Is Avigdor Lieberman a racist? No, but...

[azurnoir]

He wants to redraw Israel's boundaries to maintain a Jewish majority, and his election campaign centered around the creation of a loyalty oath for the country's citizens. And now that Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party has been confirmed as the third-largest party in the government - not to mention the likely linchpin of any sustainable coalition - debate is deepening: Is Lieberman is a racist?

"Is he a racist? No, I don't think so," said Efraim Zuroff, famed Nazi hunter and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem. "But he's certainly a bit of a demagogue. He's offering 'solutions' to problems that are on a lot of people's minds, and he's playing on the fears of Israel's citizens. It's a mixture of politics, ethnic strife - not racism - and how he can increase the number of MKs in the Knesset.

"Lieberman's loyalty law, for example, does not distinguish between races; in fact, it calls for people of every race and creed to be loyal to the state," Yakobson said. "Now, I don't agree with it, but that's not racism. It's offensive, but I haven't heard anything outwardly discriminatory about Lieberman's positions.

Others, however, said that Lieberman's attempts to pry loyalty from citizens who don't necessarily identify themselves as Zionists is in fact discriminatory, and because those citizens are resoundingly Arab, it makes the policy racist.

"He wants us to say that we're Zionists? We never will be," said Sheikh Abdullah Nameer Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who has identified himself in the past as a "law-abiding citizen of the State of Israel."

"I don't know on a personal level," Molla said. "But his campaign was certainly racist. The whole idea of citizenship for loyalty is very problematic. I mean, how do you decide what loyalty is? What do you base it on? I don't love what the Arab parties are saying per say, but I do love democracy, and part of democracy is allowing freedom of expression for minorities. Lieberman wants the opposite."

Furthermore, Molla continued, "Israel Beiteinu has no Ethiopian candidate on their Knesset list, not even far down the list. They didn't try to get the Ethiopian vote, yet they say that they're a party for immigrants. Ethiopians aren't immigrants? There are 130,000 of them. I think that says something, too, and the same ideology that Lieberman is advocating today could be used against the Ethiopian community tomorrow."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304768730&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[LeftishBrit]

1. Yes, he is.

One could argue that 'Arabs aren't a race', etc.; but that's just like the argument that 'antisemitism isn't racism as Jews aren't a race'. He comes under the usual definition of racism, IMO.

[azurnoir]

4. That was part of why I posted it

the first part of your sentence it sounded so much like arguments I have seen here, that second part about antisemitism never occurred to me before.

[sabbat hunter]

7. I have a question

What about the ultra orthodox jews that do not believe there should be a Israel until the messiah returns. What if they do not sign Lieberman's loyalty oath? Do they get thrown out? hmmmm

[Violet_Crumble]

2. He's not only a racist, but an enemy of democracy n/t

[azurnoir]

5. He is an enemy of a lot of things

and it's disturbing that his party got as many seats as it did

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Fewer that many thought...which is a good thing. Shas also lost seats

[IndianaGreen]

3. Racism is racism no matter how it is disguised

Lieberman is a racist, and a criminal as well:

Last update - 07:26 13/02/2009

Police investigation may bar Lieberman from treasury post

By Uri Blau and Lily Galili

It may not be possible to appoint Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman as finance minister - a possibility that had been discussed during the coalition talks of the past two days - because the Tax Authority, which is part of the Finance Ministry, was involved in the criminal investigation against Lieberman.

The ongoing investigation already prevents him from heading either the public security or the justice ministry, since they oversee the police and the prosecution, respectively, and it would be improper for a minister under investigation to oversee the organizations responsible for deciding his case. The Finance Ministry, in contrast, would not normally be a problem, and sources involved in the coalition talks said that Lieberman did demand this portfolio, along with the Housing Ministry, in his talks with Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. But the fact that the Tax Authority was also involved in the Lieberman probe may throw a monkey wrench into this idea.

<snip>

The investigation of Lieberman heated up two and a half weeks before the election, when the police arrested seven suspects, including his daughter Michal and his attorney Yoav Many.

In April 2007, Haaretz published an investigative report on M.L.-1, a business consulting firm set up by Michal Lieberman in 2004, when she was 21 years old. She was listed as the sole shareholder, but one of the company's two official addresses was her father's house in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim.

Between 2004 and 2007, the company received NIS 11 million from anonymous overseas sources in exchange for "business consulting." Avigdor Lieberman received a salary of over NIS 2.5 million from M.L.-1 during 2004-06, when he was not serving in the cabinet or Knesset, and was thus legally entitled to do so. But the company itself remained active even after Lieberman rejoined the Knesset in March 2006.

The police suspect Lieberman of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust. However, the investigation was delayed for over a year, from April 2007 until August 2008, because of lawsuits filed by Lieberman and his associates claiming that various documents the police wanted to examine were protected by attorney-client privilege. Only after the courts finally rejected these suits were police able to begin studying the documents.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1063809.html