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Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member
First time accepted submitter WorldPiece writes "More accurately, first non-European full member. This comes with some opposition from groups pushing to boycott Israel academia in response to the Israeli government's policies. 'It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations. This agreement enriches us scientifically and is an important step in that direction,' CERN's Director General Rolf Heuer, a German physicist, told the signing ceremony."
Politics have no business in science.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'm surprised the Elders of Zion allowed this to happen.
Isreal is non-european ... it's definitely not african, it's not american, its not australian, and i have a hunch it's non-asian ...
did we just discover a new continent ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Don't Israel have quite a considerable amount of tech industries these days? Be nice to get some official input from that.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
... joins any major international body in the 80's during their Apartheid ?...
Just wondering what the reaction would have been....
Just like then, I think BDS in a reasonnable mean to push the parties to make peace in the Middle-East...
For advertising their part as being saviors of Jews from the evil fascists, the European left wing parties and their supporters are surprisingly antisemitic, and gravitate towards even more drastic antisemitic movements, such as the European islamists and Palestinian leadership. Outside the Islamic world there aren't many political groups that would have made so much in order to discriminate israeli and the Jews. It's a real surprise to me that this really affects decisions as high and far from political harangue as CERN.
Israel has strong ties by both Europe and western culture, is run by a real democracy supporting free speech and it has high level of scientific expertise, interest in scientific inquiry and capable researchers. Palestinians, on the other hand have none of these, because their leadership doesn't value them. Why the decisions of Israel's membership in CERN should depend on Palestinians' and their supporters opinions, instead of Israel's capabilities?
"It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations."
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
Get off my launchpad!
If a country were judged by the behaviour of its fascist leaders, would the western world have so many economical and cultural ties with China?
If it is not the academic elite that are to place pressure on Israeli politics, then who? Hit them where it hurts.
Politics IS a science. And science has politics. I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
For a military state such as Israel, it is impressive that every now and then they come up with innovations; not very many, but they do come up with them.
You do know that Israel has the highest number of patents per capita, right?
A good chunk of Israeli innovation comes in part because of the military, not in spite of it. Some major private sector industries here build on technological expertise originating with military projects (imaging and radio communications come to mind).
Per capita, Israeli innovation hardly lags, but thanks for the backhanded compliment.
I won't thank you for telling me I deserve a chance, but, hey, I'll admit that you deserve one too. Posting AC because I'm normally just a lurker here...
Patents = innovation.
So patenting a linked list with two pointers is a sign of innovation?
http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false
Yes and no. There are very good reasons for keeping certain scientific results "secret". Even Einstein did that. Handing a criminal and inhumane state like Israel results without a filter in between is irresponsible.
All that aside: What Israel is doing in an institution, which has "European" in its name, is beyond questionable.
Instead, most of what I see is volgarity
So there are Russians on slashdot. Big deal - get over it. Also: learn to spell, troll.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wow, what a condescending reply.
Israel is not a "military state" in the sense that the military controls politics. It's a pretty dynamic democracy with a highly-diverse set of viewpoints. It also has a very educated labour force and a high number of high-tech companies and startups.
Israel has long been known for innovation. Just google "Israeli Innovation".
Those who propose BDS on the spurious basis of "Israeli Apartheid [sic]" are blind to reality, either out of ignorance or malice. While Israel is not perfect and its Arab citizens do suffer discrimination, it's nowhere near the level of South African Apartheid, and those same Arab citizens have more civil rights in Israel than in any Arab country.
Agreed, patents isn't a good measure.
Perhaps the nobel prices is a better one. From true Israelis it's not that many. But if you count their foreign supporters it's quite impressive.
Funny.
I suggest you take a look at, e.g, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation. Here's one paragraph (the source is backed by reference):
"How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources -- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?[4] The Economist notes that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world."
Or, e.g., browse the list that ranks the top-100 computer science departments in the world and observe where and how many times the Israeli flag appears in the list. (FYI, Israel has only 6 universities.)
etc. etc.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the billions of dollars that pour in to Israel each year as welfare from the U.S.
What's more interesting to me than Israel joining specifically, is the "first non-European member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research". Is Israel simply an exception, or will CERN be moving to less of a European focus in the future? For example, Turkey has applied for membership; will they eventually join? Could other in-the-region-of-Europe states like Egypt join?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources -- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?"
