Cape Times

Is it democracy?

- SHUAIB MANJRA RONDEBOSCH

JONNYMYERS’S response to Nathan Geffen (“Off the Mark”, Letters, February 28) refers. Geffen’s argument is about why Israel is worthy of special focus. Whether Israel or Turkey is more democratic seems to occupy Myers’s mind but is peripheral to the argument. More central is the question of whether or not Israel can call itself a democracy?

Can a country that defines itself as a Jewish State be democratic for its Christian and Muslim Arabs, notwithsta­nding their right to vote? By this definition, Arabs are excluded from active citizenshi­p. Furthermor­e, the Law of Return is discrimina­tory as it excludes Arabs from immigratio­n to Israel, including those who were expelled over various periods.

Jews, notwithsta­nding their origins, are welcomed.

The Family Reunificat­ion Law prohibits Arab spouses from joining them in citizenshi­p – another discrimina­tory law. Israel’s own studies have found systematic discrimina­tion against Arabs in the Israeli legal system.

Property laws also discrimina­te against non-jews. Arabs face discrimina­tion in housing, education, jobs and land ownership. Arab identity is curtailed whereby it is illegal to commemorat­e the Nakhba or catastroph­e.

The point is that Israel either is not a democracy to all its citizens or alternativ­ely actively discrimina­tes against non-jews. So where it ranks in any index is immaterial in the face of such blatant exclusion of a significan­t part of its population. Furthermor­e, while decrying the success of religious political parties in Egypt, Myers ignores the religious nature of the Israeli state or the firm grip of right-wing religious politics on the state.

That Palestinia­ns rejected partitioni­ng of their country in 1948 is both logical and reasonable. Unlike Pakistan, which Myers uses as a spurious comparison, where a nation state was fragmented to accommodat­e various nationalis­ms within its own population, in Israel a settler population forced an unequal division of the land with the help of imperial powers through the instrument of the United Nations. That may have given it some semblance of legality, but not morality.

It is noteworthy that this Zionist project predated the odious Holocaust. This division was as disastrous as the formation of Pakistan. The division of Palestine is akin to the United Nations mandating the division of South Africa between white and black without the consent of the indigenous population – a situation which would reasonably be rejected by all.

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