While living in Spain a few years ago, I couldn't legally work as a book editor until I gained citizenship. Ironically, I was allowed to work training other editors. All countries have their regulations on the jobs non-citizens can and can't do, and that hardly qualifies as Apartheid.
Of course it would be better if Palestinians could become citizens of Lebanon; but it would be even better if they could become citizens of where they came from in the first place -- Israel.
On another level, you suggest that Carter's soul should be bleeding for the Palestinians in Lebanon, just like yours is. The implied suggestion is that he's a hypocrite.
But you see, people are under no obligation to denounce all wrongs in the world. I'll give you an example you will understand.
You expect the world to denounce the Nazi analogies directed against Israel. They're disturbing, really.
But when last year the Defense Secretary of the United States compared Hugo Chávez to Hitler you didn't denounce it on your blog.
The Holocaust was horrendously and irresponsibly trivialized by the top defense official of the most powerful country in the world, and neither you nor a single of the zillion Hasbara blogs in the world said a word about it.
And that in itself can't be criticized. But then neither can Carter's silence over the Lebanon, Darfur or Saudi Arabia.
I wasn't exactly criticizing Carter's silence so much as putting into perspective (in a joking way) the glib comparisons with Apartheid aimed at Israel. And about the "regulations" that "all countries have," how many deny citizenship to descendants of immigrants who arrived in 1948?
The Palestinians did not immigrate into the Lebanon. They went there as refugees. Of course it's an abnormal situation that resulted from the creation of the State of Israel, itself an anomaly.
As for the comparison you don't like, in the West Bank there are facilities for Israeli's and facilities for the Palestinians, which is the hallmark of Apartheid.
Of course it's an abnormal situation that resulted from the creation of the State of Israel, itself an anomaly.
The Arabs participated in determining the form that creation took. And anyway, 60 years is almost an entire lifetime. And how much of a displacement or dispersion is one from Palestine to Lebanon? The two populations are very closely related. There are anomalous aspects to this that are independent of any Israeli anomaly.
The fact that Canadians are very similar to Americans puts the US under no obligation to absorb them if they were expelled. If, say, Greenland took over Canada and and Canadian-born people were forced to leave the country, America would very likely take the humanitarian step of granting them refugee status -- not citizenship. Just like Lebanon did vis-ŕ-vis the Palestinians.
America would very likely take the humanitarian step of granting them refugee status -- not citizenship.
Their children would be citizens automatically. It's in the constitution.
As soon as Canadian women became pregnant, the US would send them to give birth in Guantánamo, where the Constitution does not apply.
Also, the Lebanon is not sticking to US standards, but to those of an even more moral country -- Israel. As you know, Arab children born in Jerusalem to parents who have lived there all their lives are NOT granted AUTOMATIC Israeli citizenship -- why should the Lebanon behave differently?
Arab children born in Jerusalem to parents who have lived there all their lives are NOT granted AUTOMATIC Israeli citizenship -- why should the Lebanon behave differently?
Arabs in East Jerusalem dispute Israel's sovereignty there. I believe, generally speaking, they are opposed to Israeli citizenship in principle. We got to this point because of an imaginary scenario you created involving the US and Canada. If we are just comparing Lebanon to Israel, Arabs born in Israel proper are usually citizens.
Are you accepting, then, that East Jerusalem is not "Israel proper"?
" Are you accepting, then, that East Jerusalem is not "Israel proper"?
Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf | Homepage | 05.10.08 - 9:36 pm | #"
Are you willing to accept the reestablishment of Jewish Communities in Mecca & Medina? Are you willing to accept the reestablishment of Jewish Communities in all the Arab coutries that tossed them out after 1948? Are you willing to accept the destruction of that Pig-sty known as Al-Aqsa Mosque because it is built on Jewish land and on top of the Jewish Temple that stood there long before Arabs even had a culture or human-like manners?
Are you accepting, then, that East Jerusalem is not "Israel proper"?
No, it was just a convenient term to use. Perhaps I should have referred to the "green line." In any event, East Jerusalem is, of course, the heart of Eretz Yisroel. I'm an Orthodox Jew.
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