With help from the US, and draconian law enforcement?
Do you even think that Israel would exist today without US backup?
Plus, the list you are mentioning (partially) and the concept of a "startup-up company" are economic indexes, and we all know how much they reflect the truth- You are missing the point of my post; so what if you get a "hit" on one of those? That doesn't cast away any dark age veils, and doesn't disentangle politics from research. If anything, it messes them up even more.
Politicians are greedy, and want to have control on everything. Including economy and research. And AFAIK, even more so in Israel, because of the military background of prominent state officials.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
And hopefully the CERN scientists won't be lying in wait with knives and bats to attack.
Seriously, the guns only came out after the "activists" captured and nearly killed several Israelis who were using minimal force.
Please don't feed the troll.
Israel is a science, technology and engineering powerhouse. A little research turned up that Israel ranks fourth in the world in scientific activity as measured by the number of scientific publications per million citizens and that Israel's percentage of the total number of scientific articles published worldwide is almost 10 times higher than its percentage of the world's population. (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-ranks-fourth-in-the-world-in-scientific-activity-study-finds-1.4034). It's no wonder that CERN would be more than happy to welcome them as a member.
Military inspired innovations aren't anything new. We are communicating via the Internet which was in part started by a US DoD project. One could argue all technology is military based from the philosophical stand point, but why digress.
What I fail to comprehend, at least feign to fail to comprehend is why not allow Palestinians to be part of the UN. Why? This forces them into a statehood with consequences for their actions. It would force elements like Hamas to conform or frankly to be killed/imprisoned as criminals, instead of being part of some chaotic rogue element that can slink back into the wood work. It would open the door for the UN to put the hammer to unruly elements such as again Hamas because the legitimate leadership of the Palestinians is weak.
Two reasons why I think this is opposed. One it means the US welfare check would diminish or stop altogether if there is UN enforced and supervised peace. War is a profitable thing, we should know, we have more than our fair share of war profiteers here. Our warmongers and your warmongers have been in bed together for a LONG TIME. Now of course this has been necessary due to the nature of how the "homeland" has been returned to, taking it by force has been problematic. I think God knew this and is why he told you guys not to do that, but who's listening to God these days, we sure as hell aren't here, so who are we to complain?
Secondly, the UN is a tricky thing and if you have too many enemies, allowing the Palestinians in could mean trouble if they are just going to be dicks about everything, and rabble rouse with a new forum to exploit. If that is the case, fuck 'em. But if they are earnestly trying to just survive and be peaceful neighbors and not get the shit kicked out of them, it would be great to help them out. Especially if you can bump off those that refuse to evolve and just want to be militant punks about everything, via sanctioned UN actions.
Why bitch about this? It's not antisemitism; we are going broke. And as we are going broke, we are starting to turn into the modern Nazis here. Except instead of putting Jews in concentration camps, it will be minorities, the poor, the disabled, illegal aliens, etc. Multinational corporations have raped the ecology of the American ecology. Frankly put, the foundation of America, the American worker has been reamed in the butt by opportunistic trade policies that have been implemented so that said multinational corporations can exploit super cheap foreign labor and dump the products on our markets.
We are taking a nose dive because this kind of thinking is unsustainable unless we just fully evolve into fascism, and we are goosestepping our way there quickly. Being a friend, I am advising to invest in peace with your neighbors. It would help to disarm the hawks and let us focus on sound economic policies that will make it difficult for us to turn into a full blown fascist war machine which the entire world would just fucking hate. I can understand reaching out to Europe because we seem a bit flaky at the moment. Obama may seem like a punk, but he's got his hands full with keeping the 4th Reich from happening during or after his watch.
Lets face it we have the world problems we have for two reasons. One we will suck dick for oil. We have propped up dickheads to keep the oil flowing and we haven't cared what they do to the populations just as long as the oil has flowed. We have created fat cats who lord over their extremely poor populations and they have come to resent the shit out of our supporting them. We have propagated the hell out of the region with weapons, but who hasn't?
