April 11, 2006
From BluWiki
April 11, 2006
Host: Daryl Bradford Smith
Guest: Sahib Mustaqim Bleher [[1]]
Here are today's lies, misstatements, disinformation, and stupidity:
(1) Daryl Bradford Smith claims that he sees parallels between the apartheid régime in South Africa and Israel today. There are several reasons why this is not true:
(a) Palestinians in the occupied territories are under a military occupation; the blacks in South Africa were not.
(b) Blacks in South Africa could not vote in elections. Twelve Arabs were just elected at the end of March to the seventeenth Knesset.
(c) Blacks could not serve in the Army in South Africa. Non-Palestinian Arabs and all Druzes serve in the IDF.
(d) Blacks did not serve in the judiciary. Arabs have served in Israel's judiciary system, including on the Supreme Court.
Numerous other examples can be give as to why this comparison falls flat. While Israel is hardly an ideal environment for non-Jews, it is not an apartheid state.
(2) Bleher claims that Israeli Arabs are under a different set of rules, and he says that the state controls who they can marry, for instance. This is patently untrue. There is no law in Israel against a Jew marrying a Muslim. However, because of what is called the status quo agreement, power over most religious matters (for Jews) has been left to the Chief Rabbinates. Non-Orthodox Judaism is not recognized by the state. Because Orthodox (and Conservative) rabbis will not perform intermarriages, therefore a Jew and a Muslim cannot get married in Israel -- by a rabbi. An imam, however, who is not under the control of the Rabbinates, can intermarry a Jew and a Muslim, and this has happened more than a few times. Furthermore, a Christian priest or minister can do the same for a Christian Arab and a Jew.
Most secular Jews don't even get married in Israel when they marry other Jews. They go to Cyprus because marriages performed outside of Israel are deemed valid by the state. So this is an internal Israeli problem with regard to Orthodox control over religious life and no civil marriage. It is *not* an anti-Arab issue.
(3) Bleher cites different colored license plates on cars as evidence of apartheid. In Germany, all cars must bear a plate stating which Land the owner of the car comes from. Is Germany an apartheid state?
(4) Bleher says that Arabs cannot pray in Jerusalem. This is patently false. The mosques are open every day, including for Friday prayers, unless a security situation precludes this. In fact, the Muslim Waqf oversees the mosques in Israel and Jerusalem and not the Israeli government. Since Oslo, this power has presided in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.
(5) Daryl Bradford Smith says that the goal of the current Israeli government is to eject the remaining Israeli Arabs from the state. On what basis does he make this claim? While it is certainly true that some parties on the extreme right promote the idea of "transfer," the mainstream Israelis reject it as ethnic cleansing. The incoming Kadima government has no intentions of expelling Arabs.
(6) Daryl Bradford Smith asks Bleher about the Hashemites: I prompted him on this issue, having pointed out to him last night in e-mail that Faisal, son of the Sharif of Mecca and later the Hashemite king of Iraq, promised Palestine to Chaim Weizmann.
