THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

South Africa: Army Not the Solution to Raging Social Decay

South Africa: Army Not the Solution to Raging Social Decay

Date Posted: Wednesday 19-May-2010
By Meshack Mabogoane
Johannesburg - THE staggering social problems that have overwhelmed the country in the wake of a licentious "human rights" environment (and its sinister manipulation) are receiving attention, albeit grudgingly, from the government.
Now that the government admits some rot, there is a need for real frankness in assessing the mess and the role the government has played in creating it.
The Department of Defence has proposed absorbing recruits into its ranks for "instilling patriotism and discipline". That the army has to be brought in shows the gravity of the situation. It is a virtual state of emergency, and it stems from social engineering aimed at producing a degenerate social climate and, out of that, a malleable rabble.
After failing to destroy the country with explosives before 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) in power has succeeded in devastating society through the cunning manipulation of social grants, ill-meaning "rights" and state resources. This ethical wilderness is a fertile ground for propaganda and plunder and it suits incumbents in nihilistic tyrannies.
The Department of Defence's recruits will be the products of a government that has rubbished discipline and social ethics. There is excessive provision of "rights" to protect children and youth - ostensibly against abuse at home and on campus. But while youth are rewarded for misbehaviour, adults are restrained, even punished, for trying to inculcate responsibility in them.
The exponential expansion of the black population, in which the government is implicated by way of dereliction of its duties, worsens social problems. Women and children are abused, social grants-driven offspring are ill fed and ill bred - a massive social jungle and a national bungle are in the making.
"Rights" and "welfare" have undermined social institutions, values and responsibility - there is overwhelming evidence that they are harming society.
In overcrowded jails - or rather "hotels", which accommodate and subsidise the victims of social degeneration - the comforts and lack of discipline attract many. Tardiness and negligence in dealing with infractions within the bureaucracy - including the comical "disciplinary procedures" of the ANC - corrode authority. The general tone of the government and ruling party abets insubordination and irresponsibility in state and society.
And now the Department of Defence wants to act as a kind of fire brigade to extinguish the social inferno. It would be more cost-effective and socially responsible if the government stopped spawning social and personal degeneration.
The regime, by emphasising party over patria, comrade over citizen, has destroyed patriotism, which requires a real understanding of, and respect and love for, one's country. But the government falsifies history, eclipses significant events and downgrades personalities except those of its own. The heritage, views and concerns of all others are set aside and trampled on for its controversial legacies. An inimical propaganda arouses enmity and anger.
Moreover, the regime has sown conflict and enlarged chasms across generations, class, gender, racial and even black ethnic lines in pursuit of a "divide, undermine and control" programme. This militates against a common feeling of goodwill, mutual recognition and respect among citizens, which is indispensable for patriotism.
The army - now an emasculated militia - needs remedial treatment itself before its rickety structure is burdened with social jetsam. A disciplined army is what is really needed, otherwise it may produce "war veterans" fit mainly for seizures and heists. Hence the recruitment of ANC Youth League members - as comrades not citizens - is portentous.
While the Department of Defence meddles in social-patchwork solutions, it fails to face military issues because of lack of vision and political will.
The proposed role of the department in social rehabilitation will flop as long as the government allows or aggravates social degeneration and acts irresponsibly. The social collapse in this country is stoked by a hostile regime that is destroying its vulnerable citizens by exploiting their weaknesses.
Mabogoane is a freelance writer.

CRIME IN SOUTH AFRICA

[2 Pics] S.Africa: 2010: CRIME IN SOUTH AFRICA POSTER - My Pics: A Great Crime Advert: Wake up before its too late...

Date Posted: Wednesday 19-May-2010
I was driving around Johannesburg last Saturday when I spotted this advert on the side of the road. I thought it was an absolutely brilliant security company advert. It is for a company called SECURITY SOLUTIONS. I struggled to take photos with my cell phone... this is the best I could do. The company's advert says: WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE... and shows a photo of a coffin...