Secondly we have backed you guys unquestioningly. We have gave money and weapons to you for decades now, not giving one shit what you do with it as long as you don't start WW3. Yes, you took the land by force. There was some fucked up shit that has happened to the Palestinians, and that is why they are so burning pissed off. We understand, we though had enough sense to kill off the indigenous peopl
Take the Red Pill.
You are right. The 3$ billions per year Israel receives from the U.S. is ~1% of Israel's yearly budget. Importantly, most of the U.S. aid comes in the form of military equipment (that is, the actual funds flow directly to the pockets of U.S. military industry). It has nothing to do with start-ups and CS departments.
Gaza != Israel
And if the scientists were armed and agressively awaiting to attack any Israely they see, then they have all the right to nuke them out once they enter the area under their control.
Respectfully, it's clear you don't really know anything about Israeli exact science academia and high-tech industry, both of which rely very little on government money; most of their funding comes from international competitive research funds and international investors, respectively.
If anything, Israel's army is a driving force for innovation.
Bottom line: your thesis about Israel is nice. It's just unrelated to reality.
Yes, at least if we remove all outside influence from the area and left all the countries to their own devices. The Israelis would slaughter the competition.
Since scientists aren't ones to bring weapons to try to beat up and kill soldiers, I would expect not.
Don't. Feed. The. Trolls! Is that so hard?
Just let the mods deal with it.
UEFA (soccer) and they participate in the Eurovision song contest.
Turkey is in a similiar scenario.
Nothing earth-shattering except I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
If Gaza is not Israel, then why did Israel have commandos with machine guns rappel onto a flotilla boat bringing food to people in Gaza? As far as the "area under their control", the area in the case of the flotilla raid was international waters. You know, international waters, like where the USS Liberty was when Israel killed 34 of its crew. It's funny how people sailing on a ship with food in international waters are the ones "agressively awaiting to attack any Israely they see", while the commandos rappelling onto the boat with machine guns (the "any Israelys (sic) they see" I guess) are not the aggressive ones. The Israeli commandos were armed with machine guns, the flotilla passengers were armed with nothing but pieces of wood from the mast and knives they grabbed from the kitchen.
I have the feeling you're an anti-semite or want to legalize gambling or something
For a military state such as Israel, it is impressive that every now and then they come up with innovations; not very many, but they do come up with them.
I can cite two clear counter-examples in tech. If you posted on a computer that using an Intel chip newer than an Pentium IV, the technology came from Intel's Israel development center. If you've played a game using a MS Kinect, that also came from Israel.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Do you even think that Israel would exist today without US backup?
Well, it's impossible to answer "what if" questions, but Israel didn't receive substantial assistance from the US until after the 1967 war and it survived quite nicely from 1948-1967.
Right. Because all <strike>Jews</strike> Israelis like to slaughter people. They enjoy it: they are different than you and me in this respect. Oh, and the above statement isn't raciest at all! It's purely based on facts! It's a shame we didn't solve this problem altogether 70 years ago.
and join the NPT.
Just the systematic purging of Arabs in Jerusalem (by refusing permits to Arabs to modify or build new houses) though is not something you would expect to find in any true developed democracy conscious of it's minorities.
You can wonder if a democracy can operate properly at all if it's main issues are related to security
The fact that most of Israel's neighbours are fucked up countries as well (although Jordan doesn't seem bad imho and we can hopefully see positive things developing in Egypt) doesn't plead in any way that Israel is a democratic country. It'd be like comparing the US to Mexico and conclude that the US doesn't seem to have a lot of gun fights
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
I agree about Arab citizens (even though there are disturbing calls from even the mainstream parties to strip them of their citizenship or trade land where they live). People like their foreign minister who openly hates Arab citizens would have no place in mainstream American or European politics. However by apartheid people usually mean the currently implemented de-facto one state solution that includes the disputed territories. Millions of Arabs living their are limited in their basic civil and economic rights not unlike blacks of late Apartheid South Africa.
And judging by Israeli plans for a two state solution their vision of a future Palestinian state is similar to South Africa's Bantustans, a caricature of a state designed to strip blacks South African's of their citizenship and provide whites in power with cheap controlled labor.
