Pre-1967 Borders Shown On Maps"
Israeli Education Minister Yuli Tamir has ordered that all new editions of textbooks with maps must show the borders which existed before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War.
The Ha'aretz daily quoted the minister as saying that Israel could not demand that its Arab neighbours mark the 1967 borders - the so-called "green line" - while it refuses to show it in school textbooks.
Tamir also told Israel Army Radio that it was impossible to teach children history without them knowing what the Green Line was, and without their being able to recognise the June 4, 1967 borders.
According to Army Radio, a check of school textbooks on such subjects as geography and history revealed that many of them do not delineate the Green Line or show the Gaza Strip, and in some cases even do not mark large Arab cities, such as Nazareth, which lie inside sovereign Israel.
Advicate wrote: CI, you can't be so ignorant to say that Israel extends no legal rights to its Pals. You come across as antisemitic making this and other such statements.
Only the most extreme Jews call people like me "anti-semitic," because you're unable to explain the illegal takeover of Palestinian properties in Israel. Read "The Other Side of Israel" by Susan Nathan. She presently lives in a Palestinian village in Israel. She has first-hand information about the land grab by Jews in Israel that leaves Palestinians without any legal rights to their own homes and property. I was in Israel last October, and we were able to have a discussion with a young Palestinian woman now living in the Old City of Jerusalem. She hates the Jews for restricting her movements, job opportunities, and mistreatments just because she is Palestinian. Her family has lived in Israel for generations, and she has no rights in her own country.
If that makes me anti-semitic, I'm glad to wear that label.
This article is long, but it describes many of the problems of Israel's democracy.
ANTI-TERRORISM MEASURES AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Lost freedoms of Israel
The policies of Ariel Sharon's government, especially its security wall, are meeting resistance within Israel, partly because the liberties of Israelis are being threatened, amid signs of a democracy in crisis.
By Meron Rapoport
DAN SHILON, a famous Jewish Israeli television presenter, was fired by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority because he did not pass a microphone fast enough to a close friend of prime minister Ariel Sharon. Viki Knafo, a Jewish Israeli single mother with two children, lost a third of her income because the government changed the rules (1). Muhammad Bakri, an Arab Israeli filmmaker, was banned from screening his documentary Jenin-Jenin in Israel because the attorney general thought it might hurt the feelings of soldiers who fought there. Gil Na'amati, a Jewish Israeli from a kibbutz who had just finished his military service, was badly wounded by an Israeli sniper when he demonstrated against the building of the security fence in the West Bank. Nasser Abu al-Qian, an Arab Israeli from the Bedouin village of Atir, was shot in the head by a policeman because he was too slow in pulling down his car window.
None of them knew each other or had common interests: Viki Knafo didn't want to see Jenin-Jenin and Nasser Abu al-Qian had never heard of Dan Shilon. They all lived separate lives in separate places in Israel's ever more cloistered society. But social scientists, law professors and civil rights activists say they are all victims of the fact that Israel - often called the only democracy in the Middle East - is becoming less democratic. That change affects not only 3.5 million Palestinians who live in the occupied territories but Israel's citizens inside the 1967 Green Line borders.
The background is the violence of the intifada which, over three years, has killed 900 Israelis and 2,500 Palestinians. But civil rights not directly connected to the conflict have been affected. "The Israeli public has succumbed to the rightwing view that this is a war," says Professor Yaron Haezrahi of the political science department of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, a leading figure in human rights studies. "The violence around the Palestinians is damaging our concept of human rights. People are asked to give up many of their rights and the security apparatus has become a new priesthood. At the university security guards now decide which student is allowed to go to the library."
The shooting of Na'amati in December shook Israelis but got little attention abroad. He was demonstrating with an Israeli group, Anarchists against the Wall, in Mascha, a Palestinian village south of Kalkilia, about 8km from the Green Line. They were protesting against the security fence that has cut Mascha from its agricultural land. Fifty Israelis, including Na'amati, and 200 local Palestinians marched towards a gate in the fence that Palestinian farmers are supposed to use to reach their land, but is usually closed. As they approached it, Israelis and Palestinians separated into two groups. "It was agreed the Israelis should reach the fence itself", says Eli Cohen, an Israeli filmmaker whose famous work, Two Steps Away from Saida, was commissioned by the army; he is shooting a documentary about the wall. "Everybody assumed the soldiers would show restraint to Israeli demonstrators and wouldn't shoot." They were wrong. A few moments after Israeli demonstrators started to shake the gate, a group of soldiers, 20m away on the Israeli side of the fence, shot over their heads. "We started to shout don't shoot, we're Israelis, we're brothers," said Cohen. "It's hard to believe that the soldiers didn't understand the people were shouting in Hebrew with an Israeli accent." But the shooting continued.
Tal Cohen, an Israeli photographer from the daily Yediot Aharonot, who was standing near to the soldiers, warned one that the demonstrators were Israelis. Yet that soldier asked his commander for authorisation to shoot and it was given. A sniper took aim and shot Na'amati twice in the leg, hitting a main artery. He lost a lot of blood but the soldiers refused to open the gate. He had to be taken to an Israeli hospital by long, rough back roads. By the time he arrived he was near death.
