>Proponents say the law helps ensure Israel's security and maintains its "Jewish character".
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
This entire concept has a dedicated article on Wikipedia [0]. It's a pretty fun read for those that believe Arab(or those of other non-Jewish ehtnicities, though they are far fewer) citizens of Israel are fundamentally equal to Jewish citizens of Israel.
Basically, Israel is all for equality, but with some limits - essentially, it would not be acceptable for people who are not Jewish to have an outsize power in Israel, though they are free to participate as minority parties. This is, in my opinion, the main reason why Israel has never attempted to annex the Palestinian territories. The Arab majority (or near majority today) that would form in the population would seriously challenge the idea of a Jewish and democratic state - they would be forced to stop recognizing Arabs' right to vote and/or hold office.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_and_democratic_state
Ethnoreligious...to be precise.
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/zizek-has-a-lot-to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UOM3C3q7II
Zizek is certainly a madman, being both an atheist christian and a marxist in our day and age
With your logic it would be like: Japan is for Shintos, Italy for Roman Catholics, Israel for Jews....sounds terrible no?
Since like forever Jews where all over the world (and called it their home) with vastly different cultures/food/music, there is not the ONE Jewish Culture but thousands, you just cant compare it to Japan or Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah#Zionist_Aliyah_(1882_on...
You cannot become a Japanese if you practice their religion for seven years, but you can become Jewish.
I know "Italians are racists lol" trends in football subreddits, but that has nothing to do with the law of the land.
1. Israel wasn't formed organically, they first had to get rid of the hundreds of thousands of pesky Palestinians living in Palestine for a few hundred years. The Japanese didn't take over a, say, Chinese island and settle there (though they tried in Manchuria during WWII).
2. None of the other states you mention has anything resembling the ethno-state character of Israel. There is nothing in the Italian constitution that is even slightly aimed at making sure a non-Italian can't become president (even if not explicitly prohibiting it)[0]. Italy doesn't recognize the right of ethnic Italians to automatically become citizens by moving to Italy.
[0] though it's rare, there are well known cases of nation states having presidents of minority ethnicity. For example, right now in the middle of war, the president of Ukraine is himself Jewish. Also right now, Klaus Iohannis, of German ethnicity, is president of Romania. Peru has had an ethnically Japanese president (Alberto Fujimori) and more recently the son of an Austrian immigrant.
> The Naturalization Act of 1790 (1 Stat. 103, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character", thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, slaves, free black people and later Asians, although free black people were allowed citizenship at the state level in a number of states.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism#United_State...
For what it's worth Israel could go the federation route - basically, have three largely autonomous federal states, one for Jewish Israel, one for the West Bank and one for Gaza, with the federal government only taking care of finances, energy, water and security, and the rest - including passports and diplomatic relations - be done by the individual states.
Also, a federal government that is not in charge of diplomatic relationships is no government at all.
“another real problem remains unresolved in Israel: The visceral hatred and contempt that many “Ashkenazi” or European-origin Israelis have for “Mizrahi” Jews, and the way that the media exacerbates racial stereotypes by repeating them without self-critique.”
1. https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/15/israel-must-banish-its...
> What the fuck?
Israel was founded as a state for the Jewish people, so they could have some political self-determination, which given their history, doesn't seem like a such bad thing. It would entirely subvert that if it became a state controlled by other kinds of people, like all other states in the world.
Let's say Muslim Arabs become the majority in Israel, wouldn't it then become the kind of place that the ancestors of the Jewish Israelis fled from (for good reason)? There are also literally dozens of other Muslim Arab states, so the transmogrification of Israel into another would be a net-negative for diversity.
IMHO the comparisons of Israel to apartheid break down because the motivations are different. IIRC, the South African whites wanted to maintain dominance over a big subject population, the Jewish Israelis just want a state for themselves.
