4 ms·
Well, on the right side of the border. Everybody within the actual borders can vote, regardless of race, religion, etc. In a lot of ways it's a more democratic
by jfengel 5mo ago
Well, on the right side of the border. Everybody within the actual borders can vote, regardless of race, religion, etc. In a lot of ways it's a more democratic system than the US has, with multiple functioning parties.
The "apartheid" part is the people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli but also not their own country.
- throw310822 5mo ago> Everybody within the actual borders can vote Unless you're a Palestinian in illegally annexed Jerusalem... Then you don't have citizenship and have to keep proving that you live and work in Jerusalem to avoid losing the residency rights.
- SilverElfin 5mo ago[flagged]
- Terr_ 5mo ago> lived in that region first The whole premise/approach of "here first" is deeply flawed, and I think this blackly humorous cartoon [0] is a relevant critique of it. Tying things back to earlier discussion, here's the thing: One can either say a place is a "liberal democracy" or it can disenfranchise people due to events thousands of years ago, but you cannot do both. Democratically speaking, people whose lives are principally controlled by a government today deserve (for their hardship) a say in its operation today. What happened even a single generation ago is irrelevant to that relationship of duty and obligation. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
- defrost 5mo agoHmm, you may or may not chuckle a little at the tale of a Jew and a Palestinian visiting sperm banks on either side of the wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvvfnjgZlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvvfnjgZlM
- Buttons840 5mo agoProbably every single person in the region is a descendant of the Jewish people who "lived in that region first". And if we go back further: If Abraham existed, then like 99.9% of all living humans are descendants of Abraham. Do they all have claim to Israel's land then? It doesn't make sense to look back that far.
- trumpdong 5mo agoAlso a very large percentage of the current Jewish people in the region are descendants of European colonizers. The original Jews converted to Islam over thousands of years, then Jews from Europe came over just after WW2 (this was the Allied counter-proposal to the Holocaust) and said it's ours now.
- bruce511 5mo ago>> Jewish people lived in that region first. I'm going to skip over the obvious assertion that they weren't- Cainanites were in the promised land when they arrived - but instead focus on the "here first" doctrine. Because if "here first" is the primary source of political legitimacy then that argument extends to lots of places. It would require that Texas should be part of Mexico, that current govts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are illegitimate, that all whites in South Africa should be disenfranchised, that most of Europe needs to redraw borders. In other words, appealing to the political boundaries of a period thousands of years ago is not quite the killer argument it might appear to be. (It does however support Greenlanders in their fight against US rhetoric. )
- throw310822 5mo agoIt's also fun that the people who advocate the right for Jews to "return" to Palestine because they were there 2000 years ago, are the same that deny the right of return of Palestinians to the land because "dude you lost it 80 years ago, you need to accept and give up".
- StanislavPetrov 5mo ago>Well, on the right side of the border. Which border? The Israelis don't recognize a border, which is why they have illegally annexed the Golan Heights in Syria, are currently attempting to colonize Southern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
- nerfbatplz 5mo agoIsrael has never published their official borders. Even Somaliland has declared their borders but the "only democracy in the middle east" has never done so in it's entire history.
- halflife 5mo agoIsrael has clearly defined borders. If youre are talking about the West Bank there’s area a, b and c which are controlled by Israel, both, and PA respectively. I’d call that borders.
- throwaway27448 5mo agoSure and they exercise sovereignty far beyond those borders in a blatantly illegal manner. They do not acknowledge their de facto borders because it would be admitting to acts the world would be required to condemn to maintain the pretense of law and order.
- halflife 4mo agoIf you need to protect your border inside, than you already failed. Borders are protected outside the country.
- nerfbatplz 4mo agoIsrael has never defined its own borders. This is easily googleable. There are borders that are well understood by the international community but it is a fact that the state of Israel itself has never defined it's own borders.
- throwaway27448 5mo agoI mean if voting for a parliamentary representative is your barometer, would you consider Russia a liberal democracy? Or Iran? Both have formal democracies, and Iran even seems to have pretty contentious ones replete with unexpected reformist upsets. If voting at all is your barometer, we could toss in Cuba, China, and North Korea. Apartheid is not characterized by voting rights but by a qualitative difference in access to justice when pursuing basic rights. Think: Jim Crow south. Formally, black people had access to all the same public things white people did. In practice, it took nearly a hundred years to work its way through the courts to be afforded true protection by the state. Plus, you need only to look at marriage & inheritance laws and access to citizenship to see that the state is dedicated to jewish people—arguably, a jewish supremacist state with a non-jewish underclass.