I've been following the politics of ME for years, it's quite clear that Israel believes that they can keep the current status quo forever while bullshitting the rest of the world with half-hearted peace talks where they behave with barely hidden contempt for their negotiation partners. But the way things have been developing I think they are wrong and neither the International community nor their Arab neighbors are going to tolerate the stalling much longer.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Taking the ship? That would be way to expensive, as there is a direct Easyjet flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv. They wish rappelling Israeli commandos were the worst that would happen.
What a poetic post, maybe we should translate it to Aramaic, put it to music, and sing it once a year?
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
CERN was founded in the post second world war period. Part of its aim was to build bridges between nations THROUGH science since it was well recognised that science provides a common goal to work towards and that scientists are usually pretty open minded about most things. It certainly worked for me - as a Brit I now have many friends and colleagues scattered around the globe from a huge variety of different national, cultural and religious backgrounds thanks to CERN.
Politics have no business in science.
Accuracy does though - Israel is becoming and associate member NOT a full member of CERN. There is a difference!
It's funny that with so many overwhelming abuses on human rights occuring around the world (sudan, congo, burma, chad, somailia, sri lanka, just to name a few) you're pretending to stop ignoring atrocities. This sort of language is useful political propaganda, but pretending israel is the same as nazi germany is demonstrating either extreme bias or extreme ignorance.
in a land where people live peacefully, legitimacy is derived from the consent of the will of the people. in a land where people are in conflict, legitimacy is derived from force
it would be ideal if the land in question were legitimately ruled by what people consent to. but the people who live there are all too happy to reach for bombs and guns, and so they have decided that the way of the bomb and the gun is what rules their lands. blaming outsiders is a convenient excuse for one's own failures. outsiders would have no rhyme or reason to get involved if one side or the other weren't asking outsiders to get involved: there'd be no way in, all sides would repulse the outsiders. but in a land where calling in foreign powers is perfectly acceptable because hatred of your neighbor because they are sunni, or kurd, or whatever, is more important than regional solidarity, is a land that will never rule itself
the best thing about the Arab Spring is that those who spearheaded the overthrow of deeply unpopular governments insisted on no violence. because they knew this was all the excuse the government needed to respond with it's own violence. in this way, they won their own country
now the question remains if the discipline of this path of no violence can be adhered to. unfortunately, the middle east is fractured by ancient vendettas and conflicts, between religions and tribes. it is very hard for such a land to be ruled by peace. too many are hellbent on blood as the only answer, to conflicts which are best left aside
the arab world will never have peace, growth, and prosperity until the arab world itself, regardless of what outsiders do, put aside their own internal conflicts
what is legitimate in the arab world? ideally, what arabs want, decided peacefully. it is up to arabs themselves to reach for peace themselves, as the Arab Spring shows, that is the way they free themselves form oppression, foreign, yes, but mostly domestic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Israel has all that tech but they can't figure out how to create a smoke screen without dumping white phosphorus on children?
The only interest Israel wants with CERN is better job security for spies.
Right. Because we all know that if you were a Jew or Israeli, you could easily walk into Israel. But if you walked into Saudi Arabia, you'd automatically be arrested and tossed into prison to be tortured. If you were a women, you'd be tortured and raped. And if we were in egypt and you were a reporter forget the possibility of being safe. You'd be raped, beaten and raped some more.
Antisemitism is the norm in the middle east and has been for the last 2000 years, because it's the norm in Islam. And if you can't figure out that islam is a political system as in and as much a religious system you're doomed at understanding what's going on.
Om, nomnomnom...
Really? What does this barely coherent diatribe have to do with my rather well thought out reply to the GP? Next time if you want to say something to me please try to address the actual points presented.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
This is a joke, right? I can't imagine a country that's more European than Israel.
My "dispute" is calling Israel a democracy. "Arabs in the west bank are not Israeli citizens, they're a people who live in disputed territories" Yes, that's the point, Arabs in the west bank do not get to vote or have Israeli citizenship. Ergo, Israel is not a democracy.
Every $ that you don't have to spend on military gives you an extra $ that you can spend on something else.(CS departments etc)
Funny how intangible money can be.
