Israel General Discussion: Annus Horribilis

[Comrade Funk]

Wow. So is this going be taken with a shrug because this is becoming theocratic.

[Comrade Funk]

The Palestinian political parties and militias have caused that hatred to be fair. No wonder Abbas and Hamas don't want to embrace liberalisation or free and fair elections.

Again, we should only feel sorry for the Palestinian *people*. They hate their self appointed leaders and the thugs that they hide behind as much as Western governments do.

We know you don't care about the Palestinian people.

[Comrade Funk]

The situation is beginning to feel precarious...tensions are definitely on the rise. More importantly the verbal taboo was lifted and people are throwing the CW words more easily.

As in?

[Comrade Funk]

I was watching last night an interview with this very articulate history professor at U of M knowledgeable about Israel, and he did not expect much of the planned Blinken visit to Israel. He expected him to mouth platitudes about a two state solution, and so forth, that is dead in the water. I then looked up what happened with the Blinken trip. It appears next to nothing. Does anyone have an opinion of what he accomplished, and the impact of the visit, other than the null set, and mouthing of platitudes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-pA23q4eZ8

The Americans have no policy minus worthless platitudes and sticking their heads in the sand. Well at least in terms of this administration/party.

[Comrade Funk]

I was watching last night an interview with this very articulate history professor at U of M knowledgeable about Israel, and he did not expect much of the planned Blinken visit to Israel. He expected him to mouth platitudes about a two state solution, and so forth, that is dead in the water. I then looked up what happened with the Blinken trip. It appears next to nothing. Does anyone have an opinion of what he accomplished, and the impact of the visit, other than the null set, and mouthing of platitudes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-pA23q4eZ8

The Americans have no policy minus worthless platitudes and sticking their heads in the sand. Well at least in terms of this administration/party.

Withhold US aids.

Let see how far Israel go before it starts begging for our money.

The point I'm making is they won't withhold any aid regardless of what this government does.

[Comrade Funk]

Will there be a shred of accountability now that their god leader is running things or...?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/settlers-said-to-rampage-in-huwara-after-deadly-attack-set-fire-to-cars-and-homes/

[Comrade Funk]

Israelis - where do you see these protests going? Do you think it'll stop the bill?

[Comrade Funk]

This sounds like Israel will have a general strike that's basically unprecedented in scope in modern Western history? Am I off base in this regard?

May 68

[Comrade Funk]

This "delay" is bullsh**t

[Comrade Funk]

The Westminster System is the ur-example of modern democracy and it was the system of government by which Great Britain came to dominate the world. The hyperbolic moaning about how an Israeli government under that system would be the end of democracy simply exposes the utter intellectual incoherence of the socialists who dominate this board. Most of you do not care a whit about the constitutional order, you simply dislike the Israeli state and desire to see it governed by fools of your ilk.

An Israeli government under that system is not one which this reform would produce, since it'd still disenfranchise millions of Palestinians.

The biggest root of the current set of problems is, as mentioned upthread, misalignment of the electorate and the society. Large numbers of Haredis are quite insulated from society and get the vote; large numbers of Arabs suffer all the worst aspects of Israeli society without suffrage. As these portions of the population grow relative to the population as a whole, the government will grow further from society.

At the end of the road is Lebanon, if changes aren't made.

Yes, Israeli politicians are not giving out the vote to people who are hostile to the Israeli state. That's not the issue at hand here. Most Israelis who oppose the court reform still support the basic principle of a Jewish state.

The long-term path of Israel is that it keeps shifting to the right and gradually expelling the Arabs. That might not be your preferred path, but it's clearly what is going to happen.

Ethnic cleansing isn't my preferred path, yes. Is it yours?

[Comrade Funk]

We'll see if the bloodletting helps him in the polls

[Comrade Funk]

Settlers rampaged through another village in the Occupied West Bank.

[Comrade Funk]

Good news, this makes Israel a more robust democracy. Democracy isn't a mob of panicking elites in the streets in Tel Aviv, and it is also not an unelected court striking down laws based on a vague criterion - no, democracy means the highest elected body gets to call the shots in the country. Really don't understand all the fuss about a proposal that makes Israel more democratic, not less.

More democratic so they can instill hardcore religious policy and entrench the settlers in the apartheid West Bank.