Israel => fundamentalist shithole

[Glocksman]

Sundown laws were largely in the Midwest and West, not "the South", Yona. Southern institutional rascism was more overt, in that they didn't kick every colored out and say "we don't have any race problems in this town!" The difference is such that if you ask someone from the Deep South about Sundown towns you'll get a blank look(they don't understand the terminology) but someone from Indiana, Wisconsin, or Iowa and they'll nod knowingly.

I recommend you go read Sundown Towns by James Loewen.

I suggest you look at Kentucky and Tennessee today. They still exist there.

I've lived in the upper Midwest, Illinois and Wisconsin, for 63 years, and I don't recall any "sundown" laws in any area I lived in. I don't recall my parents or Grandparents talking about them either. Not to say they might not have existed,... just not where we were at.

As to the 50's, I was around then, and while some things were more "open", i.e., prejudice, etc. It is thinly hidden today, and surfaces rather rapidly even in the Midwest and Northern states. It's not just against Blacks, it is against any person of color, and is done to them mostly by people who pride themselves on their "Religion". I guess that "love" only works towards certain people though.

Just because the South acted more openly in their ignorant behavior back then, does not excuse them, or mean that they don't still do it today. They do. They are a little less open about it because of the stigma attached to that type of behavior by society in general.

I can tell you of a certain Gamers Board where it runs rampant.

Racism varies from area to area both in its mere existence and the degree in which its found.
Evansville, Indiana prides itself on being 'patriotic', yet one of the more notorious incidents of racial strife happened here during WW2 when racial strife led to a strike at the local Chrysler/Briggs plants because of wartime integration.

Personally I'd have cheerfully worked beside Satan himself before granting Hitler and Tojo the advantage of a divided America, but I'm not of my grandfather's* generation, so I can't ask WTF of them.

*My maternal grandfather worked for 5 years at the Chrysler ammo/tank plant during the war.
Later on he became president of a local bank and Chrysler moved their local plants to Fenton, MO.

[Darth Wong]

How would the self-declared religious beliefs of the founding militants that change the fact that the inspiration for modern Israel was obviously ancient Israel?

By what logic can you make the argument that religious inspiration is necessarily interest in Bronze Age theocracy?

Nice try, asshole. That's not what I said. I said that the inspiration for modern Israel was ancient Israel, which was in fact a Bronze Age theocracy. I never said that the founders of Israel were sitting around pondering theocracy.

Are you going to seriously propose that they just coincidentally chose that location, or for that matter, that this location made any conceivable sense whatsoever outside of a religious context?

You've unknowingly shifted the goalposts - much to your own disadvantage, too. This discussion has suddenly become, "Were the 'secular' founding fathers of Israel really religious fanatics looking to build a theocracy?" rather than, "What does it mean that the population of Israel is steadily becoming more religious and conservative?"

I haven't shifted anything. I'm responding to some idiot who's trying to nitpick my argument, and pointing out that his nitpick has nothing to do with the point I'm making. The fact is that Israel is where all the fucking Orthodox wackos went, because it was so obviously meant to evoke the original Israel, right down to the same name and location. It was bound to be subjected to unusual religious influence from Day One, regardless of what its founders supposedly believed.

How about the fact that the state of Israel makes all kinds of special concessions to religious interests?

Many of which relate to attempting to find some accommodation between religion and the secular, not overriding one in favor of the other at all costs.

You love those black and white fallacies, don't you?

I take it you've never read Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem?

I take it you never learned that name-dropping does not constitute a valid argument?

[Lonestar]

I suggest you look at Kentucky and Tennessee today. They still exist there.

I've lived in the upper Midwest, Illinois and Wisconsin, for 63 years, and I don't recall any "sundown" laws in any area I lived in. I don't recall my parents or Grandparents talking about them either. Not to say they might not have existed,... just not where we were at.

As to the 50's, I was around then, and while some things were more "open", i.e., prejudice, etc. It is thinly hidden today, and surfaces rather rapidly even in the Midwest and Northern states. It's not just against Blacks, it is against any person of color, and is done to them mostly by people who pride themselves on their "Religion". I guess that "love" only works towards certain people though.

Just because the South acted more openly in their ignorant behavior back then, does not excuse them, or mean that they don't still do it today. They do. They are a little less open about it because of the stigma attached to that type of behavior by society in general.

I can tell you of a certain Gamers Board where it runs rampant.