Israel to become Associate Member State of CERN
Geneva 16 September 2011. CERN Director General Rolf Heuer and Israeli Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations Office and
other International Organizations in Geneva, H.E. Mr. Aharon Leshno-Yaar today signed a document admitting Israel to CERN Associate Membership, subject to
ratification by the Knesset. Following ratification, Israel will become an Associate Member of CERN for a minimum period of 24 months. Following this period,
CERN Council will decide on the admission of Israel to full Membership, taking into account the recommendations of a task force to be appointed for this purpose.
Israel has a long-standing relationship with CERN, and has been an Observer at the CERN Council since 1991.
“It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations. This agreement enriches us scientifically, and is an important step in that direction,” said CERN
Director General Rolf Heuer. “I am very pleased that CERN’s relationship with Israel is moving to a higher level.”
“I am very happy with this decision,” said Eliezer Rabinovici, Professor and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
and Israel’s scientific observer to Council. “I view it as recognition of the Israeli contributions, both scientific and technological to CERN over the years. The Israeli
scientific community is looking forward to the continuation of this joint adventure.”
Israel has a strong tradition in both experimental and theoretical particle physics, with a major involvement in the OPAL experiment at CERN’s flagship
accelerator through the 1990s, the Large Electron Positron collider. Israel’s accession to Observer status in 1991 followed an agreement to contribute funds to the
CERN budget to support Israeli scientists, as well as providing equipment to CERN. The Israeli fund also contributed to LEP running, supported LHC construction
and R&D for future accelerators. During its association with CERN, Israel has also supported Palestinian students at CERN,
notably sending mixed Israeli-Palestinian contingents to CERN’s summer student programme.
In 2009, Israel was accepted as a special Observer State, with the right to attend restricted Council sessions for discussions of LHC matters. Israel currently has
a strong involvement in the ATLAS experiment, and participates in a number of other experiments at CERN.
If you shut yourself off from criticism, you are willfully ignorant. Be so, if you wish, but don't call yourself "intellectual" or an academic.
Funny, I could say the same to you.
Right, politics aren't intrinsically linked to sharing of energy and arms research. I'm sure they'll cooperate, collaborate, and exchange with Iran too, as soon as a regime change happens to happen. But Netanyahu's "Nuclearly Ambiguous" Israel is a perfectly stable, sensible ally to trade nuclear research with. All in the name of science, of course.
Well then, where are the Egyptian start-ups?
I'm a Volga German, you insensitive clod!
http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2010/10/montreal-activists-launch-campus.html
send + more == money?
Do you even think that Israel would exist today without US backup?
I think a better question, given the track record of Arab-Israeli wars, would be, "do you even think that Arab nations surrounding Israel would exist today without Soviet backup"?
I think you're reading into GP's words what he didn't say. The military record of IDF against Arab armies in a fair fight can quite concisely be summed up as "slaughter of the competition" - it was that one-sided - without having any negative connotations.
Germany in the 30's made a concerted effort to rid German physics of Jewish influence., See how well it worked out for them.
I wonder how science and creationism fit into the jews religious perspective?
Is Israel going to pay them, or do they get a free pass like usual?
Ban them everywhere until the agree to act like international citizens and not an apartheid race based society.
A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
What if some of that science is used to kill more Palestinians? Or used to clone European passports? Or used to invade its neighbours? Or used to subvert US politics?
I don't want Israel involved in European affairs, anymore than I want my passport data made available to them, it is none of their business.
Great they will be able to make a neutron gun to fire on Palestinians from space. Use that old reactor that does nothing put produce plutonium and is still running 20 years past its useby date and was built using stolen technology. Perhaps find a god partial and claim ownership based on an existing patent on god. Wouldn't it have been better to BDS the god particle?
Thats a really good point!!! Especially when its all amerikkkan taxpayer money which then allows such silly statistics to be concocted suggesting that the ashkeNAZIs are all WUNDERKINDS. Its like saying "look at what the jews have done and made the desert bloom, arabs couldnt do that", omitting the fact that the Israeli occupiers have actually cut off the Palestinians water! For heavens sake people, UAE is blooming too, oh wait, they must have hired jews to do it.
This is about nuclear physics, and non-signatory to the NPT . take a byte out of VANUNU why dont you??????
Surely the membership of CERN should have had the wherewithal to consider the plight of their fellow scientist VANUNU, and asked for his release prior to openly sharing data with a nuclear bbully. Oh wait just a moment, theyre not even bound by START or the Nuke NPT, so i guess CERNS all kosher.
