Avoiding the main issue

Submitted by BaderS (United States), Dec 27, 2006 at 04:48

Once again the main issue is being avoided. The problem in the Jewish state with its non-Jewish minority is the blatant discrimination that is systematically carried out by Jewish governments against the gentile population of Israel (termed here as the "Israeli Muslims" by Dr Pipes).

Democracy can be defined as the rule of the majority that respects and protects the rights of minorities. The Jewish democratic state does not respect the rights of its Arab Israeli minority therefore its democracy is flawed, to say the least. As Meron Benvenisti pointed out in his article "Threats of the future vision" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/801780.html) -- "Institutionalized ethnic separatism among the Arab minority is a direct result of a mistaken policy; it is not the Arabs who have created the separatism but rather the Jews. Their oppression of the Arabs and their discrimination against them are, in every area, based on clearly ethnic criteria, and the crystallization of an alienated Arab minority is an inevitable result."

In an article titled "Even the Shin Bet is against discrimination", ( http://www.haaretz.com) Yossi Melman writes: "In the years before October 2000," Tal believes, "the writing was on the wall. It was there in the form of the spraying of Bedouin crops in the Negev, the demolition of homes in the Galilee, more inequality, more neglect, more discrimination in the allocation of budgets. So why should anyone be surprised when the pressure cooker explodes?"

A former Shin Bet department head says, "The big problem is not what we said and what we recommended. So what if in all the annual reports of the Arab division we presented all the trends present among Israeli Arabs, their frustration, the discrimination and differential treatment, all of which encourage their drive toward autonomy, separatism and independence. Okay, so we wrote these things and we were even right. So what? Every discussion ends with recommendations and the heads of the services go to the prime ministers and ministers, and nothing is done. The responsibility for carrying out the recommendations belongs to others - the ministries of education and health and the interior, and above all the treasury and the prime minister.

The service talks and recommends, but the government does far too little." There is one more choice to be added to the three choices outlined by Dr. Pipes and that choice is to end the innate discriminatory behaviour of the Jewish state while striving to become democratic in the truest sense of the word. This would be far more productive than labeling as the enemy every person or group that criticizes the jewish state.

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