Good thing I intentionally couched my phrase with "largely", huh? While the "Upper South" had Sundown-Jurisdictions, as did some parts of Texas, the whole Sundown Phenomena was mostly a Midwest/Northern thing. The book I linked to speculates(for example) that at one point 70% of the Jurisdictions in Illinois had Sundown laws. The Upper Midwest had them as well. And they still have them, in a manner worse than the Deep South did(usually through having real estate agents discouraging blacks from moving into the area).

I'm not excusing the Deep South's behavior, but it's frustrating when some swarmy asshole from the Midwest declares that the worst racism was in the South...I guess if you ran all the coloreds out of your town in the '20s and '30s then you don't have any "racial problems" in your town, huh?

[bobalot]

...and they average 8.8 children a family.

What the fuck? There is no way in hell that the average Haredi family can actually support them without a shitload of cash from the taxpayer. The Israeli government should seriously consider subsidising vasectomies.

[The Grim Squeaker]

...and they average 8.8 children a family.

What the fuck? There is no way in hell that the average Haredi family can actually support them without a shitload of cash from the taxpayer. The Israeli government should seriously consider subsidising vasectomies.

The Israeli government subsidizes kids, and the subsidies increase exponentially after the fourth child.
The rationale is to increase the growth rate of the Jewish population in Israel, especially in face of the Palestinians having one of the highest rates of population explosion in the world, and the historical tradition of international intervention favouring the group with the higher population (just look at the situaiton today).
However, the subsidy is for all citizens of Israel, and the Arab citizens have even higher birth rates than the Haredim, the Bedouin have the highest birth rate in the world, what with multiple wives, teenage brides and widespread use of the welfare system as a source of income.

Most of the support for many of the religious parties, Shas in particular is from Arabs and Bedouin, due to the subsidies for kids which is effectively the basis for their livelihood.

[Yona]

I suggest you look at Kentucky and Tennessee today. They still exist there.

I've lived in the upper Midwest, Illinois and Wisconsin, for 63 years, and I don't recall any "sundown" laws in any area I lived in. I don't recall my parents or Grandparents talking about them either. Not to say they might not have existed,... just not where we were at.

As to the 50's, I was around then, and while some things were more "open", i.e., prejudice, etc. It is thinly hidden today, and surfaces rather rapidly even in the Midwest and Northern states. It's not just against Blacks, it is against any person of color, and is done to them mostly by people who pride themselves on their "Religion". I guess that "love" only works towards certain people though.

Just because the South acted more openly in their ignorant behavior back then, does not excuse them, or mean that they don't still do it today. They do. They are a little less open about it because of the stigma attached to that type of behavior by society in general.

I can tell you of a certain Gamers Board where it runs rampant.

Good thing I intentionally couched my phrase with "largely", huh? While the "Upper South" had Sundown-Jurisdictions, as did some parts of Texas, the whole Sundown Phenomena was mostly a Midwest/Northern thing. The book I linked to speculates(for example) that at one point 70% of the Jurisdictions in Illinois had Sundown laws. The Upper Midwest had them as well. And they still have them, in a manner worse than the Deep South did(usually through having real estate agents discouraging blacks from moving into the area).

I'm not excusing the Deep South's behavior, but it's frustrating when some swarmy asshole from the Midwest declares that the worst racism was in the South...I guess if you ran all the coloreds out of your town in the '20s and '30s then you don't have any "racial problems" in your town, huh?

I don't know about where you lived, but there were no SD laws in the town I grew up in. I went to High School in the early 60's, and there was a large multi-racial population of students and teachers. The same can be said for my College experience.

Was there discrimination,..... YES. But where I was at it was by a persons ignorance, not any "Law". I'm not saying the "Law" didn't exist in other places, just not in the city I was in.

Racism and bigotry still exist in this country today. Anyone who doubts that is not paying attention, or is in denial for obvious reasons. Real Estate agents are not "Law", they were being ignorant and thought they were protecting "property values". In short, their own wallets. This "thinking" however, was based on their own prejudices, not any "Law".

Was there racism in the North,.... oh yes. However, the worst was in the "South". They will say they fought over "states rights", but that is Bull shit. They fought to keep a way of life that for them, was profitable, secure, and gave the major landowners a source of cheap easily renewable labor.

I won't go into the mindset that was used to justify this sort of behavior, that's a whole other nasty can of worms.

Oh,.... It's "smarmy",..... and I'm not. I'm just tired of Southerners who still try to project the Civil War as a "States Rights" thing. When all along, for the South, it was a "money thing".

But I guess we'd better get back to the original topic.