Yeah folks... WAKE UP... crime is a big issue. I'll tell you later about the Police meeting in our suburb last night. Not good - certain types of crime increased by 100% in one year. Shocking...
[2 Pics] S.Africa: 2010: CRIME IN SOUTH AFRICA POSTER - My Pics: A Great Crime Advert: Wake up before its too late...
[2 Pics] S.Africa: 2010: CRIME IN SOUTH AFRICA POSTER - My Pics: A Great Crime Advert: Wake up before its too late...
Posted By: Jan - http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=76183&M=D&

Secret Tunnels under Johannesburg...

FROM THE SECRET LIFE OF THE CITIES

[2 Pics] S.Africa: My Pics: The Secret Tunnels under Johannesburg...

Date Posted: Wednesday 19-May-2010
Take a look at these 2 photos I took one day while going between buildings in the Johannesburg CBD (Inner City). What you are seeing is private and no open to the public because it is owned by a business.

The one photo is of a short tunnel between 2 underground parkings. That tunnel is 2 storey's underground. I thought it would take me to the longer tunnel, but it turned out to be very new and the other buildings aren't connected to it yet.

The other photo is a pretty cool one. Check that long tunnel - 1 storey underground. It is part of a series of tunnels that connect 5 buildings together. Cool huh?

[2 Pics] S.Africa: My Pics: The Secret Tunnels under Johannesburg...
[2 Pics] S.Africa: My Pics: The Secret Tunnels under Johannesburg...

GILAD ATZMON-ISRAELI BUTCHERY AT SEA


ISRAELI BUTCHERY AT SEA BY GILAD ATZMON  

As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured.  Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective  fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.
For days the Israeli government  prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters.  Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible
consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along.  What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist  attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.  
Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters.  At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.
Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead.  We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.
The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’  expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.  
It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli  should be considered as a  suspicious war criminal unless proved different.
Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO  members and EU countries must immediately cease their  relationships with  Israel  and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.    
Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely.  Israel is now officially mad and deadly. The Jewish State is not just careless about human life,  as we have been following  the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter,  Israel actually  seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.

IMPORTANT:Taking the Freedom Flotilla: What it Reveals

Taking the Freedom Flotilla: What it Reveals

News Commentary – May 31, 2010

Israel’s storming of vessels in a flotilla of ships carrying much needed aid to Gaza has sparked outrage around the world.

Although Israel claims its marines were attacked with knives and batons as they boarded the ships, the fact that they were still in international waters made any attempt to seize the ships an act of piracy. So in purely legal terms, the activists were entirely justified in fending off any attempt to seize their vessels.

Original estimates that 10 activists were killed have now been revised upwards to a possible total of 19 dead.

Whatever the final number of fatalities though, the whole episode is a public relations disaster for Israel. Even though their governments may make disapproving noises about the incident, growing numbers of Westerners are beginning to view Israel in an increasingly grim light.

Zionist brutality is now seen on par with the Nazi’s making the term Zionazi an apt description for modern Israel.

It also makes the Israeli marine commandos claim that they faced a “lynch mob” when they boarded the ships seem particularly hollow. Because they were engaged in an act tantamount to piracy on the high seas and the activists were well within their rights in trying to protect the ships and their cargo.

Nonetheless, Israel is still trying to protest its innocence. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday afternoon that the Flotilla’s organisers were to blame as the boarding party only opened fire after the activists on board attacked them.

Which doesn’t negate the fact that those on board the six-ship flotilla were trying to protect the 10,000 tonnes of aid aboard from an act of piracy.

If nothing else though how media outlets cover the incident reveals much about where they stand regarding Zionism.

No media outlet can ignore the outrage without exposing themselves as Zionist fronts. So it’s not a question of whether media outlets ignore the incident but how they cover it.

Predictably, the BBC reported the incident prominently but news anchors asked if the flotilla’s interception was not “understandable” given that rockets from Gaza have bombarded Israel, “some 20 this past month”, and the ships “might” have had such munitions aboard.

