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Comment by 1337shadow | Hacker News Reader

This article fails to explain the reasons for which proponents believe that marriage with Palestinians would threaten security or Jewish character of the country, failing the supposed neutrality of the article or compromising the supposed quality of journalists in charge of investigating this.

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If you start dating and marrying “the enemy” suddenly they’re not the enemy anymore. You start to understand them and treat them as an equal. As more mixing happens, opinion will start to shift and the state will start to see some resistance to the disturbing and inhuman way they treat Palestinians. The state doesn’t want to have to start treating Palestinian’s like equals. This law may not make marriage between the two groups illegal but it makes it unworkable.

Interesting conspiracy theory, but the actual rationale has been shared in another comment: it's an overreaction to a number of events involving marrying terrorists to get them in the country. About "the enemy", one side is constantly attacking the other, but you might be surprised to know which is which - or, you believe you have justifications. Anyway, my conspiracy theory is that this article purposely omits contextualisation so to drive the opinion to believe that's it's a free act of pure hate, which makes it fall into the "propaganda" category rather than the "journalism" category. And I'm not even supporting this stupid bill, but I've had more than enough of this kind of jorunlasmism which purpose is apparently to tell us how to think... IMHO this jurnolims is not a solution: it's a problem. Again, not discussing the silly law, discussing about the article in itself.

The actual rationale was outright given by the politicians who enacted this law:

it allows Israel's favored demographic to maintain a majority.

It's in the article.

I'm sorry, I'm non native, I've read the article again and didn't find that, can I ask you to quote that please?

Fourth paragraph.

> 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.

That does not explain why they believe marriages threaten its "jewish character", it does not explain why they think that. If it's about demographics, then the article should show graphics or at least some number projections so that we can build an opinion.

Wow! So marrying Palestinians is banned because… those people are actually marrying terrorists.

Apparently, we have two opposed rationales.

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.

“There’s no need to shirk from the essence of this law. It is one of the tools to ensure a Jewish majority in Israel, which is the nation-state of the Jewish people. Our goal is for there to be a Jewish majority,” Lapid tweeted shortly before the law lapsed in early July. [1]

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/months-after-citizenship-law-f...

Thanks! considering this I'm now wondering: I fill Nigeria with Norvegians, is it still Nigeria or an extension of Norway? I believe Nigerians have the right to have their country that doesn't look like an extension of another.

The verb “Fill” is so dehumanizing. This law is about banning Arab Israelis from bringing their spouse to live with them in Israel and to have a family life together.

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.

Interesting, but not answering the question.

Then please enlighten us, what's the rationale?

Exactly my question.

There have been cases of Israeli citizens marrying terrorists to get them into the country. Though this law is an overreaction. It's one thing to do background checks and impose a waiting period on Palestinian spouses, but a total ban is ridiculous.

Thanks, at least we have an idea what this law is an overreaction of, I think telling a bit about that would have made the reuters article on-par with the journalistic quality that I expect from my standards.

"Israel’s parliament on Thursday passed a law denying naturalization to Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens"

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.

Right ... So we here are opposing theories about this:

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.

But one does not need citizenship to explode a bomb. How is the law going to help here?

Plenty of people in other countries feel the same way about their native population, I don't see why Israel gets a pass.

Exactly why I'm asking why proponents believe they do: it's not in the article. Sorry if this wasn't clear, I'm non native. I'm also asking why it's not in the article. I don't mind the downvotes, but I'd love an answer ;)

I think it’s just about making their lives miserable so they go live somewhere else.

That is a probability, but seems too simple, and is in complete contradiction with all the other stuff Israel has done so far make the life of arabic Israelians enjoyable there, such as hiring arab police officers, the entry of an Arab political party—the Islamist United Arab List, or Ra’am—into government for the first time has signaled that progress could be in the offing, having the same rights as Jewish Israelis...

From what I have seen with my Israeli friends (so caveat, sample size of 2 and one of them was quite a long time ago) there seem to be a serious case of collective cognitive dissonance. It’s not that they really want to hurt the Arabs (though some of them definitely do), it’s just that they don’t see this sort of things as bad. An example is the borders walls and checkpoints. Or bombing Gaza.

You're not wrong.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-right-wing-party...

Paying them isn't quite the same as making them miserable, at the same time, it's the kind of proposals that a right-wing party, which I don't believe is specific to Israel, and as such, does not explain that law ... Nonetheless, thanks for the info!

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