Comments on: Living Together

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:43:50 +0000

@Mad Zionist:
But those on the left don’t believe in Jewish rule in those places you name.
Now can we criticise the racism of the right?

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:58:03 +0000

Sam – I’m a Zionist.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:45:16 +0000

Alex: I did not come to Zion to live in a box; I came here to be an Israeli.

What was the problem with being simply British?

By: Mad Zionist

Mad Zionist — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:59:56 +0000

The Hareidi politicos preaching a return to the walled off ghetto can be almost as vile and noxious as the Achshav Shalom activists... almost. Read this if you want to see the converse of what happens when the arabs and the radical left align to ban religious Jews from obtaining housing. Of course, those on the left who believe with all their heart, all their soul, and all their being that creating a Judenrein Judea, Judenrein Samaria, Judenrein Gaza, Judenrein East Jerusalem, and Judenrein Golan is righteous have no moral leg to stand on when it comes to fighting segregationist practices among the Shtetlists.

By: Alex Stein

Alex Stein — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:37:50 +0000

Thanks Chaim – and good to see you on here!

By: Chaim

Chaim — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:27:24 +0000

Hi Alex,
I’ll start with the easy part–you’re obviously right to find what Atias said vile. But I think there are two separate things he violates that it’s important to distinguish: integration of citizens has some history as a Zionist goal, and you’re right to say he violates that, but I think it’s worse that he’s violating a core liberal principle of freedom of domicile for a segregationist purpose. The state’s commitment to freedom of domicile means there’s a limit to how far it can go in imposing integration, and there’d be something illiberal in the state’s saying to, say the ultra-Orthodox of Meah She’arim in J’m, ” you must allow x # of secular Israelis to live among you for the sake of promoting integration.” But if that’s illiberal, then so too, obviously, is government _encouragement_ of segregation. There’s a certain degree of illiberalism for the sake of _integration_ that I personally don’t think is so bad. But one might expect a government minister in a Zionist state that is also a liberal democracy, even if he didn’t share the Zionist goal of integration, to at least be committed to the liberal principle of state neutrality. I won’t say I’m shocked to see that a Shas minister has turned out to have neither of those commitments, but his _being_ a minister is, when you think about it, crazy.

By: Gert

Gert — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:40:43 +0000

And you must forgive this ‘anti-Zionist vulture’ here for being amused at the rise of the Religious Right in Israel. We are, after all, told frequently that the root cause of the problem if Muslim intransigence and that their particular copy of the Holy Scrolls is incompatible with the existence of the Zionist Entity…

I’ve always believed mortal enemies end up mirroring each other. Well, looking at some factions of the Ultimate Far Religious Zionist Right, you can see that these aren’t really much meeker than the worst elements of Hamas.

The dreaded Press TV recently aired another doc called ‘Rise of the Israeli Right’. Granted that it wasn’t very good because it really concentrated on true fanatics (I can’t even remember the name of the group, led by Baruch Marzel), they were a sight to behold with their toy Kalashnikovs, emulating Baruch Goldstein…

By: Gert

Gert — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:23:59 +0000

Ariel Atias: ‘Apartheid we can believe in!’

It’s no small danger: an Israel full of Mad Zionist types…

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:23:41 +0000

“Religious and secular people are quite capable of living side-by-side, and we do not need Mr Atlas to set the bar for integration so low.”

Only when the seculars are the dominant group. “Mutual respect” almost always means secular people respecting the religious. The problem is that democracy and religion don’t go well together. Democracy is about granting rights, religion is about taking them away.

By: amira de hoth

amira de hoth — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:40:48 +0000

“I did not come to Zion to live in a box”

Speak for yourself.

I came here thanks to a chance meeting with Nefesh b’Nefesh’s homeless outreach programme, and they made all the necessary arrangements for me to leave the squalor of my park bench in Euston far behind me, finding me accommodation in a charming, pied-a-terre made out of a recycled Supersol cardboard box, conveniently located on the central reservation of the Ayalon, a stone’s throw from my office on the verge next to the sign for the Kibbutz Galuyot exit.

As my old mate Wild Warren Street Warren used to say, ‘if you will it, it is no meths-induced psychosis’