October 12, 2010
Since when is religion a race?
The latest uproar by Arab citizens of Israel over a bill requiring new citizens to take an oath of allegiance to the ‘Jewish and Democratic’ state is yet another misdirection of word use, and it is the press that’s causing the stir.
Nowhere within the quotes from Arab leaders, that I could find, has the term “racist” appeared. Yet the mainstream press is crying that the Arab minority within Israel is labeling the new amendment to a bill, that was passed by the Cabinet by a vote of 22 to eight on Sunday, October 10, 2010, as being so.
Yes, the Arab leadership was claiming that the legislation would undermine their rights within the nation. However, despite the AP asserting (without providing any facts to back the contention) http://tbo.ly/bBqXQT that the Arab minority suffers general discrimination, this is one population that is provided equal rights under Israeli law and is well represented within the legislative body. Today’s miniscule protest, staged at Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall, of 150 foolhardy artists and academics, who live in a world of their own contrivance, claimed Israel is now ‘fascist’ for taking a stand on it’s right to exist as a nonexclusive homeland for Jewish people. The smattering of rabble-rousers was unworthy of international press coverage, proving yet again how far the media will go to create controversy. http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Article.aspx?id=190913Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified the rationale for the bill as being necessary to remind the world that the State of Israel was established to be a homeland for the dispossessed Jewish people http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=190831. People who truly had been discriminated against, to the point of attempted extermination not sixty years ago by an actual fascist nation.
How quickly the world forgets.
They forget also that the slow migration of Jews, back to what was historically considered their homeland, took place over decades of immigrants purchasing square miles of empty tracts from the absentee Ottoman Turk landlords. No one really lived there aside from nomadic Arabs who were not called Palestinians, in that there was no Palestine. The term was instituted at a later date when the whole area came under the purview of the British Empire, which utilized the Roman name to describe the region. This area of the Middle East was essentially underpopulated to the point of being virtually barren. Even the land itself was little more than desert, with some malaria-infested swamp, that was revitalized by displaced Jews from Europe who developed the first drip irrigation systems.
And calling Israel racist? This isn’t the first time the epithet has been thrown at the Jewish state. In fact, I wrote a paper on this very issue when the United Nations first levied the charge, branding Zionism as racist in 1976 with a resolution that was unwarranted and utterly fatuous. Neither Zionism nor Judaism are racist, or can be described as such. Zionism is a political philosophy, and Judaism is a religion. Racism is generally related to categorizing humans by skin color, and even here the term is misapplied more often than not.
Over and over again, people misuse the word ‘racist’ by employing it to describe ethnicity, a completely different standard. Whether one is Hispanic, Arabic, French, Azerbaijani or Polynesian, these titles indicate ethnicity in regard to one’s native culture and language. It has nothing to do with race. In fact, the idea of race is consistently misapplied assuming that it is a categorization of people by skin tone, which it is not. The concept of races (of which there are only three – Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid) was originally assigned according to the geographic origin of a people (e.g. Australian Aborigines are classified as Caucasoid, as are Polynesians).
I hope that this is computing with all of you who constantly abuse the terminology in order to instigate divisiveness. Yes, that’s what I said… diversity is based on division of people, not the opposite, and all hypocrites who insist upon stressing the differences between people, particularly here in the United States of America, are nothing better than provocateurs.
Media must be responsible for the words they use and headlines they blare, seeking only to create rifts and undermine communities and nations. It belongs to us, the people, however, to correct misuse of language and ignore the destabilizing media and the agitators who would only degrade our society for their own gain.
Recognizing the reason why a nation came into being and pledging allegiance thereto, is no premise for division, but one of cohesion, wherein all citizens of that nation share equal rights under those laws. Israel is a democracy, different in its establishment from our own republic, but the people must uphold the state to which they profess loyalty as citizens. Look to the Pakistani immigrant who was just landed behind bars with a life sentence for attempting to destroy citizens of his adopted country, the USA.
An oath of allegiance must have meaning for a naturalized citizen of any nation, let alone a bitterly embattled state such as Israel.
A. Dru Kristenev
A. Dru Kristenev is a citizen of the great Northwest United States, former journalist and author of the Baron Series, novels of political intrigue, world markets and presumptive power brokers based on research of the underpinnings of real-time political and global financial maneuvering, and who’s instigating it.
changingwind@earthlink.net
Don’t miss www.changingwind.org for news links and insightful postings by a legal researcher as Toddy Littman, “Gold Baron” character. Toddy reappears in the new sequel, “Energy Barons.” Read “Land Barons” which introduces the very premise that we see unfolding before our eyes… the sacking of America.
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Tuesday 12 October 2010
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