It starts: Mayor of Ashkelon bans Arab workers from schools
It took a little longer than I thought, but good evening from 31,000 feet above the Atlantic. According to my trusty map, we are just about due south of Newfoundland right now, heading across 'the pond.' Air travel in the modern age is quite bizarre. First, we pulled away from the gate and they announced that we have a half hour hold because otherwise we will show up in London before their curfew ends at 6:00 am (you can't land at Heathrow before 6:00). And now we're going over 740 miles an hour and it keeps going up. I don't recall ever going more than a few miles per hour faster than 700....
In the wake of Tuesday's terror attack in Jerusalem, Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni has banned all Arab workers from his city's schools. 'Temporarily' of course. Here's what it gets rich: The workers were building shelters to
protect the kids from Hamas' rocket fire from Gaza. As you might imagine, the Left is seething....
The mayor explained that the increased presence of Arab workers in
close proximity to educational institutions is potentially harmful to
residents' security, and therefore their employment will stop until the
tense security situation improves.
The contractor which performs the work in the schools in the city is
employed by the Defense Ministry, and it should be noted that the work carried out in Ashkelon is done by Israeli Arabs and not by Arabs living
in Judea and Samaria.
The decision angered Meretz MK Issawi Frej, who accused Shimoni of "racism of the lowest kind.”
“Under the poor excuse of a 'sense of security', Shimoni wishes to
make the city of Ashkelon clean of Arabs and contaminate it with
anti-Semitic racism,” charged Frej. “I call on Interior Minister Gilad
Erdan and on the Chairman of the Local Government Center, Haim Bibas, to
publicly condemn Shimoni and ask him to reconsider his decision with
all its consequences."
The decision was also condemned by the President of the Israel Democracy Institute, former Kadima MK Yohanan Plesner.
But Shimoni was also condemned by Labor MK Nachman Shai of the 'sane' Left, as well as by Ofer Shelach of Yesh Atid, which is in the coalition (one has to wonder for how long). Here's guessing that Shimoni's decision will stand, at least for now. And here's hoping that every neighborhood in Jerusalem makes the same decision.
Labels: Ashkelon, Gilad Erdan, Labor party, London Heathrow Airport, Meretz, Nachman Shai, Ofer Shelah, Palestinian terrorism, personal stuff, racism, Yesh Atid party
Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah: 'Jewish and democratic is an oxymoron'
Nearly thirty years ago, the Knesset passed a law banning from Knesset elections parties that refuse to accept the 'Jewish and democratic nature' of the State of Israel. The law targeted, and was used to ban,
Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D's (May God Avenge his blood)
Kach party from the 1984 Knesset elections.
The Central Elections Committee voted 18-10 today to bar Rabbi
MelrKahane’s extreme rightwing Kach list from participating in the July
23 Knesset elections. There were seven abstentions.
The decision was the first time in Israel’s history that a Jewish
political faction was banned from an election. An Arab “Socialist List”
was banned 19 years ago on grounds that its objective was to undermine
the existence of the State. Supreme Court Justice Gavriel Bach, chairman
of the Elections Committee, maintained that Kahane’s list undermines
the principles of democracy itself. Kahane said he would appeal the
decision to the Supreme Court.
Kahane was eventually allowed to run for the Knesset in 1984, and won one seat, but was banned in 1988.
Bach denounced the Kach list after hearing testimony form Kahane. The
American-born rabbi who founded the Jewish Defense League convinced him
that he should not be allowed to run in the Knesset elections, Bach
said. He cited Kahane’s description of Israel’s Declaration of
Independence granting equal rights to all citizens as a “schizophrenic
document” and his call for the deportation form Israel of the Arab,
Druze and Circassian minorites.
“Only in very extreme cases should one ban a list because it is a
basic democratic right to allow the expression of views, even those
which are detestable, ” Bach said. However, the line must be drawn
somewhere. “If a man such as Kahane enters the Knesset and enjoys
immunity, anti-Semites throughout the world will no longer need the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If ever a democracy protecting itself
had the right to ban a list, this is the case,” Bach said.
Kach ran in both the 1977 and 1981 elections but failed both times to win enough votes for Knesset representation.
In 1988, however, surveys showed that Kach would get around 3-4 seats in the Knesset. That was why banning the party suddenly became urgent. Kahane's party was
banned altogether in 1994. He was assassinated in New York in 1990.
Kahane's argument was that Judaism is not a democracy and that a Jewish state cannot be a democratic one. Kahane's argument was that Israel should be a Jewish state, even at the expense of being a democracy. Now, Yesh Atid faction leader Ofer Shelah is making the same argument but from the opposite direction. He is arguing that
Israel ought not to be a Jewish state.
“Even in its best version,
so-called ‘nationality bills’ are unnecessary, and unnecessary legislation
should not be passed. In its worst versions, its a harmful bill for our shared
lives in this land and for our image abroad,” Shelah wrote on Facebook regarding
the proposals to legally define Israel as a Jewish and democratic
state.
Shelah’s Facebook post came days after Justice Minister Tzipi
Livni appointed Hebrew University law professor Ruth Gavison to write a
“constitutional provision” on Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Sources
in the Prime Minister’s Office said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did not
approve of the appointment.
Earlier this year, Livni vetoed Calderon’s
bill and another proposal on the topic by coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud
Beytenu) and MK Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) in the Ministerial Committee on
Legislation.
She did not clarify if the “constitutional provision”
Gavison is meant to work on will be a bill or not.
Shelah, however, is
against any type of legislation dealing with the balance between Jewish and
democratic.
...
According to Shelah, the words “Jewish and democratic
state” are an oxymoron and any attempt to sharpen and define them only show how
self-contradictory they are.
“To some extent, Israel’s 65 years were
walking on a tightrope, which amazing democratic strength that was possible only
because we never tried to define it,” he added. “Our justice system, freedom of
expression and the political sphere are alive, kicking and impressive to anyone
who looks at us from the outside because we live this dialectic every day,
without a law that claims to define the big mixture of identities living
here.”
Shelah concluded by saying that any film that breaks the balance
between the majority and minorities in Israel must be fought.
So now it's okay to say that Israel should only be a democratic state, but not okay to say that it should only be a Jewish state? Why is Shelah still in the Knesset?
And by the way, why is 'Jewish Home' - the only party that attaches religious significance to the existence of the State of Israel - falling all over itself to be in a coalition with Shelah's Yesh Atid party?
Labels: Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli democracy, Jewish Home party, Ofer Shelah, Yesh Atid party
