Israel minister warning over loyalty oath

[Tripmann]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1010/mideast.html

An Israeli minister has warned of a 'whiff of fascism' as the country's right wing-led government appeared set to approve a bill requiring a loyalty oath from new citizens.

The cabinet was to vote on the bill to make all new citizens swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a 'Jewish and democratic state,' legislation that has been slammed as inflammatory and racist by the country's Arab minority.

'There is a whiff of fascism on the margins of Israeli society,' Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog of the left-leaning Labour party told army radio.

'The overall picture is very disturbing and threatens the democratic character of the state of Israel,' he said.

[Tripmann]

1. Oh this just gets better.....

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/divisions-in-israel-s-cabinet-as-vote-on-loyalty-oath-looms-1.318177

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, meanwhile, that he would propose his own bill that strip citizenship off of anyone convicted of disloyalty to the state.

"Declarations are not enough in the fact against incidents such as Azmi Bishara and Hanin Zoabi," Yishai said in reference to two Israeli Arab lawmakers, one who is suspected of having contacts with enemy states and the other who took part in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. "Anyone who betrays the state will lose his citizenship."

Once this can of worms is open, It will be amazing how fast being an uppity arab protestor becomes grounds for losing your citizenship. Or supporting sanctions. Or <add action taken to highlight the latest atrocity here> as well.

[oberliner]

3. One after another with Mr. Yishai

He is doing everything he can to embarrass the government and the country.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Yishai is disgusting...

a religious right-winger with virulently anti-immigrant and anti-Arab views.

Good for Herzog for speaking some sense!

[oberliner]

2. Agree with Mr. Herzog

Hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Do you see any likelihood of that happenning any time soon?

[oberliner]

5. Absolutely

Look at the success of Livni in the last election.

That coupled with the many scandals that have dogged Lieberman and other leaders of the right will hopefully help usher in a new government with a less right-wing agenda.

[LeftishBrit]

6. True - but Livni, though much better than Bibi et al, is not a left-winger

I am sure that there will be a Labor government again but don't know when.

[oberliner]

8. She could lead a center-left coalition

Kadima and Labor together plus some of the smaller parties in the peace camp.

[LeftishBrit]

9. Yes, that's probably the best that could be hoped for in the near future

And INFINITELY better than what is the case now.

It is striking how very small numbers of votes can have huge effects.

Just a small difference in the proportions for the parties in Israel might have led to something like you suggest.

Just 5 or 6 seats going differently in the UK, and Labour Prime Minister Ed Miliband might now be leading a coalition with the LibDems.

Just slightly fewer hanging chads in Florida - or one more reasonable judge on the Supreme Court - and President Gore might have served for eight years.

On the other side, just one more seat going to the 'Liberals', or one more Independent MP digging in his heels, and the dreadful Tony Abbott might now be Prime Minister of Australia.

[azurnoir]

15. Do you believe that factors that led to there being a rightwing

government in Israel have changed?

[Violet_Crumble]

10. Does this apply to all new citizens?

I was just reading another article that said it applied only to those who are non-Jewish

[oberliner]

11. Cabinet approves loyalty oath, but only for non-Jewish new citizens

Cabinet ministers on Sunday approved by a majority vote a controversial amendment which would require every non-Jew wishing to become a citizen of Israel to pledge loyalty to "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/cabinet-approves-loyalty-oath-but-only-for-non-jewish-new-citizens-1.318212

[LeftishBrit]

16. And that is fairly disgusting...

especially as there has been some very violent and disloyal behaviour by RW Jewish settlers, who often are immigrants. If there is a loyalty oath, why shouldn't they swear it too? What are Lieberman, Yishai, Bibi et al expecting - that Hamas members will immigrate in droves into Israel to cause trouble? They generally cause trouble in other ways. It all sounds most bizarre.

[oberliner]

17. And it's all politics

The US is in the midst of the same sort of nonsense from the far-right and the tea partiers.

Hopefully they won't bcome the govertnetment as they have in Israel.

