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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."
How does this not get a Troll rating?
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.
I should've probably been a little more specific in describing a terrorist: "freedom fighter" is a smoke screen used by Hamas. What they really mean by it is area free of any jewish presence. Throwing the jews into the see is still as relevant as ever in the arab world today. Otherwise, i agree with your post.
No the numbers are correct you just took them out of context: there are 5.5 million jews living in Israel surrounded by 300 million arabs whose slogan is "Yitbach al yahud" - slaughter the jew. If there was a one to one correspondence between the number of casualties on both sides then the arabs would've achieved their agenda a long time ago.
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."
Thanks for stating the actual fact of the matter about Israel's use of terrorism to steal the Palestinian's land, something that is almost never discussed in overtly pro Zionist public school history courses or our heavily biased mainstream media. Fortunately it's getting harder for Zionists to hide the truth now that we have the web to do research about the continuous history of human rights abuses from the state of Israel's origin in terror and collaboration with the Nazis:
:(
http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html
(Don't be shocked Zionism is a racist ideology just like Nazi fascism, birds of a feather...) To Israel's war crimes continue to this day against the displaced people of Palestine as is documented in the Goldstone report:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/01/un-us-block-goldstone-report-must-not-defer-justice
The ongoing crimes against humanity by the government of Israel require two responses IMO:
1. That good hearted Jews who are appalled by Israel's ongoing crimes follow the good example of fellow Jews Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, and Norman Finkelstein and denounce Israel's crimes against humanity loudly and clearly and to call out fellow Jews when critics of Israel's crimes are falsely labeled "anti-Semetic."
2. That the U.S. government should cut off all aid to Israel until it complies *completely* with U.N. resolution 242 requiring Israel to return to it's recognized under international law border at the green line. Annexing territory after military victory as Israel has done and continues to do with expanding the settlements is a crime against humanity under international law. IMO our government ought not to fund war criminals whether it be our own unauthorized by Congress and thus unconstitutional foreign wars, or Israel's egregious crimes against humanity that are so cruel and destabilizing to the possibility world peace.
I wish I could say I was shocked by Israel keeping a database using facial recognition software of all it's citizens, but sadly I think Israel has descended nearly to the depths of the racist police police state that nearly unjustly destroyed the Jews as a people in the Holocaust. Nietzsche said if you stare in the depths of the abyss long enough you become that abyss something sadly the leadership of Israel has not learned.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
You've raised an important issue: that is democracy vs judaism.
Or, more accurately, basic human decency vs ethnic nationalism.
People can still be Jewish (for whatever the constantly evolving definition of "Jewish" happens to be at a particular point in time) without an "Israel".