Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatototoo99 | Hacker News Reader

If Israel is to remain a Jewish ethnostate, it must not be a full democracy. It's a simple demographic fact.

This law was passed specifically to allow Aryeh Dery to ignore the terms of his plea agreement and serve as a minister. It's not related to the Jewish-Arab demographic balance (which, within the 67 borders, is about 85-15).

That's technically true but also myopic. This was an explicit step to weaken the judiciary, strengthen the hard right and also indicted PM. This move is not explicitly anti-arab but it greatly empowers anti-arab leaders at the expense of democratic fairness. And rather severely at that. This was a canary. The next bill be worse and the one after worse again because they know they can't be stopped.

As the current government is making abundantly clear, 67 borders are irrelevant. There are roughly the same number of Jewish and Arab people within the territory Israel controls.

In the past the Israeli justice has been reasonably independent of the government, as can be seen from this long list where Aryeh Dery figures prominently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_public_officia...

Even if the law passed now might have only the tactical goal of promoting Aryeh Dery once more, it certainly will allow the government to do unsanctioned in the future other things that could be much more harmful.

This law is intended to prevent the judiciary from finding settlements unreasonable. Aryeh Dery is the cover story.

Exactly. The right wingers plan to annex the territories without giving the Palestinians citizenship. It was literally in their election platform!

OP was being disingenuous at best, as if the country could be brought to a standstill over a minor legislative change to allow one guy into Parliament

Isn't the entire point of Israel to remain a Jewish ethnostate? I'm not sure, but something happened a few decades ago that really soured them on the idea of not being in absolute control of the government of the state in which they reside.

Sort of unreasonable, really. I'm sure the Palestinians would be more than gracious if they ever achieved significant power.

It's wild that a two-state solution was widely accepted 30 years ago, and now the Overton window has moved so much that Israel occupying the entirety of Palestine and killing or displacing all the Arab population is no big deal.

I sympathize with the desire for a Jewish state but the United States has supported them to the hilt in human rights abuses, war crimes and expansionism that aren't related to that goal.

US support was always predicated on "they're on our side against the Soviets, and their enemies are definitely siding with them". Even then, it was always strained (they painted over their plane's markings and bombed one of our ships, ffs).

Ignoring the recent shenanigans, the Russians are a non-issue and the Israelis aren't much helping with that anyway. I have no idea why support continues. It's difficult to formulate an explanation that doesn't come off as whackjob conspiracy-theorist.

As for a "two-state solution"... it was never much of a solution for the Israelis. The other state soon outnumbers them, and they're right back to where they were in the 1960s, but with fewer options and less advantage. Same but for details with a one-state solution. If they ever pretended to accept the two-state solution, it was only to string things along as much as possible. I'm not sure why anyone ever thought it was genuine.

Was that something living in a state that decided it should be a different kind of ethnostate? This might be a controversial take, but I think ethnostates in general lead to poor outcomes.

Sure, it seems like ethnostates seem like they lead to poor outcomes. But you're also saying that to criticize an ethnicity who found out what the outcomes were for non-ethnostates, so it falls a little flat. And since they're the ones you have to convince, not me, you might need to work on your argument a bit.

I know you're being sarcastic but I think that same something really soured the world on there being any ethnostates at all, anywhere.

There has never been a "full democracy". Democracy means rule by the people. Every democracy that has existed has been some kind of representative sample filtered through a select group. That select group does the work of making biased or prejudicial decisions, as they have the powers of rhetoric and overriding the rabble. The judicial section of a democracy has traditionally been limited as well (if it wasn't, there'd be no point to a legislative branch)

Thoughts on Switzerland?

The representatives + public initiative/referendum system seems like a "full demoracy", or as close as is practically possible.

I don't disagree, but I don't understand how this contradicts grandparent poster's point. While it's not always the rule, people usually vote for those representatives that they believe will more likely make decisions aligned with their preferences.

Once they've voted for whomever made the best election campaign, can now do as they please, sans checks and balances that exist in a modern democratic country.

Once this government has been established, they started pushing their reform, which has caused many to switch sides. Recent polls show that the coalition wouldn't win an election, if it would be held today.

What do you say to the now majority of the people that don't approve of the government's actions? too bad that you made that mistake of trusting those guys?

In a truly democratic country, the elected government should have power, but it must be held in check by powerful institutions like the supreme court.

Why should it remain a Jewish ethonostate? Countries and cultures change. They should embrace diversity and reap the benefits. They should follow Europe's lead.

And why should they follow anyone's lead? They are not Europe. Why should they embrace diversity? Diversity has a separate set of problems still being dealt with.

They were founded on a jewish identity. Changing is not a possibility. Too many wars and conflicts have baked them to remain an ethnostate.

Because that's what the voters voted for?

europe seems far worse off.. what are the benefits to be reaped?

I am unsure about the goals, but this is what the rule by the seld-elected judiciary was. When Israel's courts aligned themselves too far to the left and along the racial divide, they became incompatible with Israel's current demographics and majority-elected government. The catch is, the Israeli right wing may swing too far just as well.

Israel is no ethnostate. It is ridiculous to assume that to be the case even with the context of the Jewish religion. It probably is less ethnically lopsided than the vast majority of other countries.

I have no dog in this fight but the precise breakdown of population doesn’t decide an enthnostate. It’s about who does and does not have power and what they do with it. Take the “nation-state” law passed in 2018:

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...

> The law does three big things:

> It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”

> It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”

> It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”

I don’t know enough to know the precise qualification for an ethnostate vs not but that first item clearly indicates that Israel is at minimum a country legally stratified by ethnicity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com