Knesset passes two bills slammed as discriminatory by rights groups
One bill allows communities to screen potential new residents, and another bars public funding of entities that 'undermine foundations of the state and contradict its values.'
By Jack Khoury and Jonathan LisThe Knesset passed two controversial bills on Wednesday- one which allows small communities in the Galilee and Negev to maintain admissions committees to screen potential new residents, and another which bars public funding of entities that "undermine the foundations of the state and contradict its values," including undermining the Jewish or democratic nature of Israel.
Known as the "Nakba Law," its original intent was to sentence to prison anyone who marks Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning or who holds memorial events for the Palestinian "Nakba" (destruction ).
Critics of the admission committee law, which would apply to communities in the north and south with up to 400 families, have said the provisions could be used to bar weaker demographic groups, including Arabs, immigrants, same-sex couples and single-parent families, from being accepted as residents. The law's proponents have said that amendments to the initial legislation will prevent candidates from being rejected on these grounds, but the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, along with the Abraham Fund, which promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence, and a group of Galilee residents, filed a petition yesterday with the High Court of Justice describing the law as a "license for discrimination."
One of the bill's sponsors, David Rotem of Yisrael Beiteinu, said in response: "I am not ignoring improper disqualification of people, but such concerns cannot prevent the Knesset from dealing with a situation in which development of communities is blocked."
MK Hanna Swaid of Hadash acknowledged the law's explicit prohibition against ethnic or religious discrimination but said the legislation left an opening to reject candidates based on cultural characteristics. Only 55 of the 120 members of parliament were present for the early morning vote. Thirty-five voted in favor and 20 against. The vote took place at 2:42 A.M., as the Knesset raced to pass legislation before the Passover recess. Only three Kadima MKs were present for the vote. Two of them, Israel Hasson and Shai Hermesh, were sponsors of the bill and voted for it on its second and third readings, the last step in the legislative process.
Among other legislation approved this week was a bill authorizing the creation of a second salaried post of deputy mayor in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Be'er Sheva, Netanya and Ashdod at a cost of more than NIS 1 million per officeholder.
The ACRI petition against the admission committee legislation said the law would legalize discrimination based on the vague standard of "compatibility with the life of the community" or "compatibility with the social texture." A coalition of other groups, including Adalah legal center for Arab minority rights, announced yesterday that it intended to file its own legal challenge to the legislation. Recently the legal adviser to the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Sigal Kogut, said she, too, thought the legislation presented constitutional problems.
In response to the passage of the Nakba bill, the Arab Education Monitoring Committee announced that it would continue to direct Arab Israeli schools to mark national Israeli Arab commemorations including Nakba Day, saying: "The Palestinian Arab public in Israel has the full right to mark its national days and preserve its collective memory, including [promoting] educational content and curriculum. It's fascist chutzpah and a new low point in the slippery racist slope on which the Israeli government, Knesset and Israeli society are descending."
MK Afu Aghbaria (Hadash ) said the Arab population would persisting in marking the Nakba without the use of government funds, adding: "We will continue activities marking Nakba Day with the aim of presenting the historical facts, which are not subject to interpretation when it comes to a people uprooted from its land, many of whose members were made refugees."
For its part, the Abraham Fund said Knesset members were mistaken if they thought passage of the Nakba bill would pave the way to forcing the country's Arab minority to celebrate Independence Day. It is important to allow Israel's Arabs to mark their past and their pain and for both Arabs and Jews to acknowledge the other's group narrative, the group said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beiteinu party sponsored the bill, said: "There is no other normal country that funds events comparing its establishment to a catastrophe."
Among other legislation approved this week was a bill authorizing the creation of a second salaried post of deputy mayor in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Be'er Sheva, Netanya and Ashdod at a cost of more than NIS 1 million per officeholder.
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| Photo by: Tess Scheflan |
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the supporters of such bills babble and giggle insanely as the excrement reaches thier nostrils. Screaming obscenities they accuse anyone and evreyone for the rank odour they themselves have produced.
..should the ordinary citizen care about these bills? 35-20, at 2.45 A.M? Rushing and pushing it through before the Passover recess? Oh, darling - this is democracy. Trivial procedures that leads to repression.....only three members of Kadima present? The message from the self-righteous Tzipi Livni must therefore be: these bills are not important and not dangerous. Well, that means that Livni is in opposition against Haaretz, but an accomplice to the government. Shame.
Should be abolished also. Why would a society want to commemorate such a divisive figure? We all yearn for a simpler times when we called a spade a spade and everyone knew their place.
Small communities have their own little culture and they don't want an influx of people who don't agree with their culture so they are being given the right to vet new comers. Contreversial maybe discriminatory no because it works both ways small arab communities can also vet new comers. This bill applies only to communities of 400 and bellow.Considering the arabs make up the majority of the population in the Galilee and in the past have even tried to get the government to pass legislation limiting the number of jews who can move there I would have thought this bill works in their favor. You have an small arab community and a whole load of jews decide they want to move in and take over based on demographics the arabs can say no way hosay and they can block this influx of jews and keep their small arab community. As for the nakba bill, why on earth should taxpayer money be used to fund events where people go around burning the flag and saying the country has no right to exist? Name me a country ANYWHERE in the entire world where taxpayers would be asked to fund events like that? The only reason the arabs are complaining about this bill is because we were stupid enough to ever allow it. Would taxes be better spend on giving social workers better pay or nakba events? This bill doesn't ban them from holding the events and if these idiots want to go around saying a country thats been established now for over sixty years has no right to exist and burn the flag they are more than welcome, freedom of protest is allowed in this country. This bill just says if they want to hold the events they pay for them not taxpayers. I don't see anything in either of these bills that is unjustly discriminating against arabs.
From what I read the suggested law means that public funding will be withdrawn from any group that commemorates Nakba. I.e. such a group would be punished for using the right to protest. This is very different from your version, in which such groups would only be disallowed to use public funding for Nakba commemoration but would not be deprived of public funding. "My version" of the law is quite obviously anti-democratic: the government punishes groups for expressing views with which it disagrees. Also, regarding the other law: it is very odd to say that the law is not discriminatory simply because everyone is given the chance to discriminate against others. Imagine that a Jewish citizen wants to live in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood and an Arab citizen in a predominantly Jewish one and both of them are discriminated against because of their race. What you have then is two acts of discrimination, I don't understand the kind of logic you use to reach the conclusion that they would somehow cancel eachother out...
1 If you have the right to retain public funding to a community, Has that community a right from paying taxes to the state? 2 If a street community in Jerusalem finds that the Jews next door are not of their standing and prevent them from aquiring a flat in that street has the Jews next to that street the right to enclose this street into a ghetto like environment? Be carefull that the laws that your are passing against the Arabs/Palestininans in Israel do not become ground for internal hatred among Jews! These laws are wrong and need to be removed from Israel books!
Israel's democracy, which is already covered in blood from daily inflicted wounds, is given one or two more kicks down that greasy slippery slope to the abyss --- Is there anyone now strong enough to give it a hand?