Ignoring the fact that Mossad operatives may have fired the rockets; the flotilla’s organisers would have made a point of excluding any cargo that invited the intervention of an Israeli boarding party. To do otherwise would have been self-defeating BUT that didn’t stop the BBC from asking the question.

Stupid as it may seem it introduced an air of balance into the coverage while providing spurious justification for Israeli actions.

And if that was the intention it did so subtly, almost subliminally.

Alex Jones is another case in point. Regular contributor to this website, Br Nathanael Kapner maintains that Jones is a “Zionist shill” with connections with the Bronfmans.

We reserve judgement on that but his coverage of the Israeli seizure of vessels today is interesting.

As we said no media outlet can ignore the incident and Alex Jones website infowars was no exception. Appearing below the day’s 25 top headlines came a piece by Kurt Nimmo on the incident. Then, below a report on how Rand Paul survived a smear campaign and reports on Memorial Day Alternatives and how Michigan was considering a law to licence journalists came an AFP report on the convoy seizure.

The top story across the planet and you would almost think that Alex Jones was trying to brush it under the carpet. 
Last updated 31/05/2010

International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla massacre


International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla massacre

Editorial, The Electronic Intifada

31 May 2010

Israeli naval ships flanking the Mavi Marmara.

Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara.

A passenger aboard the Mavi Marmara carries a bloody stretcher.

Early this morning under the cover of darkness Israeli soldiers stormed the lead ship of the six-vessel Freedom Flotilla aid convoy in international waters and killed and injured dozens of civilians aboard. All the ships were violently seized by Israeli forces, but hours after the attack fate of the passengers aboard the other ships remained unknown.

The Mavi Marmara was carrying around 600 activists when Israeli warships flanked it from all sides as soldiers descended from helicopters onto the ship's deck. Reports from people on board the ship backed up by live video feeds broadcast on Turkish TV show that Israeli forces used live ammunition against the civilian passengers, some of whom resisted the attack with sticks and other items.

The Freedom Flotilla was organized by a coalition of groups that sought to break the Israeli-led siege on the Gaza Strip that began in 2007. Together, the flotilla carried 700 civilian activists from around 50 countries and over 10,000 tons of aid including food, medicines, medical equipment, reconstruction materials and equipment, as well as various other necessities arbitrarily banned by Israel.

As of 6:00pm Jerusalem time most media were still reporting that up to 20 people had been killed, and many more injured. However, Israel was still withholding the exact numbers and names of the dead and injured. Passengers aboard the ships who had been posting Twitter updates on the Flotilla's progress had not been heard from since before the attack and efforts to contact passengers by satellite phone were unsuccessful. The Arabic- and English-language networks of Al-Jazeera lost contact with their half dozen staff traveling with the flotilla.

News of the massacre on board the Freedom Flotilla began to emerge around dawn in the eastern Mediterranean first on the live feed from the ship, social media, Turkish television, and Al-Jazeera. Israeli media were placed under strict military censorship, and reported primarily from foreign sources. However, by the morning the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli soldiers who boarded the flotilla in international waters were fired upon by passengers. Quoting anonymous military sources, the Jerusalem Post claimed that the flotilla passengers had set-up a "well planned lynch." ("IDF: Soldiers were met by well-planned lynch in boat raid")

The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that the Israeli soldiers were "attacked" when trying to board the flotilla. ("At least 10 activists killed in Israel Navy clashes onboard Gaza aid flotilla")

This narrative of passengers "attacking" the Israeli soldiers was quickly adopted by the Associated Press and carried across mainstream media sources in the United States, including the Washington Post. ("Israeli army: More than 10 killed on Gaza flotilla")

Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated in a Monday morning press conference that the Israeli military was acting in "self-defense." He claimed that "At least two guns were found" and that the "incident" was still ongoing. Ayalon also claimed that the Flotilla organizers were "well-known" and were supported by and had connections to "international terrorist organizations."