And if you can't figure out that islam is a political system as in and as much a religious system you're doomed at understanding what's going on.
Wow... [roll eyes]
This will come as news to... pretty much anyone who knows more than what they hear on right wing talk radio. Despite what you may believe, Islam is no more a "political system" than is say Christianity. Not that politics isn't influenced by both, but to argue that "religion = political system" is to display a stunning lack of understanding of both. Such a generalization is almost certain to fit nowhere in reality. Are there Islamic states? Sure, but again, that doesn't really tell you much about the politics in those states. In point of fact, their politics are driven far more by ancient tribal dynamics than by some mythical unified "Church of Islam". Do some reading. Irshad Manji's "The Trouble With Islam" would be a good place to start.
"The war you don't see" by John Pilger http://www.fluxradio.org/thewar.zip After watching it, I think it is enough to make anyone barf and the corruption of the BBC
I guess someone hasn't been paying attention to what's been going on in SE-Asia and Europe and therefore the realities of the world. And in turn, are actually "right wing" radio. Well I guess living in ignorance is just a fine dandy thing, or the that a modern system can come crashing down in the fantasy system of tribal dynamics.
I suppose you could always travel the world, which might do you better.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'll let you think about why what I said, and what the GP said. And how it relates. Simply because you didn't understand it. Doesn't mean it doesn't apply. You know, much like how your inane post which had no coherence to the thread at all.
Om, nomnomnom...
Now everything will be owned by the SENMACE corporations. The laws of the nations will be used to generate from the public commons within the CERN communities many discoveries paid for by the taxing paying people of the other nations that freely participate there, which discoveries will end up victim to copyright or patent packages to be sold off to the "profit making chests" of the feudal lord SENMACE.
Monopolies [copyright, patent, and license of the pieces of the public commons] created from thin air, by a rule of law made by one of the nations have allowed a very few to accumulate and own all and to quash other independent competition of whatever kind simply by call on the nation that made the law to enforce it.
Humanity has made its life in patent prison.
I guess someone hasn't been paying attention to what's been going on in SE-Asia and Europe and therefore the realities of the world..
Well, thank you for verifying the degree of your misunderstanding. Would care to name the specifics and remove all doubt?
Don't. Feed. The. Trolls! Is that so hard?
Just let the mods deal with it.
C'mon. It IS pretty hard.
And look at you, posting as AC.
before these threads turn into all-out cries of "Kill the perfidious Jews!"
The fact that most of Israel's neighbours are fucked up countries as well (although Jordan doesn't seem bad imho and we can hopefully see positive things developing in Egypt) doesn't plead in any way that Israel is a democratic country. It'd be like comparing the US to Mexico and conclude that the US doesn't seem to have a lot of gun fights
Actually, that analogy speaks against your point, rather than for it. Human behaviour is a spectrum. If you ask a Mexican whether the US has a lot of gun violence, the answer would be quite different than if you had asked a Canadian. If the Mexican government were criticizing the US for having excessive gun violence, and demanding that they do something about it, we'd laugh at their hypocrisy. We can only really judge the behaviour of a given state as it relates to other states. So it's perfectly valid to point out that Israel is largely democratic, and provides more freedom for it's Arab citizens than any Arab state. It's ridiculous for us to take Arab states seriously when they complain about human-rights violations.
We CAN criticize certain Israeli policies, but we do so because we hold ourselves to a higher standard and expect them to do better; we don't need to legitimize states who are worse than Israel by pretending that theyâ(TM)ve suddenly started to care about human rights or the plight of Palestinians. And it's important to realize that no state exists in a vacuum - the behaviour of it's neighbours is a massive factor in the policies which Israel adopts. It's asinine to expect the same standards from a nation surrounded by hostile states as we do from one which has a good relationship with it's neighbours, and has had no serious threats for decades.
This will come as news to... pretty much anyone who knows more than what they hear on right wing talk radio. Despite what you may believe, Islam is no more a "political system" than is say Christianity.
lol. Yes, Christianity is a political system. If you don't realize this, your history teachers have failed you completely. The main difference is that, today, Christianity generally acts on politics as an outside influence, while Islam is very much THE political system in many Islamic nations.