I said that the inspiration for modern Israel was ancient Israel, which was in fact a Bronze Age theocracy.

Yes it was. What makes it interesting, is that the very site they picked also has Historical and Religious meaning for Islam.

[hongi]

The Israeli government subsidizes kids, and the subsidies increase exponentially after the fourth child.
The rationale is to increase the growth rate of the Jewish population in Israel, especially in face of the Palestinians having one of the highest rates of population explosion in the world, and the historical tradition of international intervention favouring the group with the higher population (just look at the situaiton today).
However, the subsidy is for all citizens of Israel, and the Arab citizens have even higher birth rates than the Haredim, the Bedouin have the highest birth rate in the world, what with multiple wives, teenage brides and widespread use of the welfare system as a source of income.

Most of the support for many of the religious parties, Shas in particular is from Arabs and Bedouin, due to the subsidies for kids which is effectively the basis for their livelihood.

You've got to love the Middle East, where else in the world do you have a government funded demographic race?

However, the subsidy is for all citizens of Israel

I bet the nationalists are loving that. Have any groups called for the subsidy to apply only to Jews?

[The Grim Squeaker]

The Israeli government subsidizes kids, and the subsidies increase exponentially after the fourth child.
The rationale is to increase the growth rate of the Jewish population in Israel, especially in face of the Palestinians having one of the highest rates of population explosion in the world, and the historical tradition of international intervention favouring the group with the higher population (just look at the situaiton today).
However, the subsidy is for all citizens of Israel, and the Arab citizens have even higher birth rates than the Haredim, the Bedouin have the highest birth rate in the world, what with multiple wives, teenage brides and widespread use of the welfare system as a source of income.

Most of the support for many of the religious parties, Shas (relatively moderate as the religious parties go) in particular is from Arabs and Bedouin, due to the subsidies for kids which is effectively the basis for their livelihood.

You've got to love the Middle East, where else in the world do you have a government funded demographic race?

India. China too, though there they focus more on displacing people (the Urghurs being marginalized by Han Chinese, Tibet) and subsidizing and encouraging internal immigration and economics. Africa as well. Oh, and there's a lot of tension on various USA areas due to the explosion of the Hispanic population, despite it's relatively tiny relative numbers.

However, the subsidy is for all citizens of Israel

I bet the nationalists are loving that. Have any groups called for the subsidy to apply only to Jews?

What do you think .
The problem is that again, the backbone for the religious parties are Arab-Israelis since they benefit from the subsidies and welfare policies to a roughly equal degree. And Israel's Weimarr republic style system with it's overly democratic approach to allowing parties with a very small percentage of the vote in means that it's all but impossible to raise a governing coalition without the "medium sized" religious shitcock parties squeezing out concessions.

[eyl]

So how does any of that nitpicking actually address the main point, which is that Israel is swiftly transforming from a racist shithole to a racist, theocratic shithole and things are getting worse instead of better?

All of your objections amount only to "B-b-but it's not really getting quite that bad, it's only this bad..." which is hardly the sound defense you seem to think it is.

Actually, my point was that the phenomena that the article argues indicate trends of increasing religosity in some ways indicate trends of decreasing religious influence.

Nice try, asshole. That's not what I said. I said that the inspiration for modern Israel was ancient Israel, which was in fact a Bronze Age theocracy. I never said that the founders of Israel were sitting around pondering theocracy.

So? Israel's law and political system were (with a few exceptions) not modeled on Jewish law, and certainly not on the ancient Israeli kingdoms (which, if I'm understanding the definition correctly, weren't actually theocracies - religious laws are not enough in themselves to create one), but rather on European (primarily British) models. The "inspiration" was just the presence of Jews in that area, which has as much cultural or national importance as it does secular. They certainly didn't try to revive the monarchy or religious law.

[Thanas]

So? Israel's law and political system were (with a few exceptions) not modeled on Jewish law, and certainly not on the ancient Israeli kingdoms (which, if I'm understanding the definition correctly, weren't actually theocracies - religious laws are not enough in themselves to create one)

The Hasmonean rule certainly qualifies as a theocracy.

[Lonestar]

I don't know about where you lived, but there were no SD laws in the town I grew up in. I went to High School in the early 60's, and there was a large multi-racial population of students and teachers. The same can be said for my College experience.

Congrats. But that doesn't deter from the fact that Sundown Jurisdictions was more a Midwest/West/Northeast than "Deep South" thing.