It is unclear how anyone could credibly adopt an Israeli narrative of "self-defense" when Israel had carried out an unprovoked armed assault on civilian ships in international waters. Surely any right of self-defense would belong to the passengers on the ship. Nevertheless, the Freedom Flotilla organizers had clearly and loudly proclaimed their ships to be unarmed civilian vessels on a humanitarian mission.

The Israeli media strategy appeared to be to maintain censorship of the facts such as the number of dead and injured, the names of the victims and on which ships the injuries occurred, while aggressively putting out its version of events which is based on a dual strategy of implausibly claiming "self-defense" while demonizing the Freedom Flotilla passengers and intimating that they deserved what they got.

As news spread around the world, foreign governments began to react. Greece and Turkey, which had many citizens aboard the Flotilla, immediately recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Spain strongly condemned the attack. France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner expressed "profound shock." The European Union's foreign minister Catherine Ashton called for an "enquiry."

What should be clear is this: no one can claim to be surprised by what the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights correctly termed a "hideous crime." Israel had been openly threatening a violent attack on the Flotilla for days, but complacency, complicity and inaction, specifically from Western and Arab governments once more sent the message that Israel could act with total impunity.

There is no doubt that Israel's massacre of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was a wake up call for international civil society to begin to adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel similar to those applied to apartheid-era South Africa.

Yet governments largely have remained complacent and complicit in Israel's ongoing violence and oppression against Palestinians and increasingly international humanitarian workers and solidarity activists, not only in Gaza, but throughout historic Palestine. We can only imagine that had former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni indeed been arrested for war crimes in Gaza when a judge in London issued a warrant for her arrest, had the international community begun to implement the recommendations of the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, had there been a much firmer response to Israel's assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, it would not have dared to act with such brazenness.

As protest and solidarity actions begin in Palestine and across the world, this is the message they must carry: enough impunity, enough complicity, enough Israeli massacres and apartheid. Justice now.
 

Piracy is still piracy, even if it's carried out by a state


By Jamal Elshayyal inon May 27th, 2010
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As the much anticipated departure of the Freedom Flotilla nears, Israel has been busy issuing statements and press releases as how it intends to deal with the humanitarian aid convoy of ships bound for Gaza.
Israel's military says it has completed the construction of a mass detention centre in Ashdod where it plans to hold the 800 or so activists, humanitarians and journalists on board the nine ships. 
Tel Aviv has declared the waters off the shores of Gaza a military zone, deeming any unauthorised entry  tress passing. 
But the problem is, Gaza's waters are just that - waters belonging to Gaza. Israel's navy has no right under any law to enter those waters let alone declare the area a military zone. In fact ask any of Gaza's one and a half million residents and you will find that anything related to Israel is not welcome.
The Freedom Flotilla on the other hand, is welcomed by Gaza's besieged people. It brings them much needed aid, building materials school and hospital equipment. Whereas as far as Palestinians are concerned all Israel has brought Gaza since 1948 is refugees, war and destruction.
Israel insists it no longer occupies Gaza, however its continued strangle hold over all but one of the strip's entry and exit points deems such protestations, to put it mildly, grossly inaccurate. 
Thus if the Israeli military does indeed act upon its threats of boarding the Flotilla and forcibly re-directing it as well as detaining the passengers; its actions, in the eyes of the conscious many, would amount to nothing less than piracy and abduction.
The likely ransom demands for the release of 800 activists, parliamentarians, aid workers and journalist:
1. Remain silent in the face of aggression.
2. Turn a blind eye to the suffering of many.
3. Report not on the injustices of Israel.
4. Forget that Gaza even exists.
Since the resurgence of piracy off the coasts of Somalia, western governments who's vessels have been captured by pirates in recent years have always insisted that they do not negotiate with pirates. One wonders whether they will afford the same right to those on board the Freedom Flotilla. 
Meanwhile, some multi-national corporations have taken a different approach when their interests were held to ransom, paying out millions of dollars to secure their financial assets on board these ships. But for the 800 odd passengers on their way to Gaza, the ransom that could be asked of them, may prove to be too valuable a price to pay.

