Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Condemn This

Now here's a good example of where it would and is perfectly justified to condemn Israel for not just acting unwisely, but immorally:
The roughly 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel -- one-fifth of the population -- do not serve in the army, now engaged on the northern and southern borders. They have slim representation in parliament, and receive scant government support for the kind of bunkers and warning systems that have been well used in other northern Israeli cities since the fighting began.
[...]
On the next hilltop, the largely Jewish town of Nazaret Ilit has a number of shelters.

"I have discussed the issue with the Ministry of Interior and the home front and they have said there is no money for them," said Ramez Jaraysi, the mayor [of the largely Arab town of Nazareth]. (emphasis added)

I'm not sure if they are given an exemption from army service or are banned from it, so I'll let that slide for now. But refusing to fund shelters and needed security defenses is wrong, and deplorable. Pro-Israel partisans love to say how Israeli-Arabs are full citizens of Israel, and for the most part they're right, but "for the most part" doesn't cut it.

Especially now that Nazareth appears to be a target of Hezbollah rockets, the Israeli government needs to take adequate measures to protect its citizens there--all of them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi. In Israel Arabs are not barred from military service. The only difference is that Arabs are not subject to the draft. So, they can volunteer and enlist. But, they are not conscripted. And there are a number of Arabs in the military. In particular, the Druze Arabs tend to be very strong on enlisting and tend to be the "expert trackers" of the IDF.