At 7:39 PM -0500 6/4/02, David Griffin wrote:


>I think I said that Jewish people (different from Zionists) come in all colors and
>religious beliefs.

Yes, but we're having a hard time accepting that.

> > But according to that article in the
> > Daily Ha'aretz, only Jews are allowed the full rights of citizenship.
>
>This was discussed a few days ago by another writer to the list who made an
>informative post clarifying the matter. Suffice it to say, there are
>bourgeois Palestinians who also enjoy "the full rights of [Israeli]
>citizenship." Go back and read the archives.

Technically many Palestinians do also enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizenship, that is true. But from what I gather this is in form only, not in substance. Israel is highly segregated along religious lines, Palestinians live in segregated areas, send their children to segregated schools and there is even a form of effective segregation of family law.

Apologists for this segregation brazenly assert that the segregation is entirely voluntary. However the fact is that the segregated Palestinian communities in Israel receive only a tiny percentage of the per-capita government funding for essential services, such as sewerage, electricity, education and so forth that the segregated Jewish communities enjoy. They are also subject to discrimination in employment. Discrimination which is officially unlawful, but is actually facilitated by a national ID system which ensures non-Jews are readily identifiable. Non-Jews are effectively stamped as such when they go out in public, a practice copied from the Nazi state.

It is of course patently absurd to suggest that this segregation is entirely voluntary. Why on earth would people voluntarily choose to live in segregated areas with chronically inadequate essential services? The answer of course is they wouldn't, if they had any choice. But I gather from what I've read that the Israeli state actually owns virtually all the land in Israel and distributes it on license. Of course Palestinian citizens suffer discrimination in getting access to land, in some cases they don't even have any legal rights to the land they have lived on for generations. These people are subject to arbitrary eviction in favour of new Jewish settlements.

Clearly, this form of systematic discrimination is not what citizens of most bourgeois democracies would regard as "the full rights of citizenship". It is cleverly done of course, but such a claim still can't stand up to even elementary scrutiny. Palestinians are decidedly second-class citizens of the Israeli state. The claim that this is "voluntary" beggars belief.

I was having trouble understanding why Paelstinians were so adamant about wanting a separate Palestinian state until I discovered these facts. It is obvious now.


>But, at the other end, word do not only refer to one discrete idea, either.

Yes they do. If words could mean contradictory things they would be absolutely useless. People only claim they words can mean different things when they are reluctant to be honest about what they want to say, when they want to say one thing and mean another.

But there are forms and arrangements of words designed for that purpose, there is no need to corrupt the definitions of words people use in honest communications. ;-)

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas.