Israel Doubles Down as a Religious State

In essence, the law enshrines the Jewish people’s exclusive right to self-determination in Israel, differentiating between that collective, national right, and the individual rights of the country’s citizens, who [currently] include Arabs.

Before breaking for recess, Israel's Knesset passed a new law, 62 - 55, privileging Jewish citizens over others, non-Jews.

NYT:

Israel has been grappling with the inherent tensions between its dual aspirations of being both Jewish and democratic ever since the country was established. The new law, hailed by its supporters as “historic,” was denounced by detractors as discriminatory, racist and a blow to democracy.

“This is a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the state of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said soon after the vote in the early hours of Thursday morning. “We have determined in law the founding principle of our existence. Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, and respects the rights of all of its citizens.”

Some are more equal than others.

Pushed through just before the Knesset, or Israeli Parliament, went into summer recess, the law has been advanced as flagship legislation of the most right-wing and religious governing coalition in Israel’s 70-year history.

The law is largely symbolic and declarative, but opponents say it harms the delicately balanced relationship between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority that makes up about 21 percent of the country’s population of nearly nine million.

That's a high percentage of minority citizens

“The end of democracy,” declared Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Arab legislator, charging the government with demagogy. “The official beginning of fascism and apartheid. A black day (another black day),” he wrote.

Adalah, a legal center that advocates for Arab rights in Israel, said, “This law guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion, racism, and systemic inequality.”

Yael German, a legislator from the centrist Yesh Atid party, which sits in the opposition, described the law ahead of the vote as “a poison pill for democracy.”

Whenceforth goes our ally, whenceforth go we?

Unlike previous drafts of the nationality bill, the version that passed omits any mention of democracy or enunciation of the principle of equality in what critics called a betrayal of Israel’s foundational document, its Declaration of Independence.

That declaration, signed by the state’s founders ushering in independence in 1948, proclaimed that Israel “will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants” and will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

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In other news, tape has turned up from Feb. 2017 showing Borat in poor disguise at a California gun shop, abandoning his crew when discovered.

RIVERSIDE, CA (FOX 11) - A Riverside gun store owner has harsh words for Sacha Baron Cohen after he says he caught the actor showing up to his business in disguise and under false pretense, and it was all caught on surveillance video.

The video was provided exclusively to FOX 11.

It happened at Warrior One Guns & Ammo in February 2017. That’s when owner Norris Sweidan told FOX 11 Cohen and a camera met him while claiming to be filming a documentary about a Hungarian immigrant wanting to buy a gun.

“He comes in, off the bat you can see in the video I’m looking like, this guy does not look like a Hungarian immigrant, tight ass leather pants, a beard, it just didn’t fit,” Sweidan said. “The moment his words came out of his mouth I was like this guy is full of s***.”

Sweidan told FOX 11 Cohen said he wanted to buy a gun, but said it with a very odd sounding accent he didn’t find credible. 

“I’m looking at the producer and I’m just like am I being fooled right here?” Sweidan said. “And I just kept looking at the guy and I was like you’re Borat, as soon as I said that his eyes just looked at me like, and he did a turn right out the door.”

He says after Cohen left the store, he left his crew behind.

“We’re talking to the people they don’t wanna give us an answer, we basically told them to get the f*** out, you guys are all full of s***, have a great day, get out,” Sweidan said.

He said it’s obvious what Cohen’s intentions were.

“Once I knew it was Borat, we already know his game and his bull*****, so we knew he’s here to make a mockery, and of what? Gun owners? The gun business, gun shops,” Sweidan said.

He believes Cohen meant to use it as a segment in his new program on Showtime called “Who is America?” which recently aired its first episode, and showed some gun rights advocates promoting arming children while filming segments with Cohen, who was in an Israeli disguise.

Sweidan can’t believe the men fell for the disguise.

“You’ve got some gun advocate holding a bunny on some gun, if you’re a gun advocate, what the f*** are you doing holding a gun with a bunny on it, really?”

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