NEW BOOK:'Blood and Religion: The unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State'


Jonathan Cook
Blood and Religion: The unmasking
of the Jewish and Democratic State

Published by Pluto Press in Britain in April
and in the United States in July 2006

For details about how to buy the book
in the UK:  from Pluto Press,  click here or Amazon click here
in the US:  from Palgrave Macmillan,  click here or Amazon click here
To purchase an e-book copy, click here


Praise for Blood and Religion:
‘Jonathan Cook’s timely and important book on the Palestinians in Israel is by far the most penetrating and comprehensive on the subject to date ... [He] builds, through exhaustive reference to the Hebrew press, a convincing picture of ethnocratic Zionism constantly preoccupied with a central dilemma: how to rid the land of its indigenous people. This work should be required reading.’
Nur Masalha, Director of Holy Land Studies, St Mary’s College, University of Surrey, and author of The Politics of Denial (2003)

‘An original and powerful book.’
Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, and author of A Modern History of Palestine (2004)

‘Very impressive … Some of his findings will astound even the knowledgeable reader.’
Salim Tamari, Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies


Reviews:








Extracts from the book:
 
To look at the contents page and index click here

On the problems of defining a state as Jewish (in PDF) click here HERE DOWN THE PAGE

On demography and the Gaza disengagement (in PDF) click here


From the back cover:
What does Israel hope to achieve with its recent withdrawal from Gaza and the building of a 700km wall around the West Bank?
Jonathan Cook, who has reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada, presents a lucid account of the Jewish state's motives.  The heart of the issue, he argues, is demography.  Israel fears the moment when a region's Palestinians - Israel's own Palestinian citizens and those in the Occupied Territories - become a majority.  Inevitable comparisons with apartheid in South Africa will be drawn.
This book charts Israel's increasingly desperate responses to its predicament:
  • military repression of Palestinian dissent on both sides of the Green Line
  • accusations that Israel's Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian Authority are secretly conspiring to subvert the Jewish state from within
  • a ban on marriages between Palestinians living under occupation and Israel's own Palestinian population to prevent the right of return 'through the back door'
  • the redrawing of the Green Line to create an expanded, fortress state, where only Jewish blood and Jewish religion count
Ultimately, concludes the author, these abuses will lead to a third, far deadlier intifada.


About the author:
Jonathan Cook, a former staff journalist of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, has also written for The Times, Le Monde diplomatique, international Herald Tribune, Al-Ahram Weekly and Aljazeera.net
He is based in Nazareth, Israel.

Introduction: The Glass Wall 
Instead on another deception: that the establishment of Israel allowed 
the Jews to normalise, to become “a nation like other nations”. But 
what exactly is the nation of Israel? In other countries, the answer 
is relatively simple: the French nation, for example, is the collection 
of people who hold French citizenship; it is, in other words, the 
sum of French citizens. But the Israeli nation is something different. 
According to Israel’s founding laws, the state belongs not just to 
the people who live in Israel, to its citizens (one in fi ve of whom is 
ethnically Arab), but to the Jewish people wherever they live around 
the world and whatever other nationalities – American, French, 
British, Argentinian – they consider themselves to be. As the Israeli 
sociologist Baruch Kimmerling points out: “The state is not defi ned 
as belonging to its citizens, but to the entire Jewish people.”

