Hell, Chechens have felt themselves outsiders in Russia since the Romanovs.

Not to mention the you-know-whoes everywhere and at all times btween 70 and 1948 ano dominum.

"After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders." That's the headline over Ethan Bronner's New York Times piece from several days ago."

I too was aghast at the headline. Outsiders, they have more rights in Israel than Arabs do in many other countries. There are Arabs on the Supreme Court as well as in areas of public life: this after 60 years of Arab and Muslim countries trying to “wipe them off the map.”

I do hope somebody buys the NY Times before they lose the remaining few readers they have left.

Rupert or someone else are you listening?

Except 50% of the Quebecers/Welsh/etc. aren't still using septic tanks instead of toilets.  (And the Quebecers came thisclose to leaving Canada in 1994).  A certain level of anxieties is fine, but if those anxieties grow to the point that 20% of a nation's population becomes are radicalized as their racial brethren to the southwest (gaza), the terrorism of 2001 will seem like the good old days.  

Lymonl: The situation in Gaza is horrific. But the Palestinian leadership has long been more interested in venting grievances than in gaining territory. And now you have militant Islamists in control of the strip. Plus ca change.

Marty, I truly hope you wrote "except, of course, in the United States" with your tongue firmly implanted in your cheek.  We've more outsiders here than anyone else has - we just don't fence them into enclaves (much).  Anyone with a serious suntan can be subject to it.

Lib Reformer -- actually I'm referring to Israeli Arabs (that stat is dated) -- my point isn't that Israel is wrong on most of these arguments.  Israeli Arabs have it better in many ways than Arabs anywhere else, and Marty is technically correct that all minorities live with a certain level of anxiety.  But imagine if in the 1960's the black panthers had been successful in radicalizing African-Americans in general.  Now imagine that radicalized population doubled.  Now imagine it radicalized to the point of suicide bombing. I'm just saying that Israel has a strong interest in addressing those anxieties in substance, not with flip comparisons to the Welsh.  And when you still have legions of Arab Israelis using septic tanks, it's an immediate problem.  

Lymonl: I don't see how that counters my point: That the Palestinian leadership has forever been more interested in nuturing grievances than in solving problems and acquiring their own state. Shimon Peres has long had the vision of Palestinians and Israelis marching off hand in hand to a better economic future. This is utopian. Would that it weren.t.

I picked up that day's New York Times hoping to see something on Israeli Memorial Day, or on the challenges of the 60 year old country. But no, the uber-Zionist NYT decided to focus on what is a true story, but not the big picture. Sometimes the Zionist media gets carried away and forgets its roots.

Rozenson: Haven't you heard? An entire paper is going to be given over to a celebration of Israel's 60th birthday. Those Zionists haven't forgotten their roots.

Gershom Gorenburg, cohost of the "South Jersualem" blog, describes the problem facing these Arab outsiders:

-- Another crucial weakness is the status of the Arab minority, one-fifth of the population. Officially, Arabs have equal rights. But they're scarce in the civil service. Arab towns and cities get less funding from the central government than Jewish municipalities. Roughly an eighth of the country's land is owned by the Jewish National Fund, whose policy of leasing land only to Jews is at the center of a legal battle.

-- Arab parties, which hold only 10 of the Knesset's 120 seats, have been consistently left out of government coalitions. Not only does that exclude Arabs from power, but it also makes forming a majority coalition much more difficult--a central, and rarely noticed, reason for the chronic instability of Israeli governments.

www.star-telegram.com/.../630149.html

Lymon: "Except 50% of the Quebecers/Welsh/etc. aren't still using septic tanks instead of toilets." Exactly.  I This has got to be the stupidest analogy ever.

As always the antisemitic mackenzie will post snippets from an article about Israel which distort the meaning of the article:

In his concluding paragraph Gorunberg says this:

"At 60, Israel is not a perfect democracy, a Jewish ghetto imperiled by Iranian Nazis or a puppet master indirectly controlling Washington. It is more democratic than its neighbors, more reliably pro-Western and more successful economically and militarily. It faces the classic dilemmas of a nation-state dealing with minorities, borders and neighbors. It is best understood as a real place, not a country of myth."

This isn't that different from what Marty peretz said in his post above.

I would add that Israeli Arabs are not any worse off  than the Gypses do in Europe. Not to mention that the Arabs in France and elsewhere who keep rioting and burning cars on a regular basis.

Memo to the Euro hypocrites: people who live in glass houses shoudn't throw stones.

lymon1 said:  "Except 50% of the Quebecers/Welsh/etc. aren't still using septic tanks instead of toilets."

I agree that the analogy was a bit strained. It would have been better to compare the lives of Israeli Arabs to those Arabs in Syria, Libya, Algeria, Jordan and many other Arab countries.

Given that the Arabs countries have waged war on Israel for 60 years or longer the country's Arab population some of whose loyalties are at best ambivalent (an Arab MK spoke regularly about his endorsement of the violence against Israel and the Arab Islamic movement in Israel makes no secret of its support of Arab claims), I would suggest that Israel's sizable minority is being treated very generously.  

