Page 23 of 55 FirstFirst ... 13212223242533 ... LastLast
Results 661 to 690 of 1634

Thread: Zionuts

  1. #661

  2. #662
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/....2A213A384CC214

    Israel Revokes Citizenship of Hundreds of Negev Bedouin, Leaving Them Stateless
    Some were citizens for 40 years, served in the army and paid their taxes, but had their status canceled with a single keystroke and no further explanation


    Dozens of people – men and women, young and old – crowd into a big tent in the unrecognized village of Bir Hadaj. Some hold documents in plastic bags while others clutch tattered envelopes. What brought them to this village south of Be’er Sheva in Israel’s Negev desert was that the Population, Immigration and Border Authority had revoked their citizenship, claiming that it had been awarded to them in error.

    Judging by the increasing number of complaints piling up in recent months, this appears to be a widespread phenomenon among the Negev’s Bedouin residents. Hundreds if not thousands of them are losing their citizenship due to “erroneous registration.” This is the reason they get from the Interior Ministry, with no further details or explanation.

    Fifty-year-old Salim al-Dantiri from Bir Hadaj has been unsuccessfully trying to obtain Israeli citizenship for years. He doesn’t understand why Israel won’t grant it to him; his father served in the Israel Defense Forces. “Sometimes they say there was a mistake in my parents’ registration dozens of years ago. Is that our fault?” asks al-Dantiri. He’s not the only one, but many of those who came to the meeting were reluctant to identify themselves out of concern that it might hurt them in their interactions with the Population Authority. Others have already given up hope.

    [...]

    Lawmaker Aida Touma-Suliman of the Join List has received many appeals in recent months from people who have been stripped of their Israeli citizenship. Attorney Sausan Zahar from the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel recently appealed to Interior Minister Arye Dery and to Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, asking them to cancel this policy.

    According to her petition, these sweeping citizenship cancellations has been going on at least since 2010. When Bedouin citizens come to Interior Ministry offices in Be’er Sheva to take care of routine matters such as changing their address, obtaining a birth certificate or registering names, the Population Authority examines their status, as well as that of their parents and grandparents, going back to the early days of the state.

    In many cases, the clerk tells them that their Israeli citizenship had been granted in error. On the spot, he changes their status from citizen to resident and issues them a new document. People who lose their citizenship are given no explanation and no opportunity to appeal. Instead, the clerk suggests that they submit a request and start the process of obtaining citizenship from scratch, as if they were newcomers to Israel.

    Many, caught by surprise and without legal advice, don’t know what to do. Some submit a request for citizenship while others simply give up in despair. Zahar says that many requests are denied due to missing documents, a criminal record (not a valid reason for denying citizenship) or even the applicant’s inability to speak Hebrew. Many Bedouin women who have been stripped of citizenship fall into the latter category. One such woman filed an appeal over the cancellation of her citizenship due to an alleged error. When it turned out that her Hebrew was lacking, her appeal was rejected. She remains stateless.

    Adalah’s petition to the interior minister shows that individuals who have been citizens for 20, 30 or even 40 years, some of whom served in the army, who voted and paid their taxes, had clerks cancel their status with a keystroke. As permanent residents, they can vote in local elections but cannot run for office, vote in national elections or run for the Knesset. They receive social benefits such as medical insurance and national insurance payments, but cannot receive Israeli passports. If they are out of the country for prolonged periods of time, they can also lose their permanent residency, and unlike citizens, they cannot automatically transfer their status to their children.

    Among those who remain without Israeli citizenship are people born in Israel to parents who are Israeli citizens. There are families in which one child is a citizen while another is a permanent resident. Some of those affected were stripped of their citizenship when they tried to renew their passports to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, a mandatory tenet of Islam and something they now cannot do.

    Registration during British Mandate
    The Knesset’s Interior and Environment Committee held a discussion on the issue last year, following an accumulation of requests to reinstate citizenship. During it, Interior Ministry officials confirmed that such a policy exists: When Bedouin citizens come to the ministry’s offices, clerks check the population registry for records of their parents and grandparents between 1948 and 1952.

