Israel’s criminal defendant prime minister, more focused on saving his incompetent far-right government than saving the hostages who have spent seven months trapped in Gaza, is doing everything he can to torpedo Israel’s last and best chance at bringing the hostages home
“Hysteria for political reasons,” Minister Benny Gantz termed the statement issued over the weekend by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (also known as “the diplomatic official”), in which he reiterated that with or without a temporary pause in the fighting for the release of our hostages, “We will enter Rafah and eliminate the remaining Hamas battalions.”
Later, before the end of Shabbat, Netanyahu sent another announcement, in which he denied reports saying Israel had agreed to a cease-fire as part of a deal.
Netanyahu had hoped that the Egyptian proposal, which was more far-reaching than anything he had been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected by Hamas. Over the weekend, when the negotiations took a positive turn, Netanyahu found himself in distress, as was expressed by his flurry of statements. Given our familiarity with his family environment, including his pampered son on the front in Miami, his fright is indeed understandable.
Last part as in ‘‘Israel claims they are the ‘‘only democracy in the Middle East’’?
I refer to this not only because they shutdown Al Jazeera but also their entire regime. They call themselves an democratic country in the Middle East but we all know:
How can you call such an state ‘‘democratic’’?
EDIT 1: If you want, I can get news-sources for each claim.
EDIT 2: Checking upon your comment history, you’ve been spamming that particular sentence. So I’m curious why you are defending an state that is on paper “democratic” but in reality is not.
In Israel proper the laws are equal, plenty of Arabs live in Israel with the same rights as anyone else. In territories they occupy the laws are unfair, but I don’t know of any democracy that gives people in occupied territories equal rights
They shutdown a foreign media outlet specifically for the duration of a war. Undemocratic, but not beyond the scope of democracy.
This is discrimination not by law but by the people that enforce it, unfortunately democracy can’t effectively fix the biases of its citizens.
The reason they are a democracy is because they have elections that determine the ruling party in the legislature. In 2022 a right wing party got the most votes and successfully created a coalition government. If the government does unpopular things then they will lose votes in the next election and be removed, ideally this limits unpopular government policy.
Do you have any proof of your particular claim? Like give a link with an example of it. Sorry to say but I’m immensely skeptical. I could claim lots of things and it could not be true.
You said it, yourself. Undemocratic. Plus the two separate laws does not really define ‘‘democratic’’, does it? A Apartheid regime cannot be democratic. Not only that if they are so democratic, why shut it down? Freedom of speech is a part of being democratic which means allowing real news and evidence to be spread into to the world, to let others know what is going on.
Two different laws makes it by itself already discriminating against the Palestinian people. Makes it more worse when people do not even ‘obey the law’.
Not sure if I said it in this thread or somewhere else but Israel is on paper ‘’democratic’’ but in reality they are not. In January there was a poll done whether the Israeli want their Prime Minister to stay or be gone and the majority of the Israeli do not want their current prime minister and he keeps being in power.
Thanks for the response and I understand your skepticism, I will do my best to provide sources. I found an article describing the type of discrimination Arab Israelis face, there are problems but legal rights are equal, “They have the same legal rights as Jewish citizens, but many continue to face discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages.” Your link is about the occupied West Bank. Those are military courts applied during a military occupation, people living under a military occupation do not have the same legal rights as the citizens of the state occupying them.
Israel has not annexed the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, they occupy them. Apartheid is two different laws for citizens of the same country, the effect of an occupation is similar but the cause and solution are completely different. The solution is to end the occupation, in apartheid the solution is to change laws to grant equal rights to all people of a country. I could see apartheid being used to describe how the Israeli military treats the West Bank, but it does not apply to Israel itself.
The stated reason the Israeli cabinet banned them was because they were “Harming Israel’s security and inciting violence against its soldiers” this article also mentions “Under a law passed last month, the government can temporarily shutter foreign media outlets that have been found to undermine national security.” I disagree with the decision but it only applies to foreign media and is temporary. Freedom of speech in Israel isn’t perfect but the judicial system has protected it and generally it has gotten better over time. The history of the right to free speech in Israel is interesting, here’s an article about it. Israel hosts one of its harshest critics Haaretz. If Israel was undemocratic why would they allow such a news source to exist? Other countries in the Middle East certainly wouldn’t tolerate this. Israel used to have the best score on the press freedom index for the Middle East region. As a result of the war they are now second in the region but still 30-70 ranks higher than their neighbors.
In response to some of your sources, Israel’s actions at Al Aqsa mosque and in Jerusalem in general are issues I’ll read more on, specifically permanent residents status vs citizens living there. I don’t think it would change my overall view of Israel being a democracy though. Democracies can do a lot of bad things and still be democracies.
In practice Israel is a democracy. People want Netanyahu out but that’s not how a democracy works. There is not an election being held right now so the only way Netanyahu can be removed is by a vote of no confidence from the legislature. People can ask the legislature to remove him and hold new elections, in fact a vote was held in January but the motion only got 18 of the 61 needed votes. As a result of Netanyahu’s war the Likud party (he is the chairperson) has lost a lot of popularity and the National Unity party has gained in popularity. Current polls indicate Likud will lose the next election which is how democracy works. It is a slow process but in the end the people decide their government by voting.
last part as in ‘They also shut down AlJezeera news and Israel claims they are the ‘‘only democracy in the Middle East’’’
they have the same laws for all citizens. jews, muslims, druze, etc.
palestinians living in the west bank are citizens of the pa (or jordan), not of israel.
the situation in area c of the west bank is a result of the failed oslo accords and bibi’s policy of “status quo”.
article by prof mohammed wattad, who is an israeli-arab (his own words)
israel’s declaration of independence
basic laws of israel
shutting down a state backed media group that has ties to the muslim brotherhood (hamas is a branch of theirs), from a hostile state that hosts the billionaire leaders of hamas, is similar to the shutting down of rt in europe - which is a state backed media group of a hostile state.
in israel you don’t vote for the prime minister, you vote for a party. as part of the coalition creating process, the pm is chosen as part of the agreements between parties.
one of the pm’s parties in 2022, naftali bennet, had much less votes than the likud ever had.
basic law: the government
knesset
posting something twice and then replying to someone with a similar link isn’t “spamming”.
pointing out the reality of this specific action / situation isn’t “defending” anything. that’s a very black and white view of things.
same as when i criticize a state it doesn’t instantly mean i’m against it or hate it.
So first of all, Wikipedia is not a trustable source at all and therefore dismissed. This is because everyone can edit the Wikipedia page. For example, I can edit a page and then claim it is true. There’s no one really who keeps tabs on how trustable it is. Not only that, Wikipedia even says that one of the pages you gave is not really trustable ‘‘This page does not provide license information’’ and the page can be deleted. Thus not trustable.
Wikipedia is a good starting point but not a (trustable) source to back up claims.
My point stays the same; Israel is on paper ‘‘democratic’’ but in reality they are not. You cannot be democratice while having:
And everything else they do to the Palestinian people.
There are whistleblowers on how Israel litteraly tortures Palestinian people, article of this is the 3rd one. Do you consider this an actual ‘‘democratic’’ state?
Huge claim but no link to a trustable source. I’m honestly not sure whether this is true however then here’s my question: Why shutting it down now and not decades ago? If it is true, it means they knew it already and never done anything about it until Israel decided to commit another ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and worse, genocide.
I do not understand what you mean here nor to what you are referring to.
I don’t have time to give a complete argument back (yet) but where are your sources for your claims?
I’ll respond in a day or two entirely.
fair enough.
added some, will add more later.