This isn't just my view it's the view of many Israeli Arabs who when it was proposed that their villages be incorporated into either Palestine or Lebanon said that they would rather be Israeli citizens than Palestinians.

It's also the view of a prominent French official whose family is originally from North Africa:

“Fadela Amara on Israel, Anti-Semitism, and Islamist Politics”

From the interview:

“Comfortable in Israel

Amara says that when she was in Israel, she actually felt quite at home. She was invited here in June 2004 as part of a delegation of leftist women that met with Israeli and Palestinian women. She visited Tel Aviv ("didn't like it"), Jerusalem ("really loved it") and also the Muqata in Ramallah (a name she pronounces with a strong Arabic inflection). She wanted to meet Arafat, but her companions in the delegation did not want to embarrass France, which was upholding the Israeli boycott of him at the time. She acceded to their wishes and so missed a historic opportunity to meet the Rais, whose image on the television screen had captivated her as a child.

"I felt very comfortable [in Israel]. I wasn't the object of special stares, as often happens toward foreigners. I didn't feel any racism, though I'm certain it exists. You have all the colors there so it's become almost natural to see white, yellow, brown."”

Read the whole interview:

www.haaretz.com/.../971505.html

There are many Arab and Muslim people who are not Islamicists or antisemites and its important to let their voices be heard in the US media.

I posted the snippets of a Gershom Gorenberg article pertinent to THIS discussion and I provided the link so that jacksondyer, or anyone else, could read the entire article. Indeed, I recommend it to everyone just as I recommend Gershom Gorenberg's South Jerusalem blog.

Article: www.star-telegram.com/.../630149.html

Blog: http://southjerusalem.com/

The British press second only to the Arab press in its antisemetic portrayals of the Jewish State has been having a grand old antisemitic time attacking Israel:

"The BBC's Birthday Present to Israel"

www.honestreporting.com/.../The_BBCs_Birthday_Present_to_Israel.asp

Elsewhere in the British press:

"Hari Seeks to Smear HonestReporting"

www.honestreporting.com/.../Hari_Seeks_to_Smear_HonestReporting_.asp

"The Stench Spreads: Johann Hari's Stinking Op-Ed"

www.honestreporting.com/.../The_Stench_Spreads_Johann_Haris_Stinking_Op-Ed.asp

“Johann Hari Saw a Pipe, and Robert Fisk Cheers for the Enemies of Civilization”

www.solomonia.com/.../index.shtml

Jacksondyer: Robert Fisk is a piece of work.

The whole world knows that Arab Israelis are effectively outsiders in their own land so I don't know why Martin Peretz feels the need to lie about it. In the Sunday Times (of London), Adam LeBor writes:

-- And despite their many success stories, the Arabs living in Israel proper – about 20% of the country’s 7.3m population – remain second-class citizens, nonJews in a Jewish state. It is almost impossible for them to buy state-owned land. There are deep disparities in employment, health, welfare and education. Welfare budgets are unequal.

www.timesonline.co.uk/.../article3907219.ece

jacksondyer treats us to the mendacity that is "Honest Reporting." Fortunately, we have the blog Dishonest Reporting  tracking its mendacity so we are spared the stench.

-- [Honest Reporting] is back to an old favourite tactic – misrepresent a story to incite it’s readers. An angry reader is an emailing reader, firing off complaint emails with a minimum of cerebral activity. And what better way to do it than with this lie – “Hari compares Israel to excrement”. No, he didn’t. There was no comparison being made, just a recollection of the smell he experienced. HR deliberately misrepresent Hari's words immediately after complaining of "falsified quotes"! They're nothing if not audacious in their dishonesty.

dishonestreporting.blogspot.com/.../april-30-media-critique-stench-spreads.html

In follow-up to a recent column in The Independent (of London) on appalling sanitation practices in West Bank "Settlements," Johann Hari shares some of the emails he received from supporters of "Honest Reporting." Anyone familiar with commentary here will recognize the rhetoric style among the advocates of Honest Reporting on The Spine.

Johann Hari:

---

In my column today, I talk about how an organisation called ‘Honest Reporting’ orchestrates barrages of complaints against writers who criticise the Israeli government. I thought it might be interesting to give readers a taster of what these e-mails are like. Don’t read them if you are offended by swearing and references to child molestation.

Hundreds have asked a variant of “why do you never criticise Muslims or Arabs?” I always e-mail back with links to dozens of articles in which I have vehemently criticised Islamic fundamentalists and the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and for which I have been widely (and stupidly) accused of “Islamophobia.” So far, one has written back to acknowledge they were wrong. The rest either go silent, or change the subject.

To be fair, a handful of the e-mails have been polite and rational, and I’ve had an interesting if heated exchange with those readers. But the vast majority are, I’m afraid, like the following three.

(To give some context, in the article they are responding to I described the raw sewage I’ve seen pumped out from Israeli settlements on the West Bank at the Palestinians and how it smells.)