    Perhaps these years were not chosen by chance. Between the founding of the state in 1948 and the passage of the Citizenship Law in 1952, many Arabs could not register with the population authority since their communities were governed by a military administration. This included areas in the Negev which had a high concentration of Bedouin residents after 1948. In many cases, checking the records of an individual's grandparents entails looking at their citizenship during the British Mandate – a time when Israeli citizenship did not even exist.

    After last year's Knesset discussion, the Interior Ministry was asked to check the extent of the phenomenon and its legality and to then update the Interior Committee. The head of the ministry's citizenship department, Ronen Yerushalmi, submitted the findings to the committee's chairman, David Amsalem (Likud), in September 2016. Entitled “Erroneous Registration of Negev Residents,” the report said that “the extent of the problem could involve up to 2,600 people with Israeli citizenship, who could lose it due to erroneous registration by the Interior Ministry.” It added that since individual cases had not been examined, the data was not precise and the numbers could even be higher.

    During an earlier meeting of the committee in December 2015, the committee's legal counsel, Gilad Keren, expressed doubts regarding the legality of this process: “The citizenship law refers to cases in which citizenship was obtained based on false details, namely under more serious circumstances, not when the state has made a mistake. It refers to people giving false information before obtaining their citizenship. The law allows the interior minister to revoke citizenship only if less than three years have passed since it was granted. After that a court needs to intervene in order to revoke it. I therefore don’t understand how, when a person has been a citizen for 20 years and the state makes a mistake, that person’s status is changed.”

    Adalah’s appeal to the interior minister and the attorney general demands an immediate halt to the citizenship cancellation policy. Zahar argued that the people affected by it don’t even have the right to a hearing before their Israeli citizenship is taken away from them. In addition to infringing on their right to citizenship, she wrote, the policy blatantly infringes on their right to equality. It is discriminatory based on nationality, since no Jewish citizen has had his citizenship revoked due to a mistake in his parents' or grandparents' registration under the Law of Return.

    “I’m afraid that what has been exposed is only the tip of the iceberg and what hasn’t been revealed yet is even more serious,” says Touma-Suliman. She says that if Dery and Mendelblit do not resolve the issue soon, it will go to the High Court of Justice. “There is no justification for this policy,” she says. “The ministry is blatantly violating the law. It’s unacceptable that in one family living under one roof, half the children are citizens while the other half are residents or people with indeterminate status.”

    Haaretz approached several former senior officials at the Interior Ministry and the Population Authority, including the agency's head until 2010, Yaakov Ganot, and Amnon Ben-Ami, its director until recently. Former Interior Minister Eli Ben-Yishai, who held the post most recently in 2013, said that if a decision had been made to revoke the citizenship of Negev Bedouin, “I don’t know about it and don’t remember holding discussions regarding this issue during my tenure.”

    The Population Authority said in response that the cases mentioned above were not instances of revoked citizenship but ones of past registration mistakes, in which people had been registered as citizens but were not. It said now was the time to fix the problem, adding that the ministry held a discussion on the issue, the minister had taken a decision and the Knesset's Interior Committee had been informed. It said that “attempts are being made to address this problem legally in a manner that won’t affect these individuals' status in Israel.” The Population Authority also said the attorney general would be handling the appeal filed by Adalah.

    Dery’s office insisted that the cases were absolutely not instances of citizenship being revoked but were instead situations of arranging legal status. “The minister has directed officials at the Population and Immigration Authority to handle the process involving this group of people in the easiest and simplest way possible. Minister Dery asked them to find any way possible to shorten the procedure in an attempt to avoid imposing any hardship on them,” said the office.

    The attorney general's office gave no response, but officials there confirmed the details of the matter, telling Zahar that the issue had been handed over to attorney Dina Zilber, Mendelblit's deputy responsible for public administration affairs.
    Oops.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  3. #663
    Hearts and minds.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  4. #664
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.811374

    Is he trying to say that antisemitism is driving the corruption investigation?
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  5. #665
    My question is, what do the anti-Semitic meme-makers think when they see this being posted by the son of the Prime Minister of Israel?