SEPARATE NATIONALITIES, UNEQUAL CITIZENS 

The murkiness of Israel’s self-definition is underscored by the 
privileged status various international Zionist organisations, including 
the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, enjoy in Israeli 
law. They have a semi-governmental status, including owning vast 
tracts of Israeli land, even though their charters require them to act 
exclusively in the interests of world Jewry. 
As a consequence, Arab citizens’ exclusion from the Israeli 
and Jewish nation has very concrete effects both on their social 
position in Israel and the possibility of developing a civic identity. 
For example, there are some 137 possible nationalities that can be 
recorded on Israeli identity cards: from Jew, Georgian, Russian and 
Hebrew through to Arab, Druze, Abkhazi, Assyrian and Samaritan. 
Everything, in fact, apart from Israeli.41 This is because the state 
refuses to acknowledge that the Israeli nation can be separated from 
the Jewish nation. The two are seen as identical, meaning that non- 
Jews in Israel, including the population of more than one million 
Palestinians, are effectively citizens without a nationality; they are 
more akin to permanent residents. The state’s approach suggests 
that it regards the nation of Israel as including potentially millions 
of Jews who do not live in Israel and do not have Israeli citizenship 
and as excluding the more than one million Palestinians who do live 
in Israel and do have Israeli citizenship. 

Blood and Religion 
The courts have consistently upheld this position. In 1971, for 
example, when an Israeli Jew petitioned the Supreme Court to have 
his nationality changed from Jewish to Israeli in public records, Chief 
Justice Shimon Agranat rejected the application, arguing: 
If there is in the country today – just 23 years after the establishment of the 
state – a bunch of people, or even more, who ask to separate themselves from 
the Jewish people and to achieve for themselves the status of a distinct Israeli 
nation, then such a separatist approach should not be seen as a legitimate 
approach.42 
Agranat’s ruling was confi rmed by the courts again in early 2004. 
The diffi culty facing the Israeli legal system is that to recognise a 
common Israeli nationality – to recognise in effect a shared bond of 
citizenship between Jews and Arabs inside Israel – would negate the 
intentions of the country’s founding fathers, who premised their state 
on the principle that it was a haven-in-waiting for the whole Jewish 
people, wherever they lived. In this sense the legal concept of Israeli 
nationality is unlike that found on the statute books anywhere else 
in the world. Jews and Arabs may share the same label of “Israeli” 
but they are different kinds of nationals and citizens: the former are 
included in the notion of a common national good, while the latter 
are excluded. 
Consider just one example of the racist implications of this view 
of Israeli nationality, sanctioned by both the state and the courts. 
Although almost all land in Israel is nationalised, the state publicly 
admits that it does not hold it for the benefi t of the country’s citizens. 
It is held, in trust, on behalf of Jewish people around the world. 
The land of Israel is the property not of the Israeli people but of the 
Jewish nation, of Jews everywhere and for all time. As a result, Arab 
citizens have no rights to most of the country’s territory, and legally 
can be excluded from the communities built on that territory. A Jew 
from Brooklyn and his or her children and unborn children enjoy 
absolute and eternal rights in Israel (even if they choose not to realise 
those rights), while a Palestinian citizen living in Nazareth or Haifa, 
whose family has lived on the land now called Israel for many gen- 
erations, does not. In 2002 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon explained 
the difference during a Knesset debate when he observed that while 
Arab citizens enjoyed “rights in the land” – they had tenants’ rights 
– “all rights over the Land of Israel are Jewish rights”.43 In short, the 
state considers the Jewish people as the landlords of Israel. 
The difference in the nature of the nationality enjoyed by Jews 
and Arabs is embodied at the most basic level in an early piece of 

immigration legislation called the Law of Return. Passed in 1950, 
two years after the establishment of the state, the Law of Return 
was designed to ensure that the demographic ghost of the Pales- 
tinian homeland on which the Jewish state was built never return 
to haunt it. It gives a right to every Jew in the world to migrate to 
Israel and receive automatic citizenship while barring the return of 
Palestinians exiled by the 1948 war. The legislation skews the demo- 
graphic realities in Israel so that Jewish numerical dominance can 
be maintained in perpetuity. It has eased the passage of some three 
million Jews to Israel, and disinherited the 750,000 Palestinians who 
were either expelled or terrorised out of the country under cover of 
war, and millions of their descendants. The consequence of the Law 
of Return – if not its purpose – has been to ensure that inside Israel 
the Jewish population maintains an unassailable numerical majority 
over what remains of the Palestinian population.

