Israel Ban Two Arab Parties from Elections

[Coggeh]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/2009112165350696500.html

:mad:


Discuss ....

[Yehuda Stern]

I heard about this disgusting, criminal act of the racist Zionist state. Suffice to say, it's nothing that you couldn't see coming. I'm not surprised at all the Hadash (the CP front) is not part of this ban, by the way.

[BobKKKindle$]

This is, as Yehuda points out, racism. Arab Israelis already encounter discrimination in all areas of life - they are prohibited from working in many government jobs on the grounds that they could be a risk to public security, despite the fact that the majority of these jobs involve manual labour, such that workers would not even have a chance to carry out sabotage even if they wanted to. In addition, the Shin Bet monitors all promotions and appointments in the Arab education system, and only selects teachers who are not likely to educate children about the history of the Palestinian people and the injustice they have endured and continue to endure at the hands of the Israeli state, and there have even been reports of the Shin Bet bribing individual children in order to monitor the content of lessons without the knowledge of the teacher. The need to maintain the Jewish character of Israel underpins the decision-making of the Israeli state, and Israelis are increasingly faced with the threat of becoming an ethnic minority and losing their current status as the most important political constituency, due to higher birth rates amongst the Arab population. Thus far the Israeli strategy for dealing with this "problem" has been limited to changing the distribution of the Jewish population, most notably by removing the settlements in the Gaza Strip despite strong opposition from the settlers and a large section of the national electorate, but in the future this strategy may expand and assume an explicitly racist character, if the Israeli state chooses to deny Arabs the right to vote and influence the political process, or if Israel tries to force Arabs to flee to other countries by making conditions even worse in the occupied territories, as currently advocated by the far-right.

Needless to say, socialists oppose the racist Israeli state, and support all struggles directed against Zionist oppression, regardless of whether they are led by Hamas or a revolutionary socialist party.

[Saorsa]

So much for Israeli "democracy".

[Mather]

So much for Israeli "democracy".


Yeah.

Also, have you ever noticed how Zionists (in and outside of Israel) and Israel's supporters in Western governments and the bourgeois media always make the claim of Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. Notice how they always leave out Lebanon, which even by the standards of bourgeois 'parliamentary democracy' is a lot more 'democratic' than Israel.

[Louis Pio]

It seems this move has been tried before, as far as I can see in regards to Balad. That time the israeli high court voted against it.

If this goes through the last nail in the coffin about the myth that Israel is "the middle easts only democracy" has been hammered in.

[Skin_HeadBanger]

That's fucking rediculous.:cursing:

Jim Crowe laws, anyone?:rolleyes:

[KC]

I posted this on another forum and got a good response:


From The Jerusalem Post:



In 2003, the committee approved a similar request to disqualify Balad from Knesset elections, a decision that the High Court of Justice later reversed.

Rivlin quoted the High Court's 2003 ruling, saying the decision had mandated that there be substantial evidence that a given party supported an enemy's armed fight against Israel in order to disqualify that party from running for the Knesset, not just random and sporadic hostile sentiments expressed by its members.

Attorney Dana Briskman, speaking on behalf of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, told the committee prior to the vote that the attorney-general had not found sufficient evidence to disqualify Balad or UAL.

Elections C'tee bans UAL, Balad lists | Israel | Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231760644913&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

Israel has well-defined standards and its rule of law extends broad political protections to its citizens. Given Briskman's explanation that there is insufficient evidence to support disqualifying the Balad or UAL parties to meet the High Court's standard, I believe the Election Committee's ban will be reversed.

[Circle E Society]

Honestly is anyone really that shocked. It is important news get me wrong but I mean is it that surprising. Just another case of Liberal-Democracy failing yet again and on top of that there is the whole Palestine/Israel conflict.