Abe Foxman announces that Israel's Supreme court is antisemitic.

They've rescued the idiot politicians from themselves before. Thank God they're still up to the task.

One word: good.

-Z

Withdrawing from Gaza, now this...

Your move, Palestine.
How about keeping the knuckleheads with the rocket launchers under wraps a while?

What's the big deal about Arab parties? Hash is great!

Now, if we could get both the Palestinians and Israelis to 'make party, not war', life would be much better for both.

Snark aside - why does it seem that we cannot get more than the Likud side of what is happening - other than from progressive Israeli web sites & JuanCole.com's 'Informed Comment'?

There is bad happening from both sides, but the actions of the JDF are at or beyond the war crimes level!

Roberts, Thomas, Scalia and Alito could, perhaps, take a year's break from our Supreme Court and go clerking at Israel's?

It's interesting to note that Steve's post on the initial banning of these parties had 49 comments, more than half by 2 hours after it was posted -- while this current report has 6 at about the same point.

Now it's true that not all those postings by any means were anti-Israel. And it wasn't the day after a wonderful political event in the US. And the Gaza invasion was in full force.

Still, food for thought.

Simple, larry birnbaum. Because the banning of the parties was a democratic and civil rights outrage, a conspiracy by the majority over the the already poorly treated and represented minority, with, as now confirmed, no basis in law.

This merely restores the status quo ante. Not quite so exciting.

Maybe you should eat more so you can think. Don't go looking for what's not there, and perhaps recognize what is plainly in front of you.

I don't think it's exactly simple, notthere, although your point is well taken.

However I was tempted to be sarcastic because of the gratuitous snark at the end of your comment, and respond something like this:

"I see. Like if the Supreme Court knocks down some outrageous claim by the Bush administration that prisoners at Guantanamo had no habeas corpus rights, that wouldn't be as exciting as the original decision to deny them those rights."

Anyway, I apologize in advance for that tone. I just couldn't resist. Maybe we can just talk in the future?

But Israel isn't a democracy. It's a theocracy. It explicitly gives priority to Jewish citizens and explicitly discriminates against and segregates citizens of other faiths. It's the "Jewish state" as the MSM constantly reminds us. Jews don't live, go to school, or serve in the armed forces with people of other faiths. Those are the facts. And that's not a democracy as we in the the US otherwise use the term, as meaning a free society where all people are equal before the law. Calling Israel a democracy is like calling South Carolina in 1820 a democracy because all white male property owners could freely vote and live as they wished. Sorry if this offends some people. But I'm tired of all the pious BS on this subject.

Stacy, you raise a complicated issue. Israel isn't a non-sectarian democracy like ours. On the other hand, technically, neither are the UK and a number of other European countries with established religions.

It's true that, sadly, Arabs and Jews rarely live in the same places (Haifa is a big exception actually, Jerusalem in a more ambiguous way). The main legal segregation as you mention is in the schools -- Arabs go to Arab schools and are taught in Arabic. I suppose the Israelis could try to force them to go to schools in which they are taught in Hebrew. I'm not sure they would be thrilled with that idea. In any case in this regard Israel is like many other countries with ethnic minorities who are allowed to control their own schools and teach in their own languages (Quebec in Canada is kind of an example). Again in the UK and elsewhere in Europe there are schools for different religious communities paid for by the state. And there are many places where this would be viewed as a positive step towards human rights -- for example, allowing Kurds in Turkey to teach their children in Kurdish schools. The main point is that the US is the outlier here in terms of its history, demography, and approach to this issue.

This is not to say that there isn't a great deal of discrimination. There is. The biggest official discrimination being of course that most Arabs don't serve in the IDF (the Druze do, as well as men from a small number of Bedouin tribes in the Negev). However given the circumstances in which the country finds itself, I don't think this is terribly surprising.

And of course there is the right of return for Jews who immigrate but not others. Again however there are other democratic countries in the world (Germany for example) that use ethnicity in this way.

So while I can't say the situation of Arab Israelis is a happy one, or that Israel's political model or values are identical to ours, I think it would be vastly overstating the case to say that it isn't a democratic country because of the factors described above.

well said. if each side continues to give a little here and there, then maybe each side will end up, "GIVEING UP THE VIOLENCE".

Israel is not a Jewish state if it has 20% Arabs, because the Arabs are not going to convert. Would Jews agree that America is a Christian state if it had 20% Jews?

So Israel is a "democratic society?" Who knew? Reading the Arab propaganda that is broadcast daily by the press, one might think it was an undemocratic, apartheid regime, not one in which its Arab citizens have the exact same legal rights as its Jewish citizens, although not the same legal obligations - Arab citizens being exempt from the draft (along with Orthodox Jews). That's not to say there isn't some discrimination against minorities, just like there is in France, or the UK, or Germany, or the US, or Japan, or for that matter, every other country in the world.

Next thing, we'll probably find out that the Israelis don't want to kill all the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza. Gee, another shocker.