Netanyahu’s Election Day talk of Arabs voting in droves was ‘not racist’

[Little Tich]

Source: Time of Israel

8 months on, attorney general’s office answers citizen’s query over PM saying ‘left-wing NGOs are busing Arabs to ballots’

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein’s office ruled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to Likud voters on Election Day to go out and vote because his “Arabs in droves” comment did not constitute incitement to racism.

Netanyahu made the comment on the afternoon of March 17 when voter turnout was still quite low. Filmed sitting in an office with a map of the Middle East behind him, Netanyahu said “Arabs are going to the ballot boxes in droves, they are being bused in by left-wing NGOs.”

The comments immediately drew fire, with Netanyahu’s opponents saying he was inciting to racism against Israeli citizens exercising their democratic right to vote.

Two weeks ago, some eight months after the comment was made, Weinstein sent a response to a query by Rishon Lezion resident Harel Primak, who alleged in a letter to Weinstein that Netanyahu had violated Clause 144 of the Penal Code.

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/ags-office-no-incitement-in-netanyahus-election-day-comment-on-arabs/

[Israeli]

1. :) .....................

Bibi The Brave

[6chars]

2. Give it a rest

There is so much real racism all over the world. So much. So many people being killed by real racists.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. Wow, I don't believe that I have seen such a naive

attempt to whitewash such a crass, right wing-zionist bigot as Netanyahu in a long time.

It's the same old argument: don't look at the horrible things that apartheid Israel does since there is a bad thing happening elsewhere...I guess.

You are really bad at this.

[Little Tich]

4. I'm sorry, I just don't like racists.

It's a little bit disconcerting that racism is legal and even encouraged in Israel. For me, racism and democracy don't mix.

[6chars]

5. Oh the irony

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. Leave Binyamin Netanbooboo alone...!

[Israeli]

7. Leave Donald Trump alone too ...!

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

8. Birds of a feather that have their own flock...

[shira]

9. Really? Then why give Abbas a pass for holocaust denial?

Or his racist incitement to not only kill Jews but also praise the murderers?

[Little Tich]

12. It seems as if Abbas has recanted on his Holocaust denial stance.

Abbas Denounces Murder of Jews in Holocaust as 'Most Heinous Crime in Modern Era'
Source: Haaretz, Apr 27, 2014
(snip)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released a special message on Sunday in Arabic and in English on the occasion of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he decried the murder of Jews in the Holocaust as "the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history.

This is the first time a Palestinian president has ever made such a public declaration.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.587527

As for Abbas' incitement, please provide examples...

[shira]

17. No, he did not. We've been over this before. Your article is April 2014...

Last edited Sun Nov 29, 2015, 08:03 AM - Edit history (3)

This is November 2014:

Abbas' book reveals: The 'Nazi-Zionist plot' of the Holocaust
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4596121,00.html

These malicious lies about Jews helping the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust are decades old and are still in Abbas' republished book. You won't find him backtracking on any of these insane claims, anywhere. Denouncing the Holocaust as a great crime but blaming Jews for it does not let Abbas off the hook - or for that matter notorious deniers like Ernst Zundel, David Irving, or Robert Faurisson. No one sane would give Zundel, Irving, or Faurisson much credit for acknowledging the Holocaust was a great crime, even if they also accepted 6 million died. But Mahmoud Abbas is let off the hook - why?



As for incitement:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1134119691#post14

“We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.”

-Mahmoud Abbas. Sept 16, 2015

To this day, he won't condemn attacks on civilians even though he's been asked to do so many times. You'd go absolute ape shit if Netanyahu were doing the same against Palestinians.

And while I admit it takes real talent for Netanyahu to not only take away a winning talking point but make it into an anti-Israel one (Mufti/Hitler Jew killing alliance), it's far worse that Abbas's vile Holocaust denial goes unchallenged under the cover of Bibi's exaggeration (that Bibi actually walked back). Of course, Bibi is not to be believed for stepping that one back while Abbas is. Why is that?

[Little Tich]

19. Weak.

Abbas has stated that the Holocaust was the “most heinous crime in the modern era”, and there's nothing that would even remotely imply he's changed his mind. I Googled the subject, and there's a lot written about how Abbas is still a Holocaust denier - all of it without presenting a shred of credible proof.

As for the other stuff - I wouldn't even call it incitement when Netanyahu and his f**kwit ministers refuse to acknowledge that the dead of the other side are victims, nor is it incitement to state that the blood spilt on one's own side wasn't in vain.

You're trying to use double standards, but the problem is that Netanyahu is the bigger inciter, and he's very busy throwing gasoline on the fire.

[Shaktimaan]

10. ???

Racism isn't illegal anywhere, as far as I can tell. Regarding its encouragement, I find it's pretty commonly utilized by politicians everywhere when it will serve their needs.

[Little Tich]

11. Jean Marie Le Pen has been fined in 2008 and 2013 for his racist remarks; and he's not more racist

than Netanyahu.

Perhaps you think France's racial hatred laws are too tough, but other countries have similar laws. Netanyahu wouldn't be able to say what he says in most countries, and this goes for his cabinet who are just as racist as he is. I find the legal and popular acceptance of Netanyahu's blatant racism unacceptable.

[Shaktimaan]

13. It seems I was wrong.

Incitement to racism IS illegal in Israel. That said, your assertion that Bibi would be unable to make similar comments in MOST other countries is absurd. Especially considering your evidence being Le Pen's handful of indictments in France. Le Pen routinely makes far more racist comments than even Bibi does, asserting that the Roma have a predilection for theft, or that the gas chambers in WWII were a "detail of history." Compared to American politicians, ie: Trump insisting that the Mexicans are coming here to rape people, or the actual disenfranchising of Black and Latino voters in states throughout the south, both Le Pen and Bibi appear tame.

Perhaps you think France's racial hatred laws are too tough, but other countries have similar laws.

It's not that they're too tough, they're absurd and very rarely enforced. There's hardly any dearth of european politicians using racism to make political hay. Look no further than the swiss voting to ban minarets, or the golden dawn party in Greece. The fact that someone as odious as Le Pen faced five or six fines out of a lifetime of rampant hate speech serves my argument far better than it does your own.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

14. "It seems I was wrong." Not an uncommon occurrence...I guess.

[Little Tich]

15. If racist incitement was illegal in Israel, then Netanyahu and his cabinet would have been

prosecuted for their racist remarks.

And Netanyahu isn't less racist than Jean Marie Le Pen, Netanyahu's Hitler apologist remarks betray a deeply entrenched antipathy towards Arabs. How much of a racist do you actually think Netanyahu is - not racist at all, just a little bit racist, or what?

[Shaktimaan]

16. I'm sorry?

I don't know what to tell you. The point of the OP was that Israel's attorney general didn't think Netanyahu had violated Clause 144 of the Penal Code, aka incitement to racism. I disagree, it's clearly racist, but whatever. I have no idea how racist Bibi really is, versus how much he uses racist rhetoric to scare people into voting for him. It's really a distinction without a difference there. Honestly though, I see very little difference between him and Jean (or Marine) Le Pen, (or Trump/Huckabee/Nixon/etc.) on this matter.

[6chars]

18. Clause 144

I disapprove of Netanyahu's comments and his intent to use the Arab vote to drum up the right wing vote. Very distasteful, and reminds me of a series of much-criticized and racially tinged comments from one of the Democratic presidential candidates in 2008, e.g., in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. But disapproval is not the same as illegal.

which of these did Netanyahu's comments violate? persecution, humiliation, degrading, expression of hate, hostility or violence?
if that comment counts as an any of these, the law is more restrictive than a liberal arts college campus speech code.