You mentioned "no laws", in the study done for the book the author notes that most of the jurisdictions took care not actually record the law, and discouraged(and still discourage) locals from mentioning it to others(he cited, for example, Chambers of Commerce that went after local papers who mentioned the "Sundown" ordinances)

Was there discrimination,..... YES. But where I was at it was by a persons ignorance, not any "Law". I'm not saying the "Law" didn't exist in other places, just not in the city I was in.

Racism and bigotry still exist in this country today. Anyone who doubts that is not paying attention, or is in denial for obvious reasons. Real Estate agents are not "Law", they were being ignorant and thought they were protecting "property values". In short, their own wallets. This "thinking" however, was based on their own prejudices, not any "Law".

Their thinking may be influnced by laws that existed at one point, or the intial act of chasing all the coloreds out that made the community all-white. Places like Darien Conn. and Grosse Pointe had ordinances that created coerced rela estate agents into using a "point system" for letting new folks in, and if they didn't abide by the rules then they lost their licenses.

Was there racism in the North,.... oh yes. However, the worst was in the "South". They will say they fought over "states rights", but that is Bull shit. They fought to keep a way of life that for them, was profitable, secure, and gave the major landowners a source of cheap easily renewable labor.

Oh,.... It's "smarmy",..... and I'm not. I'm just tired of Southerners who still try to project the Civil War as a "States Rights" thing. When all along, for the South, it was a "money thing".

I know you haven't been on this board long, but you are barking up the wrong fucking tree if you think I think the South left because of "States Rights". My original complaint was that someone from the Upper Midwest was saying implying with a straight face that the majority of Sundown jurisdictions are/were in the South.

[eyl]

So? Israel's law and political system were (with a few exceptions) not modeled on Jewish law, and certainly not on the ancient Israeli kingdoms (which, if I'm understanding the definition correctly, weren't actually theocracies - religious laws are not enough in themselves to create one)

The Hasmonean rule certainly qualifies as a theocracy.

Atually, that was one of the exceptions I was referring to.

[Thanas]

It is kinda nice to label the most important and most powerful kingdom an exception. It truly does wonders for your argument.

EDIT: In case this is not clear already, the Hasmonean kingdom was the first time an independant state had been founded since the Babylonians took over Israel four centuries before that. To label it an exception would be akin to declaring any other kingdom an exception.

It would be like claiming the entire 20th century is an exception in american history and that we cannot base any conclusions on it.

[eyl]

It is kinda nice to label the most important and most powerful kingdom an exception. It truly does wonders for your argument.

EDIT: In case this is not clear already, the Hasmonean kingdom was the first time an independant state had been founded since the Babylonians took over Israel four centuries before that. To label it an exception would be akin to declaring any other kingdom an exception.

It would be like claiming the entire 20th century is an exception in american history and that we cannot base any conclusions on it.

Timewise, the Hasmoneans ruled for around 80 or 90 years. Prior to the Babylonian conquest, Judea (plus the pre-split kingdom) had existed for over five times as long, excluding the pre-monarchy period.

So if it makes you feel better, replace "not a theocracy with a few exceptions" to "not a theocracy for the better part of its existence". It's a minor point in any case.

[Samuel]

India. China too, though there they focus more on displacing people (the Urghurs being marginalized by Han Chinese, Tibet) and subsidizing and encouraging internal immigration and economics. Africa as well. Oh, and there's a lot of tension on various USA areas due to the explosion of the Hispanic population, despite it's relatively tiny relative numbers.

Yes, but the governments there aren't paying both sides.

Yes it was. What makes it interesting, is that the very site they picked also has Historical and Religious meaning for Islam.

Only Jerusalem- I don't think the rest of the region is considered holy ground.

[Thanas]

Timewise, the Hasmoneans ruled for around 80 or 90 years. Prior to the Babylonian conquest, Judea (plus the pre-split kingdom) had existed for over five times as long, excluding the pre-monarchy period.

Actually, the first one to hold the title of High Priest was Jonathan and the revolt was highly religious right from the start, so you can get a total of over 120 years. Meanwhile the Kingdom of Israel/Judah existed for about 300-500 years, dependsing on where you make the cutoff point.

So if it makes you feel better, replace "not a theocracy with a few exceptions" to "not a theocracy for the better part of its existence". It's a minor point in any case.

The Maccabees were not important in the creation of a jewish identity?

[Yona]

Their thinking may be influnced by laws that existed at one point, or the intial act of chasing all the coloreds out that made the community all-white. Places like Darien Conn. and Grosse Pointe had ordinances that created coerced rela estate agents into using a "point system" for letting new folks in, and if they didn't abide by the rules then they lost their licenses.

