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Israeli Knesset Approves Biometric Database Law
Lord Duran writes "The Israeli Knesset approved a bill that will require every Israeli citizen to submit a visual scan of their face and a biometric scan of their fingerprints to a national database. I, for one, fail to see how this is anything but evil. TFA mentions the Israeli census was breached — I'd like to point out, for comparison, that it's still freely available on your peer-to-peer file sharing network of choice."
You should get your facts right.
Israel never moved the border in the way you describe, rockets were shot at us (I'm an Israeli) over two borders, Lebanon and Gaza. Ask the UN, and they will tell you we retreated long ago (that is, 9 years for Lebanon, 4 for Gaza) to the border, as it was since 1948 (though we do invade from time to time, I don't like when people shoot at me).
In 1948, the Israeli armed forces tried to drive Arabs out of territories they controlled, the Arab forces (armies of neighboring countries) urged them to leave (to make their war easier) and in general there was a war (so, death and destruction all around). Although the actions by Israeli forces were problematic, you should remember two points:
* There was no organized transfer, otherwise places like Jaffa and Haifa would be cleared of Arabs as well.
* Things must be considered in comparison to the norms of those days, as you don't judge your founding fathers for denying other people their rights (slaves). In the forties transfer solutions in an attempt to create countries of a single nation were common and accepted. In Europe you can look at the way Poland and Czechoslovakia treated their German citizens, in Asia you can look at India and Pakistan.
As for the place of the Irgun in Israeli history and politics, I can tell you they held very little influence at the time they acted, and for 25 more years. They reached power long after they stop using terror and became just a political organization.
As for body counts, your argument seem to be flawed, for several reasons:
* You can't (in most cases) tell if a dead Palestinian is a civilian, they don't wear uniforms.
* What about the dead combatants? If the Palestinians kill 10 civilians a month, no soldiers, and we kill 20 civilians among 200 combatants, you'll have us as the terrorists?
* What does your argument say about any NATO member? They all killed more civilians in Afghanistan then they had died in terror attacks... So I guess NATO is a terror organization.
Regarding the UN resolutions, Israel didn't violate that many resolutions of the security council (we did violate some, for example we gather intelligence in Lebanese sky), and the general assembly has no power in the UN, as we know. And although we point from time to time at other countries, I can't think of any one but Lebanon (which has worse record then we have) and Iran (which is probably the country that violated the most).
So no, Israel in not above reproach, nobody is, but it is also not automatically guilty of everything you might think of, and guilt should be proved with actual facts.
No such state existed when Israel was created. Are you perhaps confusing it with the province of the Ottoman empire that shared the same name?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Nice ad hominem attack, but actually everything I said is true, there is documentation in the form of letters that Irgun was ready to deal with the Nazis had the Nazis won, follow my link to mainstream lefty Counterpunch for more details, and the war crimes Israel committed against Gaza are well documented in the Goldstone report I linked to. Whether or not we should defund Israel is of course a subjective opinion and as such is not falsifiable but rather a subjective opinion you either accept, or don't accept. My *opinion* is that Israel has committed enough crimes against humanity that American citizens ought to stop funding their government with our tax dollars. I feel the same BTW about our own neo-con war criminals of both Republican and Democrat variety.
Thus in sum, I am the one here who has linked to sources Zionist apologist, and the one who also knows the ontological difference between verifiable facts (provided) and opinions (discussed) and you? Not so much... That was seem weak soup Hasbara, try again, this time with linked *facts* and feeling, m'k?
On the plus side at least you had the guts to respond as weak and undocumented as your response was, the cowardly Zionist tool who marked me down OTOH is cowardly.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?