No equality before the law

[IndianaGreen]

No equality before the law

Construction laws in Jerusalem applied differently to Jews, Arabs

Hagai Segal Published: 03.10.10, 00:10 / Israel Opinion

I felt two very dear people were missing in last week’s press conference where Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat presented his King Garden’s plan: The city’s Legal Advisor, Yossi Havilio, and State Prosecutor Moshe Lador.

They were supposed to be there to praise the plan, or at least show moral support with their very presence. After all, one of the plan’s most prominent aims is to impose law and order in the wild construction market of east Jerusalem, and both of them thus far appeared to be zealous supporters of this challenge. Yet they did not show up.

<snip>

Construction laws are the most relative thing in Jerusalem. If you are a Jew living in Kfar HaShiloah, the rule of law will embitter your life in case you build something without a permit. Yet if you’re a Palestinian, you can build a whole illegal neighborhood in a national garden and comfortably grow older there. The prime minister will grant you immunity for diplomatic reasons, while legal advisors will grow silent.

And by the way, Beit Yehonatan was not built by Jews. They merely purchased it for its full value from an Arab construction offender. In order to save the building, they must not quickly sell it back to the Arab, or move King’s Garden in the middle of the night.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3860417,00.html

[bemildred]

1. This guy is a tool.

The question is, as it always is, who decides? So this is really about who owns Jerusalem, or maybe who owns which parts of Jerusalem, and this guy never gets into that issue, he starts with the idea that it's all of one piece.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. When Israel starts granting permission to build evenhandedly, then I'll listen to Segal.

At present, Israeli planning permission is - like most of Israeli society - immensely racist: Jews get it easily, Arabs find it much harder. As such, I think it's entirely appropriate that Israel should be more lenient when it comes to "illegal" - i.e "in violation of the laws of a country which is itself illegally occupying much of the land in question" - building by Arabs than by Jewish settlers. The only situation in which "positive discrimination" is ever justifiable is to attempt to rectify initial discrimination, but this is about as clear a case of that as you'll get.

[oberliner]

3. Jews and Arabs and are not races nt

[shaayecanaan]

5. That's on the same intellectual level as saying that Arabs are semites

and cannot therefore be anti-semites.

The premise of racism has always been relatively independent of any well-founded biological notion of "race". Witness racism between Koreans and Japanese, for example.

[Violet_Crumble]

6. +1

As well as that, I've noticed that it also gets used mainly as an attempt to distract from the bulk of what a poster says. The example in this thread is a good one where everything the poster said was ignored in favour of fastening onto the word 'racist', picking it up, and running with it...

[oberliner]

7. Only if you don't care about accuracy and truth

Racism, by definition, is a belief that racial differences produce an inherent superiority or inferiority of a particular racial group.

If discrimination or prejudice is not race-based then it is not racism.

In the case of Arabs and Jews, neither is a race. As you know, there are Arab Jews and Jewish Arabs.

Thus, the term is meaningless in this context.

Anti-semitism, on the other hand, is a term that has nothing to do with "semites".

The definition of that term is hostility or prejudice against Jews.

[shaayecanaan]

10. If you want to contend that anti-semitism has nothing to do with "semites"

...then you need to concede that racism (for the most part) has nothing to do with "race".

The Nazis and the Jews in Germany were both white, and therefore from the same "race". Yet I would have no difficulty describing the Nazi's attitudes towards the Jews as being racist.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. thank you!! that kind of crass sophistry gets just so tedious

Mexicans are not a race, but no one would dispute the term racism if one is describing bigotry against Mexicans.

Anti-Semitism is described commonly as a form of racism.

Even many in the Israeli media will describe the far-right politicians who advocate expulsion of Arabs who are Israeli citizens or requirements for loyalty oaths from Arab citizens as racist.

Playing with words is disgusting to minimizes the meaning of what is happening! - Crass sophistry! That is all it is - Vulgar, Crass sophistry!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. Oh, come off it. I expected better from you, of all people. N.T.

[azurnoir]

4. the result-'No to cash for draconian moratorium’

A Knesset panel dealt a blow to the freeze on new settler homes on Tuesday, when it rejected a funding request by the Defense Ministry for extra manpower to enforce the decree.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked the Knesset’s Joint Committee for the Defense Budget to approve a two-year transfer of NIS 12 million from security to coordinating activities in the West Bank, to add 40 positions – 29 for the enforcement arm of the Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria, and 11 within the Defense Ministry.

Coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), and coalition MKs Miri Regev (Likud) and Amnon Cohen (Shas) joined MK Uri Ariel (National Union) in voting against the transfer, while Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Tzahi Hanegbi (Kadima) and MK Ronnie Bar-On (Kadima) voted to support Labor chairman Barak’s proposal.

“The committee acted correctly in rejecting Barak’s request,” concluded Ariel, who was responsible for coordinating the opposition to the initiative.

“While the Palestinians build illegal estates without anyone doing anything, Barak is busy rounding up a budget for inspection of his draconian moratorium,” Ariel said.

He emphasized that when the 10-month moratorium against new settlement construction was put in place on November 29, he had warned Barak that his plan to add new inspectors and staff to enforce it was illegal as long as Barak had not received an okay from the joint committee.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170608