I know you haven't been on this board long, but you are barking up the wrong fucking tree if you think I think the South left because of "States Rights". My original complaint was that someone from the Upper Midwest was saying implying with a straight face that the majority of Sundown jurisdictions are/were in the South.

What has the length of time spent on this board have to do with anything ? My comment was not directed at anyone in particular. It was directed at those who keep harping "States Rights", then and now. Hell, Texas still wants to secede over "States Rights" according to people I know down there.

Nor did I imply or say that SD Laws were only in the South. Although from my POV, and History as taught in the schools I went to, I consider Kentucky and Tennessee part of the "South". I stated what I know about existing SD Laws and their location. They still exist in the Southern states. I'll bet that any person they affect knows which areas still have them and if they enforce them or not.

So, back to the land they all claim.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

So? Israel's law and political system were (with a few exceptions) not modeled on Jewish law, and certainly not on the ancient Israeli kingdoms (which, if I'm understanding the definition correctly, weren't actually theocracies - religious laws are not enough in themselves to create one)

The Hasmonean rule certainly qualifies as a theocracy.

Atually, that was one of the exceptions I was referring to.

Then perhaps you should work on your sentence structure. When you mentioned exceptions, you were clearly referring to modern-day Israel's law and political system not being modeled on Jewish law (with a few exceptions). You then claimed that it was certainly not modeled on the ancient Israeli kingdoms, which you asserted were not theocracies. You made no reference to exceptions to that last part, so I'm not seeing how this could possibly be one of the exceptions you were referring to.

[Pelranius]

Yes it was. What makes it interesting, is that the very site they picked also has Historical and Religious meaning for Islam.

Only Jerusalem- I don't think the rest of the region is considered holy ground.

Hebron is considered holy by both, for being the burial ground of some of the Patriarchs.

[Axis Kast]

Nice try, asshole. That's not what I said. I said that the inspiration for modern Israel was ancient Israel, which was in fact a Bronze Age theocracy. I never said that the founders of Israel were sitting around pondering theocracy.

Then why talk of the inspiration at all?

The fact is that Israel is where all the fucking Orthodox wackos went, because it was so obviously meant to evoke the original Israel, right down to the same name and location. It was bound to be subjected to unusual religious influence from Day One, regardless of what its founders supposedly believed.

Actually, "mainstream" Judaism as practiced in the State of Israel has been relatively more mild, in terms of strictly religious content, than what is found in the United States and Canada.
The point of early Zionism was to establish a homeland for Jews to escape persecution in Europe and elsewhere. The appeal of Palestine clearly lay in its religious significance, but your suggestion that trouble is now "coming home to roost" is misleading at best, and wrong at worst. The rise of ultra-Orthodox politics has more to do with demographics than groundwork laid by Israel's founding fathers.

You love those black and white fallacies, don't you?

The implication of your argument regarding state sanction for religious observance is that there is some structural defect causing these outcomes. Not so -- unless that defect is democracy.

I take it you never learned that name-dropping does not constitute a valid argument?

It's an extremely famous book, and worth your time. I'm frankly surprised you've never read it before. A significant section of the book relates Friedman's discovery of the fact that Judaism is often a cultural activity in Israel. Later, if I remember correctly, he does foreshadow the "Orthodox problem."

[Big Orange]

There are some official moves against relationships between Jewish women and Christian/Muslim Arab men that is breaking defacto taboos long held by elders. I'm pretty sure that's not a sign of dysfunctional cultural/biological insularity at all, nuh-uh...

Israeli drive to prevent Jewish girls dating Arabs
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: September 25. 2009 1:57PM UAE / September 25. 2009 9:57AM GMT

NAZARETH // A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counsellors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and “rescue” them.

The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate – and little discussed – initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage.

In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls.

Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israel’s ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behaviour as a threat to the state’s Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with “national treason”.

Since the state’s founding in 1948, analysts have noted, a series of legal and administrative measures have been taken by Israel to limit the possibilities of close links developing between Jewish and Arab citizens, the latter comprising a fifth of the population.

Largely segregated communities and separate education systems mean that there are few opportunities for young Arabs and Jews to become familiarised with each other. Even in the handful of “mixed cities”, Arab residents are usually confined to separate neighbourhoods.

In addition, civil marriage is banned in Israel, meaning that in the small number of cases where Jews and Arabs want to wed, they can do so only by leaving the country for a ceremony abroad. The marriage is recognised on the couple’s return.

