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Really Apartheid?

Dear Judy
With all due respect, please learn your facts before you accuse Israel of being an apartheid state, and do not just hate on Israel because it is a country of Jews.
The three pillars which you talked about are missing some very key pieces of information which you so conveniently decided to leave out.

1. Firstly let us properly understand the Law of return and put it into proper context. The Law of return states that any Jew may come to Israel and become a citizen without undergoing the full application process which other applicants must go through. This is no different from a country like Japan where only ethnic Japanese are eligible for automatic citizenship. This means that there are ethnic minorities (Koreans, Chinese) born and raised in Japan, who speak nothing but Japanese that are still not Japanese citizens. Is that not unfair too?

Nonetheless there is good reason for the Law of Return. The Law of Return embodies a major purpose of the state of Israel, which is to provide a safe haven for Jews from every country and to make possible the restoration of the Jewish people. The need for such a haven is evident when looking at the prominent theme of persecution throughout Jewish history. From the expulsion of Jews from Israel to Babylon, to the Spanish Inquisition from 1233- 1492, to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, to the Blood Libels in 1775 and 1840 to the most recent Holocaust when every country in the world closed its doors to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution (For the complete list of Jewish persecution go to http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/HistoryJewishPersecution/). Throughout Jewish history the Jews have been persecuted and have had no place to live, thrive and call their own like almost every other religion that I know of.

Abolishing the Law of Return, would destroy the purpose of Israel as a national home for the Jews. Israel's immigration policy is not racist or separatist. In common with many other countries, it gives precedence to its own “absent nationals.”

2) Your point about the separation of racial groups into different geographical areas is also bogus. No land has been reserved for Jews exclusively. Muslims and Christians and who ever else lives in Israel are allowed to live where ever they want so long as they are Israeli Citizens.

3) You are right that there were never “tanks or planes buzzing overhead like there is in West Bank”, but as I recall the Blacks never shot rockets at innocent white South Africans, or try killing innocent people by blowing themselves up. More than 6,000 rockets have fallen on Israel's cities and now that Hamas has acquired long-range missiles, more than 900,000 civilians are in danger. If that is not a legitimate reason to amp up security I do not know what is. However, please correct me if I am mistaken.

Your claim that Israel does not allow ‘Palestinians’ to return to Israel is also factually incorrect. ‘Palestinians’ if that is what you are calling the neither Jewish nor Christian people who live in and around the area of Israel, are allowed to immigrate to Israel by applying for citizenship the same way anyone else would.

My final reason for believing that Israel is not an apartheid state is because of the fact that non-Jews enjoy the same rights as Jews. “Both Arabs and Druze hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Every Knesset, since the founding of the State in 1948, has had Arab and Druze members. All transactions in the Knesset are simultaneously translated into Arabic, and Arab members may address the Knesset in Arabic”. “There is, however, one difference between the "rights" of Arabs and Jews in Israel. Israeli and Druze men are required to do three years of military service and then serve one month every year until they are 50. Arabs are exempted from military duty and are not required to perform any compensating civilian service. Since the surrounding Arab states are the avowed enemies of Israel and dedicated to its destruction (there is "peace" with Egypt and Jordan), this exemption is granted by the Israeli government to its Arab citizens, so as to spare them conflicts of loyalty and conscience.”

I just have one last question for you Judy. The next time the world turns against the Jews and Jews are being killed left right and center where will you go? When the world turns you away because of the religion you were born in to, where is the only place that will take you in?
Israel. Israel (and maybe the Dominican Republic) are the only places that will want you. Just look at WWII.

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