  6. #666
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    My question is, what do the anti-Semitic meme-makers think when they see this being posted by the son of the Prime Minister of Israel?
    I gotta say, with the corruption investigations really taking off, Netanyahu and his crowd have really become unmoored from reality. Should be interesting to see what happens if/when an indictment is handed down - there is no obvious leader/winner who will emerge with a strong mandate in the ensuing elections.

    Also, for Loki: I find it encouraging that one of the two cases that is likely to bring about Netanyahu's loss of power is tied to his monkeying with press coverage. Illiberal states generally don't have PMs unseated for such behavior (or run of the mill corruption, for that matter).
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  7. #667
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/w...democracy.html

    Wig, are these people overreacting, too?
    Hope is the denial of reality

  8. #668
    Loki, you don't get it. I have never said that what Netanyahu has tried to do isn't problematic. I've just said that Israeli civil society has prevented the worst from coming to pass. Rivlin's speech was - rightly - a critique of efforts by Netanyahu to wiggle out of corruption investigations that have been gaining steam for some time. But, critically, those efforts have so far failed, with the judiciary, his own attorney general, and much of the public opposed to the move. Most of his other problematic initiatives have been similarly foiled.

    If - if - Netanyahu is actually successful at anything - I'd start to worry. In the meantime, it sure looks like Netanyahu has something to worry about; amusingly, it looks like the most pedestrian of the investigations against him may be the one that causes his downfall. The bigger cases involving corruption involving the procurement of German subs and quid pro quos with Israel's main daily to limit negative coverage - which are both far more concerning - have yet to yield the kind of pressure Netanyahu is now experiencing.

    Do you honestly believe that a civil society that roundly defeats his illiberal impulses and that is likely to charge him (and has successfully imprisoned multiple high ranking members of the government, including a president and PM) is so weak that it will succumb to illiberalism? Israel's public sphere is poisonous, fractured, and deeply troubled, but it is still surprisingly resilient.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  9. #669
    You really underestimate the importance of maintaining norms.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  10. #670
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  11. #671
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  12. #672
    Ok. . . but they're not being asked to rule on the laws of Kuwait, they're being asked to uphold the laws of Germany which the airline was operating in at the time. There is no sovereign immunity at play here even if it's a state airline. This was a commercial and contractual arrangement made in Germany. Also, I find it rather difficult to believe that German discrimination law doesn't touch on things like national origin or citizenship. I damn well know it's not just the three classes listed in the article.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  13. #673
    The ways of Zionuts are mysterious.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  14. #674
    Senior Member Flixy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    The Netherlands
    Posts
    6,435
    Laws in planes are a bit odd anyway. Don't the laws apply from the country where the plane is registered?
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  15. #675
    If the act of discrimination occurred in and/or involved a decision in Germany--which was arguably the case--this will be reversed on appeal. There are technical loopholes but if such a loophole is successfully exploited this time it will swiftly be closed.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  16. #676
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Amsterdam/Istanbul
    Posts
    12,312
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    If the act of discrimination occurred in and/or involved a decision in Germany--which was arguably the case--this will be reversed on appeal. There are technical loopholes but if such a loophole is successfully exploited this time it will swiftly be closed.
    The article makes me wonder about two things ; does Kuwait airlines have direct flights from Frankfurt to Bangkok and are Israeli citizens allowed to travel to Kuwait?