Later it turned out that the commander of the army unit was from Elkana, a Jewish settlement a few hundred metres away; he was from a religious family and studied in a yeshiva (religious school) linked to the rightwing National Religious party. An internal army inquiry found that the soldiers had acted according to the regulations and had been sure they were facing Palestinian demonstrators threatening to cross the fence and attack them.
Na'amati's father, Uri, a veteran Labour party activist and head of a local council in the Negev, said you would have to be drunk to believe the army version. Eli Cohen says: "I'm afraid of my conclusions. All my life I've believed that this is my army and that it is protecting me." Yet he was unconvinced. "The soldiers were very calm; there wasn't any build-up of tension. It was a cold-blooded decision, as if they were saying to the demonstrators: 'You're helping the other side and you think you'll go unpunished? You'll have to pay for what you've done'."
Dr Haezrahi is blunter: "This was the first time that the army opened fire on the left wing. The refusniks are blamed for using the army for political purposes. Here, the right wing was hiding behind army uniforms. Even the newspapers wouldn't say that the soldiers were rightwingers who shot at leftwing demonstrators, although it was reminiscent of the way the Phalangists behaved" (2). Dana Alexander, head of the legal department of the Human Rights Association, says: "The affair is a step further than anything we've seen before, but it didn't come as a shock to me. It's a natural progression from the violent attitude towards leftwing demonstrators and the de-legitimising of the left and Arab politicians inside Israel."
In April 2002 a small group of Arab Israelis in the mixed city of Lod went to demonstrate, peacefully, against the military reoccupation of all West Bank cities. Alexander explains that such a protest does not require a permit under Israeli law, but 11 protesters were arrested and jailed. They had to stay in prison until their trial on charges of illegal organisation and incitement. After it was revealed in court that the charges of incitement were based on an incorrect translation of a placard the protesters waved, they were quietly sent home.
Other cases ended with the killing of innocent Arab people. The Mossawa Centre, based in Haifa, works for the protection of the rights of Israel's Arab citizens. It has documented at least 15 cases in which police or border police have killed Arab Israelis in the past three years, besides the killing of 13 in the demonstrations of October 2000 at the outbreak of the second intifada, when "the government and the Shabak [General Security Service or Shin Bet, responsible for internal security] took a decision at the highest level to drive the Arabs home because they saw the uprising as a war on the whole of Eretz Israel," says Jafar Farah, the centre's managing director. "Now we have moved to a climate of transfer (3), with calls of death to the Arabs, and that influences the police."
Farah admits, as do Alexander, Haezrahi and others, that this climate is the result of the present state of war between Israelis and Palestinians and above all suicide attacks on civilians inside Israel. But most of the cases on the Mossawa list have nothing to do with suicide bombers or even security issues. None of the 15 Arabs killed by the police was involved in terrorist activities and only a few were suspected criminals. Most were innocent people with no connection to crime or terrorism. No Jewish Israeli citizen, even those who were criminals or suspected criminals, was killed by police during that period.
The Or Committee, set up by the Knesset to investigate the killing of Arab Israelis during the October 2000 demonstrations, ruled that the police fired live ammunition at Arab demonstrators without justification and against regulations. Yet in September 2003, only 10 days after the publication of the findings, the police fired at Arab Israelis in Kfar Kasem, near Petah Tikva, as they tried to arrest them: 11 were wounded. They were all innocent, since none was charged or prosecuted.
In August 2003 there was another case of police violence. Nasser Abu al-Qian, 23, was driving a van on the road to Beersheba. He stopped at a traffic light. The border police suspected him of transporting illegal Palestinian workers. He was slow to respond so a policeman broke his window with a pistol and shot him in the head. At first the police claimed that he was trying to escape. But evidence, including that of Jewish drivers, disproved this and the policeman was charged with manslaughter. Farah says that no charges were made after 14 other killings. Perhaps because there were no Jewish witnesses?
There is pressure from above. A parliamentary committee decided to bar two Arab members of Knesset (MK), Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi, and one Arab party, Balad (Bishara's party), from running in the general elections of January 2003. The Supreme Court annulled the decision. Bishara, the first MK to face trial because of a statement (4), had his parliamentary immunity restored. But most of the nine Arab MKs have been the subject of police enquiries; none produced any evidence to proceed further. Mossawa has reported 25 cases in which Arab MKs were beaten by regular or border police over the past three years. Arab MKs are now accused of inciting rebellion against the state, though some Israelis admit that the accusation is a deliberate attempt to delegitimise Arab political leadership. Alexander says "There were similar attempts in the past, but they did not reach such a high level or get such wide support in the Knesset."
In August 2003 the "demographic danger" argument most recently raised by finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu, led to a discriminatory law: the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law.
