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 Friday, August 01, 2003



I have kept mum about the recent law passed by the Israeli Knesset forbidding non-Israeli Arabs to marry into Israeli citizenship.  Other folks have been talking about it.  I found it disheartening and nothing to be proud of.  In clicking through the sites I try to check daily I found this post at Setting the World to Rights , one of the handful of right o' the aisle bloggers I read regularly.  In it, STWTR has a different perspective on this new law and added a piece of information that I hadn't heard.  The law expires in one year.  Additionally, STWTR notes:

The fact is that the existing right of non-Israelis to gain citizenship, with its automatic right of entry and freedom of movement in Israel, by the expedient of marrying an Israeli Arab, has already been used many times as a means of murdering people. For instance, this murder of sixteen people was carried out by a Hamas man who had gained entry to Israel by marrying an Israeli Arab woman. The Israeli security services say that there have been nineteen such cases so far, involving 87 murders. To do nothing about this situation out of deference to ‘Love’ would be an obscenity.

Disclaimer: I think the law is unfortunate and discriminatory.  However, viewing it as a temporary exigency during a time of war shifts my perspective a little.

I am interested in others' thoughts.  Feel free to chime in. 

Update: Damian at Daimnation shares this view in this post:

I hate to sound cold and hard-hearted here, but might this new law have something to do with the fact that Israel and the Palestinians have effectively been at war for the past three years? Something tells me it wasn't easy for an Briton to bring his new German wife to the UK between 1939 and 1945.

For that matter, if an Israeli marries a person from, say, Saudi Arabia, would he or she gain the right to live in Saudi Arabia? I think you know the answer to that one. But I don't expect to see any front-page articles in the Independent about it.

On the other hand, Jimm at Project for a New Century of Freedom has this to say:

And going beyond the issue of racism, this is also about the disturbing trend of citing security as a reason to suspend our most cherished ideals. Of this trend gaining too much traction in the post-9/11 world, and probably just making things worse.

Perhaps we all should become more comfortable with the idea of living with some risk for awhile, as a condition for freedom and democracy.

That is certainly the arguement I would make here vis-a-vis the Patriot Act.  And yet I have a hard time applying it to Israel.  Maybe because I can't imagine the amount of violence that happens in such a small place.  I can't imagine living in a place where a routine trip to the grocery store or local cafe could end in such tragedy and horror.  Or where putting my child on the bus to school carries such risk. 

I know people think that this law, and the "wall," are awful, racist, anti-democratic strategies.  But I would rather see Israel isolate itself from its neighbors that continue to be responsible for the atrocious violence in the occupied territories.  

In case you haven't noticed, dear reader, Israeli policy is the one arena in which I am acutely torn between the "turn the other cheek" self-flagellation of the left and the "bomb them into submission" violence of the right.


5:39:06 PM    






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Last Update: 8/13/2003; 7:30:38 PM

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