Dr Yuval Yonay, a sociologist at Haifa University, said the number of interracial marriages was “too small to be studied”. “Separation between Jews and Arabs is so ingrained in Israeli society, it is surprising that anyone manages to escape these central controls.”

The team in Petah Tikva, a Jewish city of 200,000 residents, was created in direct response to news that two Jewish girls, aged 17 and 19, were accompanying a group of young Arab men when they allegedly beat a Jewish man, Leonard Karp, to death last month on a Tel Aviv beach. The older girl was from Petah Tikva.

The girls’ involvement with the Arab youths has revived general concern that a once-firm taboo against interracial dating is beginning to erode among some young people.

In sentiments widely shared, Mr Hakak, a spokesman for Petah Tikva municipality, said “Russian girls”, young Jewish women whose parents arrived in Israel over the past two decades, since the former Soviet Union collapsed, were particularly vulnerable to the attention of Arab men.

Dr Yonay said Russian women were less closed to the idea of relationships with Arab men because they “did not undergo the religious and Zionist education” to which more established Israeli Jews were subject.

Mr Hakak said the municipality had created a hotline that parents and friends of the Jewish women could use to inform on them.

“We can’t tell the girls what to do but we can send a psychologist to their home to offer them and their parents advice,” he said.

Motti Zaft, the deputy mayor, told the Ynet website that the municipality was also cracking down on city homeowners who illegally subdivide apartments to rent them cheaply to single Arab men looking for work in the Tel Aviv area. He estimated that several hundred Arab men had moved into the city as a result.

Petah Tikva’s hostility to Arab men mixing with local Jewish women is shared by other communities.

In Pisgat Zeev, a settlement of 40,000 Jews, some 35 Jewish men are reported to belong to a patrol known as “Fire for Judaism” that tries to stop interracial dating.

Unusually for a settlement, Pisgat Zeev has attracted a tiny but growing population of Arab families, both from East Jerusalem and from inside Israel. Because Pisgat Zeev sits within Jerusalem’s municipal borders, Arabs with Israeli residency rights can live there as long as Jewish settlers are willing to rent to them.

One member, who identified himself as Moshe to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, said: “Our goal is to be in contact with these girls and try to explain to them the dangers of what they’re getting themselves into. In the last 10 years, 60 girls from Pisgat Zeev have gone into [Palestinian] villages [in the West Bank]. And most of them aren’t heard from after that.”

He denied that violence or threats were used against Arab men.
Last year, the municipality of Kiryat Gat, a town of 50,000 Jews in southern Israel, launched a programme in schools to warn Jewish girls of the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video titled Sleeping with the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an “unnatural phenomenon”.

Haim Shalom, head of the municipality’s welfare department, is filmed saying: “The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab.”

In 2004, posters sprang up all over the northern town of Safed warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to “beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime”.
Safed’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, told a local newspaper that the “seducing” of Jewish girls was “another form of war” by Arab men.

Both Kiryat Gat and Safed’s campaigns were supported by a religious organisation called Yad L’achim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to “saving” Jewish women.

According to its website, the organisation receives more than 100 calls a month about Jewish women living with Arab men, both in Israel and the West Bank. It launches “military-like rescues [of the women] from hostile Arab villages” in co-ordination with the police and army.

“The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one,” says the website.

The National

[JME2]

Hmm, a fundamentalist theocracy with nukes...

What could possibly go wrong??

My aunt and I were actually discussing this the other day as a result of the Iranian nuclear surprise. Quite frankly, an Israel with nukes scares me more than Iran.

[hongi]

It makes me slightly suspicious that the article comes from the UAE...

Actually, "mainstream" Judaism as practiced in the State of Israel has been relatively more mild, in terms of strictly religious content, than what is found in the United States and Canada.

In what way?

[Samuel]

It makes me slightly suspicious that the article comes from the UAE...

There are some official moves against relationships between Jewish women and Christian/Muslim Arab men that is breaking defacto taboos long held by elders. I'm pretty sure that's not a sign of dysfunctional cultural/biological insularity at all, nuh-uh...

I mentioned that in post 14. And posted the same article which we both got from spacebattles.

My aunt and I were actually discussing this the other day as a result of the Iranian nuclear surprise. Quite frankly, an Israel with nukes scares me more than Iran.

Israel probably already has nukes.

[Davis 51]

Israel probably already has nukes.

Probably? I thought they did, it was only a question of exactly how many. Last I heard it was in the several hundreds.