The Jews didn't exactly jump from Judea as opposed to getting pushed:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina
Certainly there was a diaspora before that, but the (Second) Temple was still a large focus, but that ended as well:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)
Certainly there were always Jews (and Christians, and later Muslims) in that geographic area, but to say that Jews particularly 'deserve' exclusive governing of that area may be stretching it given the two thousand years of history since they last had 'exclusivity' to it.
> IMHO the comparisons of Israel to apartheid break down because the motivations are different. IIRC, the South African whites wanted to maintain dominance over a big subject population, the Jewish Israelis just want a state for themselves.
A reasonable desire. The Poles also wanted a state for themselves for a while, and finally got one (after a messy twentieth century), but would it be okay for them to say "no blacks or Arabs" in their naturalization/citizenship laws? (Versus the perhaps 'simpler' idea of "must be fluent in Polish and be familiar with Polish culture/history".)
Palestinians also want a state of their own, but Israel is (according to some) squatting on their land:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine
Don't both have a right (?) to exist? Why does Israel deny to others what it wants for itself?
> The Jews didn't exactly jump from Judea as opposed to getting pushed:
That's not what I had in mind. I was thinking of more recent history, like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/opinion/last-jew-afghanis...
> Dozens of countries around the world have had their Last Jews. The Libyan city of Tripoli was, astonishingly, one-quarter Jewish in 1941; today the entire country is Jew-free. After the fall of Muammar el-Qaddafi, who banished the country’s lingering Jews during his reign, a lone Libyan Jew came back to Tripoli and took down a concrete wall sealing the city’s one remaining synagogue. But he was soon forced to flee, having been warned that an antisemitic mob was coming for his head.
----
> Certainly there were always Jews (and Christians, and later Muslims) in that geographic area, but to say that Jews particularly 'deserve' exclusive governing of that area may be stretching it given the two thousand years of history since they last had 'exclusivity' to it.
I don't think it's a stretch. There's more to it than just historical tenancy.
> Palestinians also want a state of their own, but Israel is (according to some) squatting on their land:
Sure, but it would be yet another Middle Eastern Arab Muslim state. Why erase something unique for that?
> Palestinians also want a state of their own, but Israel is (according to some) squatting on their land:
> Don't both have a right (?) to exist? Why does Israel deny to others what it wants for itself?
Unfortunately, the world doesn't divide into nice neat categories that don't conflict.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Law_for_the_Pro...
>What the fuck?
Why all the outrage? Should France not maintain it's French character?
The only other countries on Earth today that have anything similar to this type of language and laws are Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Russia (which both offer passports to foreign nationals of hungarian/russian ethnicity, for example).
Don't agree with the headline or the law.
They aren't banning spouses, they are banning naturalization of them.
I don't know what other visas are applicable for Israel, in Japan if you get married you can get a spouse visa(1,3,5 year) but you won't be able to get a permanent residency right away.
1) Journalists at Reuters suck, 2) It's standard clickbait to drive traffic in, or 3) Journalists at Reuters purposedly oriented their article.
Whatever the explanation is for this debacle of an article, I don't like it.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-right-wing-party...
it allows Israel's favored demographic to maintain a majority.
It's in the article.
> Proponents say the law helps ensure Israel's security and maintains its "Jewish character".
> "The State of Israel is Jewish and so it will remain," said Simcha Rothman of the far-right Religious Zionism party, a member of the opposition who brought the law forward with Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked.
Rationale 1: Terrorists are constantly looking for ways to get in a country, if the marriage background checks are proven not to be secure then it makes sense to pause it until a solution is found indeed.
Rationale 2: Jewish hate Arabs is the explanation for everything.
And I'm saying it would have been great if the article provided enough information so that we could make our own opinion based on more facts.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/months-after-citizenship-law-f...
In fact Nigeria recognizes the right of Nigerians to bring their spouse to live with them in Nigeria and even offers Nigerian citizenship. Nigeria is actually more advanced than many western countries in this respect.