Israel’s criminal defendant prime minister, more focused on saving his incompetent far-right government than saving the hostages who have spent seven months trapped in Gaza, is doing everything he can to torpedo Israel’s last and best chance at bringing the hostages home
“Hysteria for political reasons,” Minister Benny Gantz termed the statement issued over the weekend by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (also known as “the diplomatic official”), in which he reiterated that with or without a temporary pause in the fighting for the release of our hostages, “We will enter Rafah and eliminate the remaining Hamas battalions.”
Later, before the end of Shabbat, Netanyahu sent another announcement, in which he denied reports saying Israel had agreed to a cease-fire as part of a deal.
Netanyahu had hoped that the Egyptian proposal, which was more far-reaching than anything he had been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected by Hamas. Over the weekend, when the negotiations took a positive turn, Netanyahu found himself in distress, as was expressed by his flurry of statements. Given our familiarity with his family environment, including his pampered son on the front in Miami, his fright is indeed understandable.
Do you have any proof of your particular claim? Like give a link with an example of it. Sorry to say but I’m immensely skeptical. I could claim lots of things and it could not be true.
You said it, yourself. Undemocratic. Plus the two separate laws does not really define ‘‘democratic’’, does it? A Apartheid regime cannot be democratic. Not only that if they are so democratic, why shut it down? Freedom of speech is a part of being democratic which means allowing real news and evidence to be spread into to the world, to let others know what is going on.
Two different laws makes it by itself already discriminating against the Palestinian people. Makes it more worse when people do not even ‘obey the law’.
Not sure if I said it in this thread or somewhere else but Israel is on paper ‘’democratic’’ but in reality they are not. In January there was a poll done whether the Israeli want their Prime Minister to stay or be gone and the majority of the Israeli do not want their current prime minister and he keeps being in power.
Thanks for the response and I understand your skepticism, I will do my best to provide sources. I found an article describing the type of discrimination Arab Israelis face, there are problems but legal rights are equal, “They have the same legal rights as Jewish citizens, but many continue to face discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages.” Your link is about the occupied West Bank. Those are military courts applied during a military occupation, people living under a military occupation do not have the same legal rights as the citizens of the state occupying them.
Israel has not annexed the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, they occupy them. Apartheid is two different laws for citizens of the same country, the effect of an occupation is similar but the cause and solution are completely different. The solution is to end the occupation, in apartheid the solution is to change laws to grant equal rights to all people of a country. I could see apartheid being used to describe how the Israeli military treats the West Bank, but it does not apply to Israel itself.
The stated reason the Israeli cabinet banned them was because they were “Harming Israel’s security and inciting violence against its soldiers” this article also mentions “Under a law passed last month, the government can temporarily shutter foreign media outlets that have been found to undermine national security.” I disagree with the decision but it only applies to foreign media and is temporary. Freedom of speech in Israel isn’t perfect but the judicial system has protected it and generally it has gotten better over time. The history of the right to free speech in Israel is interesting, here’s an article about it. Israel hosts one of its harshest critics Haaretz. If Israel was undemocratic why would they allow such a news source to exist? Other countries in the Middle East certainly wouldn’t tolerate this. Israel used to have the best score on the press freedom index for the Middle East region. As a result of the war they are now second in the region but still 30-70 ranks higher than their neighbors.
In response to some of your sources, Israel’s actions at Al Aqsa mosque and in Jerusalem in general are issues I’ll read more on, specifically permanent residents status vs citizens living there. I don’t think it would change my overall view of Israel being a democracy though. Democracies can do a lot of bad things and still be democracies.
In practice Israel is a democracy. People want Netanyahu out but that’s not how a democracy works. There is not an election being held right now so the only way Netanyahu can be removed is by a vote of no confidence from the legislature. People can ask the legislature to remove him and hold new elections, in fact a vote was held in January but the motion only got 18 of the 61 needed votes. As a result of Netanyahu’s war the Likud party (he is the chairperson) has lost a lot of popularity and the National Unity party has gained in popularity. Current polls indicate Likud will lose the next election which is how democracy works. It is a slow process but in the end the people decide their government by voting.