2010-10-30

Watch: As Israel Slides Toward Fascism, Citizens and Supporters Swear Their Loyalty

Vatic Note:   You know, this needs few words.   You can see the danger yourself when you watch this and remember,  THESE ARE AMERICANS.  Make your own decision about how you feel about this.

Watch: As Israel Slides Toward Fascism, Citizens and Supporters Swear Their Loyalty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsWDcFiPo2s&feature=player_embedded
http://www.alternet.org/story/148201
September 16, 2010

Swearing a loyalty oath to Israel as an ethnic state is gaining legitimacy; a video produced by the authors shows the willingness of Israeli residents to pledge allegiance. (VN:  I believe these were American dual Israeli citizens who want to eventually migrate to Israel and thus the willingness to take the oath while still Americans, voting in American elections sending our wealth and children to die for Israel, is that right? No, if they are who they said they were, its treason)

September 16, 2010
The Israeli Knesset is debating a bill proposed by David Rotem of the extreme right Yisrael Beiteinu party that would require all Israeli citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state." This bill is targeted at increasing pressure on the 20 percent of Israelis who are Palestinian citizens, while forcing the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority who reject the legitimacy of any state not based on Jewish biblical law to accept Zionism. If passed in its proposed form, citizens unwilling to take the loyalty oath would be at risk of losing citizenship.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsWDcFiPo2s&feature=player_embedded

Israeli leaders committed to a classic secular political Zionist platform have always fought at all costs to guard Israel's "Jewish character," even while they reveal their inability to properly define exactly what it is. The loyalty oath and the push for a two-state solution are the most profound examples of the insecurity that has roiled beneath the surface in Jewish Israeli society since the state's inception. Without a Jewish majority exhibiting clear legal and political dominance over the non-Jewish or non-Zionist minority, the Zionist movement becomes meaningless. So as the Palestinian-Israeli minority actively resists its dispossession and the ultra-Orthodox stubbornly reject the concept of a Jewish state, the Israeli establishment feels increasingly compelled to seek draconian measures to salvage its vision of Zionism.

Watch the video: Feeling the Loyalty to the Jewish State of Israel -- (article continues below)

The loyalty oath was one of the main platform issues for Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's far-right Yisrael Beitenu party when it campaigned in 2009. "No citizenship without loyalty," was among Lieberman's most effective campaign slogans. (His other slogan was "Only Lieberman speaks Arabic.") It helped guide his party to an astonishing third place, with 15 of the 120 seats in Israeli Parliament. The draft bill currently debated in the Parliament would allow the Interior Ministry to strip even native Israelis of their nationality if they refused to swear allegiance to the Jewish state and "its symbols and values," and failed to profess their willingness to perform military service. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has expressed support for Yisrael Beiteinu's loyalty crusade.

After the proposed law failed its first reading in the Knesset due to opposition from a handful of liberal members of the ruling Likud party, Yisrael Beiteinu released the following statement: "Yisrael Beitenu will continue to act for Israel's basis as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and will fight against disloyalty and the negative exploitation of Israeli democracy." In July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet has approved a similar bill requiring all new citizens to take an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state. The measure would make attaining citizenship nearly impossible for Palestinians residing inside Israel.



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