The Knesset is now reviewing a proposed law to force NGOs to submit donations from abroad to scrutiny by a governmental authority, which would have the right to ban funds for organisations that "seek to change a position or public opinion in Israeli society". If passed, it will affect the Arab NGOs that receive most of their money from the European Union or European states.
Another blow to civil liberties is a government plan, approved in April 2003, to evacuate 70,000 Bedouins from where they have lived for the past 50 years and force them into townships. Farah says: "They won't succeed in deporting all Bedouins from unrecognised villages, but many will be deported. It's the first time a well- defined plan has been approved." Haezrahi, Alexander and Farah agree that all these acts are part of the climate of transfer, as mentioned by minister for internal security, Tzahi Hanegbi, to the daily paper Ma'ariv in August 2003 during a visit to Beersheba: "The city has fallen into the hands of gangs of Bedouin criminals. I tell you: rise up in the thousands, take clubs in your hands and drive Bedouin criminals out."
Unfortunately the Israeli media has joined this "war against terrorism", which has turned into a war on Arab Israelis. Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer from the Hebrew University, outgoing president of the Council of Journalists, the highest voluntary institution in the media, says: "The government has managed to impose its views on most of the media. Official versions are being adopted. It's become impossible to distinguish between an official spokesman and a journalist." But he and other media people believe it is not just a question of self-censorship, common in times of war: there is government pressure on the media and a gradual erosion of freedom of expression. "In the past year, government intervention became blatant," says a senior journalist at the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, which controls the First Channel on TV and Kol Israel, the most popular radio station. "There were pressures before, but not like this. You see the news and you think you see what the editor or presenter wanted you to see. That is untrue. The chairman of the authority is an active Likud member and sends notes saying who should be interviewed and who not. The managing director is worse. Before the last elections, he refused to allow an interview with Amram Mitzna, head of the biggest opposition party and candidate for the premiership. There was bitter discussion before he finally permitted the interview." Uri Dan, a close friend of Sharon, has been given a two-hour radio programme in which praises he Sharon and attacks his opponents. Now he is on the panel of a prestigious Friday night television newsmagazine.
Dan Shilon, a founding father of Israeli television, used to be the programme's presenter. One day he found out from the newspapers that he had lost his job: he had not passed the microphone to Uri Dan fast enough, despite urgent calls from the control room. Dr Kremnitzer says: "The government has taken over the Broadcasting Authority. We are going back to the days of Ben Gurion, when the authority was not an independent body protected by a special law, but a department inside the prime minister's office."
The problem goes beyond the authority. When the actor Muhammad Bakri made his documentary about the fighting in Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, the Viewing Commission for Films and Plays, a censorship committee, banned it. The attorney general defended the strange decision. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of its screening. The attorney general appealed to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile the film, seen at festivals worldwide, has still not been shown in Israel.
Dr Kremnitzer is certain that none of this would have happened three years ago. He refers to the decision by the National Press Office to issue press cards only to journalists that the Shabak have declared "clean". The decision was revoked only after unusual pressure by foreign and Israeli press. In a recent survey by the Israeli Democracy Institute, Israel has dropped to 31 out of 36 democratic states surveyed. "We have the lowest grade for free press," says Dr Kremnitzer. "If we drop a bit further, we will be graded as a semi-democratic state."
The road to a semi-democratic state does not stop at leftwing demonstrators or Israel's Arab citizens, MKs, or the media. It reaches the basis of society. In the past year Netanyahu has led a fierce campaign against social benefits and labour unions, using the language of the intifada. He made a famous gaffe during negotiations with unions, saying "We will not surrender to enemies," using the Hebrew word oy'vim (enemies) instead of ovdim (workers). "And it was a discourse between enemies," says Yuval Elbashan, a lawyer and director of the legal clinic at the Hebrew University. "Netanyahu made a slip of the tongue, but it wasn't accidental." He adds there is a move to get rid of labour courts, the last stronghold of trade unions. A special committee was set up to review the future of the courts, and Elbashan is sure that they will be dismantled: "When you don't have a legal system, society falls apart."
Netanyahu has now made a unique deal with the police. The finance ministry will give extra funding to the police, who in return will set up a special unit to track down people who get social benefits by fraud. The money the state saves through this will stay within the police. Dr Haezrahi says: "This is the cruellest finance ministry in Israel's history. In a cold way it is planning to destroy all our social institutions. The security issue has prevailed over everything. Terrorism has affected the human rights movement and opened the way to damaging other civil rights."
In January the Civil Rights Association had a small victory against Netanyahu when it appealed to the Supreme Court against a 30% cut in allowances for permanently unemployed people, including many single mothers. It claimed such a drastic cut could infringe the basic right to a decent life. During the hearing it was clear that the finance ministry had not evaluated the minimum needs to live in dignity. The court told the government to do its homework, prompting a virulent attack by the Knesset. Undaunted, Professor Aharon Zamir, a former Supreme Court judge and a level-headed member of the legal system, says: "The finance ministry has disregarded and disobeyed the law." Is there now a war between the Supreme Court and the Knesset?- the sign of a democracy in crisis?