[Violet_Crumble]

12. Israel's loyalty oath: Discriminatory by design (Guardian editorial)

New pledge requires future citizens declare their loyalty to an ideology, one intended to exclude Palestinians

There are two narratives at work in Israel that have a bearing on the capacity of its leaders to negotiate the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to it. The first is official and intended for external consumption. It is the one that claims Israel is ready to sit down with the Palestinians in direct talks without preconditions and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, should not have wasted so much of the 10 month partial freeze on settlement building before he did so. On Saturday, America was given another month by the Arab League to persuade Binyamin Netanyahu's government to halt settlement building, the bare minimum required for talks to continue

There is however a second narrative, which could be called business as usual, and it has nothing to do with occupation, Iran's nuclear programme, Hizbullah's rocket arsenal, or any threat which could be called existential. This was evident in all its inglory yesterday when the Israeli cabinet approved a measure requiring candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to "the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state". The naturalisation oath would not apply to Jews, who are granted automatic citizenship under the law of return, so it is, by definition, discriminatory. The existing text binds individuals to declare their loyalty to the state of Israel. The new version requires future citizens to declare their loyalty not just to a state but an ideology, one specifically designed to exclude one fifth of its citizens who see themselves as Palestinian.

Palestinian Israeli leaders have described this proposal as racist. Palestinian Israeli citizens do not have to take this oath, but their partners seeking naturalisation do. Neither could agree with Israel's characterisation of itself as a Jewish state. It could be a state of Jews and all its citizens, but never a Jewish state. Nor is this the only bill around. There are 20 others in the slipstream that have a similar effect: there is a loyalty law for Knesset members and for film crews; there are bills that make it a criminal offence to deny the existence of Israel; that penalise the mourning of Nakba Day; that force any group financed by a foreign nation to report each contribution; and a bill to deny ethnic minorities' access to Jewish settlements. The authors of these proposals not only intend to create a state ideology but to police it.

http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/11/Israel-loyalty-oath-discriminatory

[oberliner]

13. Fixing the broken link

I get a 404 error on the link but this seems to work:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/11/israel-loyalty-oath-discriminatory

[Violet_Crumble]

14. Analysis / Loyalty oath does not serve the Jewish state or Jewish people (Ha'aretz)

Despite public criticism, cabinet approves loyalty oath for non-Jews.
By Yossi Verter

Political legend has it that the dramatic, down-to-the-wire election campaign that swept Benjamin Netanyahu into the Prime Minister's Office in 1996 was decided by the last-minute offensive in which he flooded the country with the famous slogan: "Netanyahu is good for the Jews." That ad campaign, which was backed financially by the wealthy Australian Chabadnik Joseph Gutnick, gave Netanyahu thousands of "Jewish" votes and helped him beat Shimon Peres in a photo finish.

During that first term in office, when the country was mired in destruction, in-fighting and strife between left and right, religious and secular, a counter-slogan made the rounds: "Nu, is it good for you Jews?"

Over a decade has passed, and Netanyahu is once again revisiting the "Jewish" issue. His government met for hours yesterday, discussing and finally approving the unnecessary, useless bill requiring non-Jews seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. It is a bill that does nothing to serve the Jewish people or the state of the Jews. It is a bill whose political damage is greater than any benefits that can be derived from it.

Perhaps it serves Netanyahu by shoring up his base of support on the right, but that, too, is doubtful. What is certain is that it reinvigorates those same political circles that rose up against him 13 years ago: the left, jurists, academia, artists and writers. What is even more certain is that it extraordinarily serves Yisrael Beiteinu and its chairman, Avigdor Lieberman.

"Without loyalty, there is no citizenship" was the successful campaign slogan conjured by American political guru Arthur Finkelstein and used by Lieberman during the previous election campaign. When Netanyahu grants him the gift of a loyalty oath, to the dismay of the left and the Arabs, he strengthens and legitimizes him. By the same token, he also highlighted the boundaries that separate Labor from the remainder of the coalition, thus casting his key partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in a ridiculous light.

Barak is used to that light, anyway. Perhaps Bib did him a favor when he refused to bring to a vote Barak's proposal to affix the words "in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence" to the bill. What is Netanyahu's problem with the Declaration of Independence? That remains unclear. But by refusing to bring up the issue, the premier gave Barak the perfect excuse to vote against, together with the four other Labor ministers and three Likud ministers - Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Michael Eitan. Their Likud colleague, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, is also among the most vocal opponents of the proposal.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/analysis-loyalty-oath-does-not-serve-the-jewish-state-or-jewish-people-1.318286