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Our own worst enemies

January 22, 2009 11:15

Harry's Place blog, one of my favourites, sums it up nicely when it quotes from George Orwell: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".
I believe that Israel's Supreme Court this week took the right decision to allow two Arab parties, Balad and the United Arab List-Taal, to stand in the 10 February general election. By doing so, the Justices overturned a ruling by the politically-run election committee which had declared the parties' anti-Israel because of their stance that the country should be "for all its citizens" - a euphemism for Israel ceasing to be a Jewish state (what ever that means).
Not to put too fine a point on it, the committee's decision smacked of racism. Jewish parties (and particularly the Orthodox ones) which want to change the nature of the state are not questioned.
Leading the charge on the Arab parties - and Israeli Arabs in general - is Avigdor (ne Yvett) Lieberman, who is basically a Moldovan-born rabble-rouser, who used to be Binyamin Netanyahu's right hand man before he saw there was mileage in courting the extremely xenophobic Russian immigrant vote.

January 22, 2009 11:15

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