THE JEWISH STATE DEFINED 
The Jewish identity of the state, and the permanent marginalisa- 
tion of the Palestinian citizens it was forced to inherit in 1948, was 
enshrined in the country’s founding document, the Declaration 
of Independence, which mentions only the history, culture and 
collective memory of the Jewish people.44 It speaks not on behalf 
of the country’s citizens but on behalf of the representatives of the 
Jewish people, as well as the Zionist movements, including the Jewish 
Agency and the Jewish National Fund.45 These organisations, which 
enjoy a legal right to discriminate in favour of Jews, control social, 
political and economic benefi ts for Jews only. 
Despite a pledge in the Declaration of Independence to produce a 
constitution within six months of the establishment of the state, no 
document has yet been drawn up. One of the insuperable obstacles 
facing the drafters has been how to embody the ethnic and religious 
values of a Jewish state without resorting to clearly discriminatory 
language.46 A fl avour, however, of what values the courts think a 
“Jewish state” embodies have been provided by the current chief 
justice, Aharon Barak, considered one of the most progressive and 
secular voices in Israel: 
[The] Jewish state is the state of the Jewish people ... it is a state in which 
every Jew has the right to return ... it is a state where the language is Hebrew 
and most of its holidays represent its national rebirth ... a Jewish state is 
a state which developed a Jewish culture, Jewish education and a loving 
Jewish people ... a Jewish state derives its values from its religious heritage, 
the Bible is the basic of its books and Israel’s prophets are the basis of its 
morality. A Jewish state is also a state where the Jewish Law fulfi lls a sig- 
nifi cant role ... a Jewish state is a state in which the values of Israel, Torah, 
Jewish heritage and the values of the Jewish halacha [religious law] are the 
bases of its values.47 
Instead of a constitution, Israel has 11 Basic Laws, none of which 
guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of religion or, most impor- 
tantly, equality. The Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty, passed 
in 1992 and the nearest thing Israel has to a Bill of Rights, fails to 
include equality among the rights it enumerates, instead emphasis- 
ing the values of the state as “Jewish and democratic”. As a result, 
state-organised discrimination cannot easily be challenged in the 
courts. Repeated attempts by Arab Knesset members to introduce 
an amendment to the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty 
incorporating the principle of equality have been rejected by an 
overwhelming majority of Jewish MKs.48 (In any case, since the 1948 
war Israel has never revoked a state of emergency that allows gross 
violations of human rights inside Israel).

