January 21, 2012
WHEN YOU CAN'T BE ARAB AND ISRAELI...:
Israeli Arabs have never been equal before the law (Yitzhak Laor, 1/20/12, Ha'aretz)
Last week's decision by the High Court of Justice to uphold the amendment to the Citizenship Law that keeps Palestinians apart from their Israeli spouses has closed a chapter in the life of Israeli democracy. The Supreme Court no longer wants to protect Israel's Arab citizens. [...]The looming expulsion of thousands will be carried out with the silent agreement of enlightened members of society. This silence does not stem from their deep respect for the High Court of Justice. Its cause is that maintaining a Jewish majority is an ideological common denominator for the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and this ruling is a symptom of the demographic arguments made on their behalf.But in effect, Rubinstein was lying. In order to discriminate against the Arab citizens of Israel, Rubinstein wrote about residents of the territories, who do not live in an enemy state. They live in an Israeli ghetto, a bantustan, without the right, as blacks had in apartheid South Africa, to earn a living from their masters.The State of Israel is officially in its 64th year. But it can be more accurately seen as an imaginary entity that existed in reality only for the 19 years between 1948 and 1967.Temporariness is an illusion. For jurists it's also a cynical trick.The expulsion of women and children from their homes will be carried out by a state that has never held Arabs to be equal before the law. That's the real reason an Israeli constitution was never written. That inequality was the wound. Now it's just pus.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2012 12:34 PM
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