Comment by coolestuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolestuk | Hacker News Reader

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It is truly offensive to what black africans endured under apartheid, to compare Israel with South Africa. My guess is that the people who say such things have never visited Israel and never visited South Africa under apartheid.

'African-American student leaders from a variety of historically black colleges and universities took out full page ads in numerous American college newspapers Thursday, displaying an “Open Letter to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP),” to convey that they were offended by SJP’s use of the term “apartheid” at recent Israel Apartheid Week events at campuses across the country.'

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=215811

Ever wonder where a millenium of European anti-semtism disappeared to following 1945? It transmogrified itself into prejudice against Israel.

There are countries that truly are comparable to apartheid (e.g. Saudi Arabia, where non-muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca). But it is always democratic Israel that gets equated with apartheid, not undemocratic, discriminatory Saudi Arabia.

Palestinians aren't allowed to enter huge portions of the West Bank, including big sections of Hebron where only 500 Jewish settlers live among 300,000 Palestinians. There are whole highways that are Israeli only. Jewish settlers steal private land and then are defended by the IDF as has happened in Nabi Saleh.

One set of rules is enforced on Palestinians and another for Israelis living in the same area. That is the definition of apartheid.

'Palestinian' denoting citizenship rather than race. I can 100% assure you that there are Druze and Bedouin checkpoint soldiers.

South African apartheid discriminated based on the race of South African citizens. Israeli only roads because Palestinians are not Israeli. They are Palestinian. The word youre looking for is occupation.

The only requirement to become an Israeli citizen is a religious claim. Apartheid based on religion vs race is not much better.

I consider the occupation terminology BS because there has been no progress on the two state solution for 50 years. It is one country defacto ruled by Israel. Israel tries to claim the Palestinian territories as a weird hybrid state, not independent but not part of Israel, just so they can claim to be democratic, but they are not.

The only requirement to become an Israeli citizen is a religious claim.

Unless you misunderstand the meaning of "requirement," you're either misinformed or making things up. There are plenty of Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel. There are even Muslim Israeli Arabs in the Knesset, Israel's version of the Parliament. In short: being Jewish is not a "requirement" of citizenship.

What I was referring to was the Israeli Law of Return that gives citizenship to any Jew that applies.

But as far as Arab Israelis, they are discriminated against in all sort of ways including discrimination encoded into laws. Israel proudly claims to be a Jewish state and they intend to keep it that way by discriminating against Arabs in any way they see as necessary.

> What I was referring to was the Israeli Law of Return that gives citizenship to any Jew that applies.

So the country established by all the western powers as a home for Judaism shouldn't permit Jews citizenship based on religion? You're an idiot and you can't comprehend it and are publicly flaunting it.

Seriously read a book with a viewpoint not espoused by a neo-nazi group and you might actually learn something about the Israel-Palestine issue.

Israel isn't the only country that's actively discriminating against Arabs, they're just the easy one to point to. Let's forget that the Caucasus are in the middle of a religious war led by Arab religious sects attempting a religious coup in many parts of Russia. Let's forget that the Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years and Israel is surrounded by people trying to kill them simply because their Jews. Hey no shit, those ancestors of the jews who survived all their families being killed and robbed don't like that shit. Who knew!

You're complaining because Israel isn't being considerate to the poverty stricken Palestine that elected a terrorist organization as its leaders and that fire mortars into Israeli cities and use UN outposts so Israel can't return fire. Hey here's news to Palestine not spending money on things that destroy themselves could get you out of poverty.

Sorry I give Israel kudos because if any country was launching mortar strikes on US cities it would have been carpet bombed to rubble inside a week and with or without a religious or racial motives, no one would be complaining.

> What I was referring to was the Israeli Law of Return that gives citizenship to any Jew that applies.

Also known as Jus Sanguinis with the twist being that one can convert to Judaism. Judaism is a remnant from a time when nation and religion were interchangeable terms. Hence why conversion is possible.

And in case you were unaware, this isn't the only way to acquire Israeli citizenship. Non-Jews can acquire Israeli citizenship through a typical naturalization process.

> including discrimination encoded into laws.

I challenge you to find an Israeli law that discriminates against Israeli Arabs. The closest you'll find are laws which specify state-funded opportunities only provided to those who have done civil or military service.

For someone who has gone so far as to boycott Intel products because of their connection with Israel, you are shockingly ignorant about very basic facts.

I can find two laws:

- The racist Jewish National Fund, which manages a big chunk of Israeli land exclusively for Jews, was authorized by the Knesset to refuse to lease land to Arab citizens.

- Arab citizens are not allowed to obtain citizenship for foreign spouses while Jews can.

With regards to the first law, you are either misinformed or simplifying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_National_Fund#Adalah.27s...

With regards to the second law, that is a result of national security concerns. Spouses of Arab citizens are not allowed to obtain citizenship automatically (they can of course, as I stated above, go through a naturalization process) because if that were the case it would effectively be the Right of Return.

Under apartheid, black people were not allowed to be citizens. They were not allowed in Parliament. They were not allowed to vote. Which makes your claim of Israeli apartheid is overblown to the point of being ridiculous. Muslims, Christians, Jews, black people, white people, and Arabs can all vote. Everyone can sit in Parliament, as Muslim Arab Israelis have and currently do. Non-Jews can still be citizens, and citizens are not separated into different legal classes like under the South African apartheid system. Back your argument up with something more concrete than your handwavey "all sorts of ways," or don't make it at all.

A closer analogue to Israeli discrimination based on religion is America's race- and class-based discrimination. As one example among the hundreds available, prison sentences are many times higher for crack cocaine abuses than pure cocaine abuses -- because the American underpriveleged (who are often minorities) are more likely to use crack, and the American wealthy (who are often white) are more likely to use pure cocaine. The Israeli legal system inarguably has systemic bias, but it's much closer to American legal systemic bias than South African apartheid.

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