Top House Democrats reject Rep. Jayapal's comments calling Israel a 'racist state'

[Marius25]

34. First of all, I disagree with the settlements

However, I also disagree with the apartheid claim. There are no Israeli laws that qualify as apartheid. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens and thus cannot be under the same laws as Israeli citizens anymore than Canadians are treated the same as Americans. About 20-30% of Israeli citizens are Arab Palestinians and while they deal with their own issues (much like blacks or Hispanics deal with issues in the US), they're still afforded the same basic rights as all Israeli citizens.

That means by definition, Israel cannot be an Apartheid state. South Africa was an Apartheid state because the majority black population was bound by different laws than the minority white population within the country.

As for Netanyahu, there are daily protests the largest of which the country has ever seen over his abuses of power. I don't know if that will result in him being kicked out, but millions of Israelis hate him.

The main reason Israel is even a right-wing country these days is because of the Second Intifada. Israel was created as a left-wing socialist country and all Prime Ministers until 1977 came from the Socialist parties.

The Second Intifada really destroyed the left-wing in Israel. Over the span of 2 years, Palestinian terrorists were blowing up civilian buses, restaurants, homes, schools, etc. nearly every day killing thousands of innocent people. This was largely blamed on the left-wing parties, because they didn't take threats of Palestinian terrorism seriously enough and tried to appease Palestinian groups. After 2 years of constant terrorism, the Israeli population took defense and security way more seriously and the right-wing parties emphasized that in their party platforms, vowing to never allow that kind of widespread terrorism to happen again. It led to the permanent rise of Netanyahu and others like him, while the left-wing parties barely get any seats.

When you live your entire life dealing with threats of terrorism, you're not going to side with political parties who want to negotiate with those terrorists.

Furthermore, the ultra-religious Jews of Israel have way more children than secular and liberal Jews, which is leading to them having more power in government. And since the religious groups will never negotiate with Palestinians, and don't want Israel to be secular, it gives lots of power to the far-right.

Short of the majority of the country getting fed up with the far-rights dictatorship efforts or millions of American Jews moving to Israel, Israel will likely always be far-right.

No, not all the problems are directly the result of Palestinians, but many of them are and that's how it started. The primary power in the Palestinian territories right now is Hamas - a recognized terrorist group who is similar to ISIS. As long as Palestinians are led by a terrorist group, Israel will never play nice.

Keep this in mind. Hamas' stated goal in their political charter is to exterminate all Jews. Israel may not play nice a lot of the time, but Israel doesn't not have any official doctrine on exterminating all Arabs, and if they had that goal, they would have done it by now.