    If the answer to both questions is no, then it's unlikely that any court will be overruling this verdict as the airline merely did what every airline flying to Europe does. And that would be making certain they aren't transporting individuals without permission to travel to the destination of the airplane. For starters because that comes with a hefty fine and the obligation to take that individual back to where he came from.
    Congratulations America

  17. #677
    Transit in Kuwait City, which would have provided adequate justification as you say. However, the ruling referred to the law prohibiting Kuwaiti firms from entering into any contracts with Israeli citizens, which is unreasonable and has in the past not survived legal challenges eg. in US and Switzerland. The argument that nationality is not a protected class in and of itself is not entirely false but in this case there is an overlap with other forms of unacceptable discrimination.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  18. #678
    That said, I can't help but laugh at the thought of how people will react when they become aware of the parallels with the US travel ban.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  19. #679
    Quote Originally Posted by Flixy View Post
    Laws in planes are a bit odd anyway. Don't the laws apply from the country where the plane is registered?
    When it's in flight that's the case IIRC. This was not a plane in flight though.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  20. #680
    So, will there be an official announcement this week that the US embassy will be moved to Jerusalem? Bets on the eventual death-toll?
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  21. #681
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    So, will there be an official announcement this week that the US embassy will be moved to Jerusalem? Bets on the eventual death-toll?
    It almost sounds like you feel the embassy shouldn't move because you are worried about what terrorists will do.

  22. #682
    I have to confess, I have little interest in the pretense that absolute fiction is reality. The fact is Jerusalem has been the Israeli capital and their seat of government for over 60 years, even before they actually got hold of the east side. It's probably past time the rest of the world stopped pretending.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  23. #683
    We created an international crisis...for precisely nothing.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  24. #684
    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    We created an international crisis...for precisely nothing.
    Well that's just not true--the rapture has been brought that much closer.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  25. #685
    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    It almost sounds like you feel the embassy shouldn't move because you are worried about what terrorists will do.
    Quote Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy View Post
    I have to confess, I have little interest in the pretense that absolute fiction is reality. The fact is Jerusalem has been the Israeli capital and their seat of government for over 60 years, even before they actually got hold of the east side. It's probably past time the rest of the world stopped pretending.
    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    We created an international crisis...for precisely nothing.
    Interestingly, I'm kinda in agreement with each of these positions... kinda.

    LF is right that this whole thing has been a diplomatic farce. Just like the polite fiction that China and Taiwan are a single country, or any number of other little white lies, it's obvious that Jerusalem has been Israel's capital since nearly the very beginning of the country, long before the 1967 war. And any reasonable person would tell you that in any final status agreement with the Palestinians, fully 2/3 of the city (at a minimum) will continue to be in Israeli hands, and will continue to be Israel's capital. So it's fundamentally silly that (a) we're all burying our heads in the sand and shouting 'LA LA LA WE CAN'T HEAR YOU, ISRAEL'S CAPITAL IS TEL AVIV' and (b) someone who dares to state the obvious is somehow breaking a taboo and obviously out to start WWIII.

    That being said, we all know that the very best case scenario is that the Arab and Muslim worlds will be incensed and retaliate diplomatically, with very likely scenarios involving widespread violence, attacks on Western institutions, and a further hardening of the already moribund peace process. We saw what happened with a few cartoons in obscure European publications; I don't doubt that the reaction to this has the potential to be far greater. And yet, Lewk is right that we shouldn't refrain from acknowledging reality (especially an ethically defensible reality) just because other people are going to go crazy and try to burn down some embassies and blow up a few cafes - down that road is a very dark future.

    Which brings me to a toned down version of Loki's position: Where's the percentage? There's nothing wrong with acknowledging reality, no, but there's also nothing wrong with leaving the status quo as is. Is there a special advantage the US is expecting to gain from this move? Will it somehow help revive the peace process? Will it allow them a quid pro quo from Israel on an issue of major import to the US (say, building outside of settlement blocs)? In the absence of a clear advantage to be gained, it seems like a poor risk/benefit ratio.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  26. #686
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  27. #687
    Hope is the denial of reality

  28. #688
    Not really Zionuts, but it was an interesting read and not worth a thread of its own:

    https://www.politico.com/interactive...investigation/

    But this is kinda Zionutty. The foreign press is the Palestinians' single greatest asset, and endangering them is not the smartest move:

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/police...-a-journalist/
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  29. #689
    It hasn't really had an impact in the past. BBC World News Hour seems to almost never use the word "Israel".

  30. #690
    Lmao at the hilariously ominous threats from Trump & Haley.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •