Israel could be bringing back the death penalty – but only for Palestinians | Hacker News Reader

Israel could be bringing back the death penalty – but only for Palestinians

cbc.ca

43 pointsnrhrjrjrjtntbt32 comments

Open articleView on HN

Israeli government officials wearing golden noose lapel pins is…quite the fashion statement.

"are we the baddies?"

How is this not apartheid?

Who said it wasn't except the ones doing it?

It is

It is not apartheid because the law is not actually making this distinction. The article does three things, and the title ... the title just does not cover the contents:

1) a law is proposed to make it possible to get the death sentence for the worst terrorism offenses. The law does not specify the religion of the terrorist as a factor, though obviously it would predictably affect one group much more than another.

2) a far-right politician with very bad taste in Jewellery claims that no Jew would ever commit terrorism. Incidentally, this politician has been convicted many times by the Israeli legal system. And then he got elected again.

Imho, these two statements do not correctly combine to the sensationalized title of the article.

3) the article points out that this is not the first time a law like this is proposed in Israel, for the same exact reason: the PA uses funds from the UN to pay terrorists and their families, literally per Jew killed. This is why there are claims that the UN pays for terrorists to hunt Jews, because that statement is literally true, just not directly. Palestinians swear in English they'll stop this practice on a regular basis since at least 1995. In arabic they shout on TV they'll never stop doing this. And then they don't stop doing that.

Note: these pay-per-slay payments are referred to by most media, even the BBC, as the "social safety net" of Palestine. Reality: can't work? (try to) kill some Jews, and the Palestinian government will pay your family a living wage based on how much damage you did.

> It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap (lit. 'boss-ship' or 'boss-hood'), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population.[4] Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order.

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

Israeli settlers living in the West Bank fall under a different legal code than the non-Israeli citizens living there. Israelis fall under Israel's civilian legal code while the occupied non-citizens fall under a harsher military occupation system without due process. That system of segregation and separated legal codes is the very nature of apartheid. One class of people has less protections than the other without a means of redress.

That distinction in practical terms is that people in the citizen status are rarely held to account for violent crimes against the people in the non-citizen class while the people in the non-citizen class are severely punished for extremely minor offenses. For example there are cases were IDF soldiers commit first degree homicide on video and yet still receive lighter penalties than minors of the non-citizen class for throwing stones.

By the way, the US used to have a less formalized system of apartheid system as well called separate but equal, but it was eliminated in 1954.

> Israelis fall under Israel's civilian legal code while the occupied non-citizens fall under a harsher military occupation system without due process.

Every country treats citizens and non-citizens differently. Apartheid is about discrimination based on race, not based on citizenship.

You are incorrectly commingling the concepts of legal status and legal system. People can have different status assignments and still fall under the same legal system, which is how most countries work, but not Israel.

Sure it may be somewhat unusual; that doesn’t make it apartheid. The legal system one falls under is still based on citizenship, not race.

US service members sometimes fall under a different legal system; that’s likewise not apartheid because they’re not a race.

It does make it apartheid when one group imposes separate legal systems to intentionally advantage one party over another. That is the most essential nature behind the term apartheid. In both cases of South Africa and Israel the primary motivation is to transfer land from the disadvantaged party without their consent.

It’s like saying that border control with Mexico is apartheid because the main motivation is racism against Mexicans. There’s a grain of truth (racism exists), but it’s not really the reason we have border control, and even if it was it still wouldn’t be apartheid.

To see why Israel ended up with the current system, we have to consider a bunch of possible alternatives (eg giving citizenship to all residents), each of which runs into legal and/or security problems.

Its not like that. The US does not occupy Mexico in any capacity.

Wow, if this is how you think, you must really hate Palestine and even Islam ... after all that is exactly what Islam as a religion proscribes, and the Palestine government applies those laws and makes them worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi, note the laws on ownership and inheritance. That is definitely taking advantage of one party. And, of course, it's muslims taking advantage.

But Palestine, of course, has actually gone further, and has done exactly what you say makes a system apartheid, alter laws to transfer land from a disadvantaged party without consent:

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

So now we pretend you see your mistake and you don't just change what was never your opinion on apartheid, just to keep hating Jews? I mean I expect you to call me a racist for pointing out that you're making up excuses for hating Jews, but I keep getting told to expect the best from people.

Please don’t try to distract by changing the subject.

Secondly, I hate on Israel all the time but I have never said anything remotely negative about Jewish persons or the Jewish religion.

So you're grooving on the Palestinian discriminatory laws he cited but sidestepping that whole issue because it's inconvenient? Or, let me guess, what-about-ism?

I'm not changing the subject, I just pointed out that your description of apartheid really fits the people you claim are victims here. Somehow I think you do not wish to discuss what your definition means about them. Because, well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: you checked ... and found that I'm right about at the very least the contents and existence of those laws. And of course that those laws, both the Palestinian ones and the islamic laws are racist and frankly inhumane. That they both violate human rights and are far worse than anything you've mentioned ... and that they are directly related to the subject.

So death penalty for any Palestinians defending themselves against jewish settlers on the west bank. Kinda already is but now it will be the law.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com