ISRAEL’S PACT BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR 

The veiling of the religious and ethnic discrimination at the heart of 
Israel has been partly achieved through the seemingly unimportant 
decision of its founding fathers to remove the state from all matters 
of personal status. Each religious community has been left to regulate 
issues relating to its members’ births, deaths and marriages. In these 
core matters in each citizen’s life there are no civil institutions or 
courts to which he or she can turn. It is neither possible to register 
as an atheist or agnostic, nor formally to bring up one’s children 
as secular citizens. Instead, the leaderships of each of the main 
religious communities – Jew, Muslim, Christian and Druze – have 
been given exclusive powers to deal with their own members. Anyone 
belonging to the Arab Christian community of the Greek Orthodox 
faith, for example, must seek a divorce in a Greek Orthodox religious 
court before a panel of clergy in proceedings possibly carried out in 
Greek, with translation for the Arab participants, and according to 
Byzantine laws dating back to the fourteenth century.50 Similarly, 
no civil marriage is possible in Israel, forcing citizens from different 
religious communities to marry abroad. 
Rather than encouraging diversity, Israel has used the “subcon- 
tracting out” of personal status matters as a way to create a series of 
ethnic and communal partitions. There is no room for civil society 
to fl ourish when the state has abandoned its citizen to their religious 
ghettos, and the arbitrary decisions of their religious leaders. Instead 
individual citizens have been left to fi ght lonely battles to establish 
their rights in the most private areas of their lives, without the help 
or protection of civil institutions and laws. By refusing to offer an 
alternative, secular identity to its citizens in addition to that offered 
by the religious authorities, or to arbitrate in disputes between indi- 
viduals and their confessional group, the state leaves citizens prey 
to anachronistic traditions and the whims of bigots. In Israel, the 
most lively public debates concentrate on arcane personal status 
issues, such as the battles to ease marriage restrictions, allow public 
venues to open on the Sabbath, and end the Jewish Orthodox’s iron 
grip on conversion. There is no room to adopt a more critical civil 
discourse, one that questions the huge budgetary requirements of 
Israel’s military or the economic policies that have opened up huge 
disparities in wealth and employment. 
The authority wielded by the various religious leaderships, rather 
than equalising the status of the different religions before the law, 
has served to entrench an especially privileged place for Judaism in 
Israel, as the religion of the majority. The Hebrew calendar and the 
Jewish religious holidays are the only ones recognised; offi ces, banks, 
institutions and public transport shut down for the Jewish Sabbath 
only; restaurants, factories and public institutions are obligated to 
follow only the hygiene practices of Jews; only Jewish holy sites are 
recognised and protected by law; almost the entire budget of the 
Religious Affairs Ministry is reserved for Jewish places of worship, 
cemeteries, seminaries and religious institutions;51 and Jewish 
religious schools receive resources far outstripping those given to 
state-run Jewish and Arab education.52 
Conversion, which would at least offer a route, if a problematic 
one, to inter-confessional marriage inside Israel and lower the barriers 
between religious communities, has been made all but impossible 
in the case of Judaism. In an agreement forged in the earliest days 
of the Jewish state, control over personal status matters was passed 
exclusively to rabbis representing Orthodoxy, a fundamentalist 
stream of Judaism and the least progressive of its major movements. 
As well as insisting on a purist defi nition of who is registered as a 
Jew (only those born to a Jewish mother), the Orthodox rabbinate in 
Israel approves only a handful of conversions to the Jewish faith each 
year, requiring that converts accept a fundamentalist interpretation 
of Judaism, including observance of halacha (Judaism’s equivalent 
of sharia law). Conversions performed in Israel by rabbis belonging 
to other streams, such as the Conservative and Reform movements, 
are not recognised by the state. 
This pact between the state and Orthodoxy has averted any threat, 
however improbable, of Palestinian citizens converting en masse 
to Judaism and thereby ending their exclusion from the centres 
of power. But it has also caused collateral damage, making life 
extremely diffi cult for Jews living in Israel who are not considered 
Jewish by the Orthodox rabbinate, including more than a quarter 
of a million immigrants who arrived in the last 15 years following 
the collapse of the Soviet Union.53 Because they are the non-Jewish 
spouses of returning Jews, or the offspring of such marriages, they 
fi nd themselves unable to wed in Israel,54 to be buried in Jewish 
cemeteries, or to be registered as a Jew on their identity cards. Their 
children inherit this fl aw. 
Religious control over personal status matters has erected impene- 
trable barriers between Jews and Arabs in both the communal and the 
individual sphere. The policy has undermined any awareness of shared 
interests between Israel’s different confessions; instead, communal 
groups must battle for resources that benefi t their members alone 
rather than forging alliances that might unite groups on other bases. 
The arrangements put in place by the state have forced citizens to 
remain in a sectarian, tribal formation – as Jews, Muslims, Christians 
and Druze – vying for resources and privileges. 
In this hierarchy of citizenship, given the state’s defi nition as a 
Jewish state, the Jewish majority is always the winner by some con- 
siderable margin;55 lagging a great distance behind are the Christian 
Arab denominations, which, because of their historic links to the 
global Churches, have enjoyed better opportunities for education 
and travel;56 next comes the small Druze community, treated by the 
state as a national minority separate from the Arab population whose 
members are obligated in law to perform military service alongside 
Jews; and in last place is to be found the large Muslim population, 
comprising 80 per cent of the country’s Palestinian minority, which 
has been entirely marginalised.