Ivan Stux from ivanstux@hotmail.com writes: “When I pass male homosexuals on the street, I sometimes can smell a distinctive pungent scent of shit emanating from them. Might it be that the smell of shit you are sensing as you describe in your article comes from your own behind or mouth, or both, because you forgot to wash after you have been copulated by a man? Does that make you a dirty M.F. (as in male fucked)?”

Somebody who doesn’t give their name e-mails from southernwolf@gmail.com to say: “When I think of 'Hari' I smell shit. You aren't good enough to write about Israel, Jew hater. Long after the so called "Palestinians" have faded into the shithole of history where they belong Israel will remain, proud and strong. By then Jew haters like you will have another "cause".”

John Norman from jdnorman@btopenworld.com writes: “Surely, it's your own smell that you smell when you write about Israel. After all, a fat faggot like yourself cant smell of anything else. It must have been your Swiss-nazi Dad that fucked you up the arse when you were a kid and fucked yr tiny brain box to bits. How you were awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism must remain an unexplained enigma for decades to come.”

I’ll spare you the hundreds more along the same lines.

www.johannhari.com/.../article.php

Marty, what do you think about David Grossman's "The Yellow Wind"?  Apparently it's a seminal book in Obama's thinking on Israel-Palestine according to an interview he gave the Atlantic recently.  

"The whole world knows that Arab Israelis are effectively outsiders in their own land"

This mackenzie quip should read: The whole antisemitic world knows that......

His condemnation of honest reporting says it all.

Mackenzie  prefers the Fisk obscenities to real reporting. Not that I am surprised.

When someone says  "the whole world knows" you know they are lying.

It leaves out, for example people like Fadela Amara who knows more about it than the antisemitic lying piece of work mackenzie:

“Fadela Amara on Israel, Anti-Semitism, and Islamist Politics”

From the interview:

“Comfortable in Israel

Amara says that when she was in Israel, she actually felt quite at home. She was invited here in June 2004 as part of a delegation of leftist women that met with Israeli and Palestinian women. She visited Tel Aviv ("didn't like it"), Jerusalem ("really loved it") and also the Muqata in Ramallah (a name she pronounces with a strong Arabic inflection). She wanted to meet Arafat, but her companions in the delegation did not want to embarrass France, which was upholding the Israeli boycott of him at the time. She acceded to their wishes and so missed a historic opportunity to meet the Rais, whose image on the television screen had captivated her as a child.

"I felt very comfortable [in Israel]. I wasn't the object of special stares, as often happens toward foreigners. I didn't feel any racism, though I'm certain it exists. You have all the colors there so it's become almost natural to see white, yellow, brown."”

Read the whole interview:

www.haaretz.com/.../971505.html

The majority of Arabs in Israel are not more "outsiders" than are the Arabs in Syria and they have a lot more rights than those in most other Arab States.

Johann Hari is  another Fisk type. He always sees red when it comes to Israel. Only in Great Britain would he considered a reporter.

His attack on Honest Reporting is an attempt to save his incompetent and hateful ass.

More "back in the day" soft-on-Israelness from Obama:

blogs.abcnews.com/.../obamas-inabilit.html

How many needles have to fall out of this haystack?  

"How many needles have to fall out of this haystack?"

Well, this is Obama's MO, when caught blame the hired help. The Butler did it.

Fadela Amara describes her impression as a French woman visiting Israel as part of a "delegation of leftist women." Nowhere in the extract provided by jacksondyer does she mention Arab Israelis - women or men - other than to imply she is "certain" racism exists towards them. Amara does not contradict the assertions of Johann Hari and Adam LeBor that Arab Israelis are outsiders in their own land.

What an idiot mackenzie is.

Fadela was talking about Israel as "an Arab" woman, as it were. She said she found less discrimation there, fewer stares than in Paris.

Nuf said.

The situation of Arabs in Israel while far from ideal are pretty good given the existential conflict  Israel has been facing with its Arab neighbors for the last 60 years or more.

There are Arabs in the Israeli government as well as on the Supreme Court. How many Jewish in any Arabs country sit in the government or on the Supreme court? How many Jews are there in Egypt or Syria? Very few, because those countries like Yeman and Iraq, etc. have ethnically cleansed them.

Get a llife, mackenzie and stop shitting all over these threads.

jacksondyer -

It is easy to see why YOU, by far the most prolific poster on these threads, might confuse my shitting all over your worthless and mendacious posts with "shitting all over these threads."

You have made more than 4,000 posts on The New Republic message boards - many times more than any other contributor including, I suspect, the staff. It is long past time when you should have stopped being a parasite on the bottom of Martin Peretz's spine and started your own blog.

When the asshole can't address an issue he begins to count posts.

Go stick your head in a shit hole. You'd feel at home there.

Ndmackenzie: Who is it that is a parasite on these threads? And as to quantity, blackton has over 4,000 posts, as well. But in your tunnel you haven't gotten the news. Jacksondyer: My understanding is that Arab Israelis do have a fairly good time of it, considering. Better than Jews in Damascus and environs, say.