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Israeli High Court Decides In Favor of Arab Parties |
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 by Michael Weiss, January 21, 2009 |
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A likely outcome, and a win for democracy:
The High Court of Justice overturned Wednesday the Central Elections Committee’s decision to disqualify the Arab parties, Balad and United Arab List-Ta’al from taking part in the next Knesset race.
Now what's Hamas been up to since the ceasefire? Gene at Harry's Place explains:
According to a Reuters report the Hamas internal security service has been instructed to track down collaborators and “hit them hard”.
The move has drawn accusations from Fatah that its members are being targeted. Naturally as they were clearly the ones who fired rockets into Israel.
Another report in the Jeusalem Post said Hamas has now rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists. It quotes Fatah members and eyewitnesses saying the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers.
The JP also says that Hamas has also renewed house arrest orders that were issued against thousands of Fatah officials and activists in the Gaza Strip shortly after the military operation started.
Ehab al-Ghsain, spokesman of the Hamas Interior Ministry, without singling out Fatah members by name, told Reuters: “They [the internal security service] arrested dozens of collaborators who attempted to strike the resistance by giving information to the occupation about the fighters,” he said, using a Hamas term for Israel, whose 22-day offensive devastated the Gaza Strip.
A statement issued by Fatah in Gaza said that since fighting ended in Gaza Hamas had carried out a number of attacks against its members. These have apparently included summary “executions and throwing the bodies in the rubble”.
A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added.
The Fatah official in Ramallah said that, apart from being baseless, the allegations were aimed at paving the way for a ruthless Hamas attack on Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip.
“They were afraid to confront the Israeli army and many Hamas militiamen even ran away during the fighting,” he said. “Hamas is now venting its anger and frustration against our Fatah members there.”
Another Fatah activist in Gaza City told the Post that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah,” he said. “Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?”
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Milk and Honey-ite
How diverse can the coverage be from Sky News to BBC and then the Jerusalem Post as seen and read on 21st January. The confusion of views can only be for the best for the west and Palestinian people in the majority.
Ismail
It's very nice that the Court overturned the Elections Commission's blatantly racist finding, but what does it say about Israeli society that the Commission produced such a horror in the first place, and what does it say that Likud, Labor and Kadima tacitly went along with Lieberman's attempted putsch? Put another way, suppose some Idaho White Power nitwits get Jewish candidates disqualified from running for political office. Although the Supreme Court ultimately overturns the outrage, both Dems and Repubs remain silent as the infamy wends its way through the legal system. What's the story here-"American democracy is vibrant and healthy" or "Remarkably, the major political parties went along with an attempt to disenfranchise an entire people"?
And what's your take on the fact that the Court, during the same session, rejected a petition brought by numerous Israeli civil rights group to evacuate the wounded from Gaza, now completely unequipped to deal with its numerous casualties, and to restore electricity to Gaza? The Court took this decision without even hearing the State's argument!
We're Zionists. We let no flicker of decency go unsmothered.
Isaac
Based on the context of the petition Ismail describes (and the information he omits), it sounds like the dismissal might have been made on account of a technicality or reasoning that could have possibly been published. These things tend to happen in societies that comport with rule of law, as opposed to those governed by rule of, you know... passion!
I am unfamiliar with this suit. But one should be honest if they're going to bring this sort of thing up and convey the details that matter. It's one thing to defame Israeli society, even if for merely reacting the same way that any other society under the sort of habitual threats to its identity, security and political rights that Israel is expected to be subjected to would respond. But to defame its system of law should require a higher burden. Technical details matter here in a way that they don't in the selective narratives that are standard fare among highly politicized polemicists and ranting demogogues - even if for no other reason than the fact that they would help such specialists make their own cases in more credible ways.
Ismail
"Based on the context of the petition Ismail describes (and the information he omits), it sounds like the dismissal might have been made on account of a technicality or reasoning that could have possibly been published."
Translation: "I know nothing whatsoever about the petition in question. Being unaware of the specifics of this case, of course, will not keep me from speculating that the particulars favor my viewpoint, although I repeat that I'm completely ignorant of any relevant details. Because I have an unrequited mancrush on him, I await Ismail's every comment so that I may, by tacking on one of my barely coherent replies, feel if only for a moment that I am fulfilled and complete and alive..."
Ismail
PS-Bravo on the new avatar, Michael. Makes young Werther look like Andrew Dice Clay.
Michael Weiss
Isaac
You are as imaginative in guessing my motives as you apparently are of both Israel's legal system and the dismissal, whose particulars you still refuse to divulge. (This, despite the fact that you are the one, having brought up the case, upon whom it is incumbent to provide said details... or at least a link... or at least - Ok. Now I'm starting to sound as desperate as... guess who).
Ismail: For future reference, people who take issue with things you say don't necessarily have a mancrush on you. But if it makes you feel better about being incapable of refuting their objections or criticisms, then you are free to think so. ;-)
Noah Pollak
I'm not so sanguine, Mike.
How is it a win for democracy to include in elections parties that want to destroy the very democratic system in which they participate?
Ismail
"How is it a win for democracy to include in elections parties that want to destroy the very democratic system in which they participate? "
Please cite the party plank, speech, white paper, journal article, napkin scribble, sleep murmur or pillow talk in which any Arab party member suggests destroying a democratic system. And don't bother including in that category the system of ethnic privilege that currently holds sway in Israel, and which the Arab parties rightly challenge.
Alcove-One
Arabs parties throughout the Arab world have such a brillant track record of liberal democracy. I am sure the actual liberal democracy that Israel provides Israeli-Arabs who are the most liberated Arabs in the region is valued and will be maintained regardless of their sympathies for Hamas, the Hizbos and most other tyrants surrounding them. Considering how Hamas and others treat Israeli collaborators, the Israeli-Arabs had better maintain a democracy if they want to survive.