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Israeli Election 2013: Who is represented? Who is disenfranchised?
On January 22, Israelis went to the polls to chose a new government. Yet more than 1 in 3 people living under Israeli rule did not have the right to vote.
For the IMEU backgrounder on the Israeli Election:http://imeu.net/news/article0023442.shtml
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Those living in the West Bank voting in Israeli elections, though, would mean citizenship and ultimately annexation - which i assume you wouldn't find acceptable.
This is of course based on the presumtion that the state is "legitimate," or that "voting" is something which accomplishes anything, or is actually a "right."
An individual surely has the "right" to pick a leader for themselves, but the statist system is not that, the statist system is picking a "leader," for others, and in that case, a ruler.
Picking a leader for someone else is not a "right" anybody can possibly have.
It doesn't even make any sense, but that is the common belief of the statists.
They don't necessarily view it that way all the time, if ever.
On top of it, a "vote" for the state is against ones own interests, always, for a "vote" for the state is essentially an admission that they have the "right" to rule you. It is the admission that their commands are at least "justified" enough to have to use their own voting system to attempt to repeal or change them.
To "consent to be governed," which is essentially the belief in "voting," is in essence to say "I agree to let you forcibly control me, even if I disagree with what you order me to do." It's utter insanity, honesty.
Here is an excerpt from a book called There's No Government Like No Government, by Jackney Sneeb, which deals with ritual of "voting."
"You've been kicked out of #che-lives by Q (Chat is restricted for people from Opposing Ideologies. Cheers.)"
They called me an "anarcho capitalist," and kicked me out of the people's chat.
That oversimplifies what the point of this is. Of course the obvious solution here'd be for Israel to annex these areas and grant them citizenship, but Israel is unlikely to do that because of the nature of Israel. An ideal country, even a bourgeois democracy, should have voting across its population. In Israel's case, there's an religious-ethnic basis to its creation which would preclude citizenship towards Arabs living in its borders. And yet it considers itself to be democratic.
Israel as far as the government is concerned is for Jewish people and they plan their policies accordingly. If they would extend voting rights to Palestinians in areas they effectively rule, the political arena in Israel would change completely. Where as now we see Israel creating right-wing religious governments, a large influx of Arab voters would throw a wrench into forming such governments.
The same logic dictated apartheid in South Africa. Basically that they have a precarious position in the region, and it is in their interest to intentionally keep the electorate restricted to their part of the population. Any deviation would mean the end of the system they built up. This kind of information is also meant to illustrate a hypocrisy in defenders of Israel, which laud it as a functioning democracy but ignore how it handles its citizenship.
It could also be seen as a justification for a one-state solution to the problem, one founded on secular principles that goes beyond Arab and Israeli nationalism. Admittedly a difficult ideal to reach, but still.