Nadene Goldfoot
The biggest lie that Israel's enemies have spread is saying that Israel is racist. The fact that it is to remain as a Jewish state with the predominance of a Jewish population is its right after being hunted down and almost wiped out as a people, sustaining their religion and a remnant of their people for the past 3,000 plus years.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East since its declaration of being a state again on May 14, 1948, and they take Democracy quite seriously. They have pondered this and hoped for it for over 3,000 years. It's their religion! Much of this is Judaism at it's best. Civil liberties prevail. There is equality among citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds unlike any other place in the Middle East.
The 1972 census showed that she had 3.2 million population consisting of 2.7 million Jews which meant that 85.1% was Jewish. There were about 359,000 Muslims that made up 11.2% (about the same as Blacks in the USA). All or nearly all were Arabs. There were most of 80,00 of them saying they were Christians which was 2.4% and most of them also Arab, and about 39,000 Druzes and others making up 1.3%. The Druze people are an Arab group that broke away from Islam in the 10th century.
Today Israel's population is at 8,487 (2018). Whoops, it grew this year of 2019 to 8,592,755, according to the UN. Finally we had 6 million Jews, the number we lost after WWII. When Israel was established again in 1948, they had 600,00 Jews, the number Moses entered Canaan with on their 40 year trek from Egypt to Canaan.
According to Wikipedia, the present population is larger. "The demographics of Israel are monitored by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The State of Israel has a population of approximately 9,021,000 inhabitants as of May 2019. Some 74.24% are Jews of all backgrounds (about 6,697,000 individuals), 20.95% are Arab of any religion other than Jewish (about 1,890,000 individuals), while the remaining 4.81% (about 434,000 individuals) are defined as "others", including persons of Jewish ancestry deemed non-Jewish by religious law and persons of non-Jewish ancestry who are family members of Jewish immigrants (neither of which are registered at the Ministry of Interior as Jews), Christian non-Arabs, Muslim non-Arabs and all other residents who have neither an ethnic nor religious classification."
Israel's population today includes " the population of Israel to also include Israeli settlers living in the Area C of West Bank and the Muslim residents of East Jerusalem and Area C, who have Israeli residency or citizenship.
By 1949 at the end of the Israeli War of Independence, there were only some 160,000 Arabs in Israel. The increase is due mostly to more births and partly to the readmission of thousands of Arabs who fled when the Arab states attacked Israel telling them to leave and that they could later return to claim Jewish homes and property because of their winning .
Israel's 1948 basic constitutional document, the PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE, provides complete equality of social and political rights for all citizens regardless of creed, race or sex, and guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, as well as of language, education and culture.
It specifically invited Arab people living in Israel to help build the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all institutions. There is no institutionalized discrimination against Arabs or other minorities. All groups freely exercise all citizen's rights, including the right to vote and to run for public office.
Compare this with what happened in Lebanon, the little state north of Israel which was made up of Christian and Muslim Arabs which has killed off or chased out most Christians. Christians were always a minority there but the President had to be chosen from them according to their rules.
Compare this with other Arab states and look for Jews. They are not allowed to even visit Saudi Arabia, and since all the states had attacked Israel since its inception, are enemies because of religion and have carried on a religious persecution since then.
Saudi Arabia 100% Muslim Iran.......98% Muslim
Somalia........100% " Tunisia...98% "
Maldives.......100% " Comoros 98% "
Mauritania......99.99% Muslim N Cyprus 98% "
Turkey...........99% " Pakistan.97% "
Algeria......... 99% " Iraq........97% "
Morocco........99% " Tajikistan 97% "
Afghanistan...99% " Libya.......97% "
Yemen......... 99% " Etc..........96% to 50%
But No Jews......or Christians.
Jews had to leave their Middle East homeland when Israel was created in 1948. They were kicked out. Jews had been living pretty much as 2nd class Jews there anyway with some stiff laws, such as not being able to have a building higher than the Muslims. They had to endure fewer pogrom and had no rights at all in eastern Europe, faring better in the Middle East. This is another reason why our fore-fathers thought we stood a better chance of a RETURN to the Middle East on our ancient homeland. Now, of course, the Palestinians want not only our ancient beginnings of Judea and Samaria but all of Israel as well.
In Israel, Arabs and other minorities freely exercise all citizen rights including the right to vote and run for public office. Anyone who lived in what is now Israel in 1948 and has lived there since is an Israeli citizen. That was 71 years ago, so few today would be natural born citizens. But I digress.
Persons of any nationality or creed but excluding known criminals and similar undesirables, people showing hatred against Israel such as Norman Finkelstein, may come to Israel to live, and may become citizens after a specified waiting period of of 3 years in most cases. Finding he was denied entrance, Finkelstein has recanted his position. He challenged Joan Peters book, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, while I praise it and her. He even called Alan Dershowitz's book, A CASE FOR ISRAEL, a fraudulent book. He has been a man with his head in the sand, refusing to believe the facts these people had found, and he himself only criticized Israel with false facts, a PhD who hadn't really done the job of finding the truth, well at all. This is a good lesson: follow the wrong and hateful people and you do not get to the truth.
Israel was created as THE HOMELAND OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE with good reason. We haven't had a homeland since 70 CE when the Romans destroyed our homeland and took it as theirs after burning down Jerusalem and our Temple. Israel has created an expedited procedure for Jewish return called THE LAW OF RETURN. Any Jewish immigrant from any country is to be admitted and made a citizen if he or she wishes without waiting. My husband and I were not aware of this in 1980 when we made aliyah, so waited 5 years to fill out citizenship papers such as in the USA. No matter. We were such Greenhorns then back in 1980. We felt like an Israeli the moment we stepped onto the tarmac at the airport.
Hebrew is the official language along with Arabic. On the floor of the Knesset (legislature) Arab members speak Arabic. All Knesset proceedings are conducted with simultaneous translation from Hebrew into Arabic or vice versa. Citizens may use Arabic in any court of law or government office. Children in schools study both languages. Arab children can be seen helping Jewish children and vice versa in the after hours. They are said to be similar languages but with very different alphabet scripts. As a rule, an Arab's pronunciation of Hebrew is far far better than mine with my American accent.
There is no problem in Arabs maintaining their own culture and tradition. Arab children attend schools where classes are in Arabic and their history and culture are freely taught if they wish. They also attend public schools.
In 1976, there were 24 daily newspapers of which 4 were in Arabic. Numerous Arabic books and some 20 Arabic magazines were published. The radio and TV featured daily programs in Arabic. Living in Safed from 1980 to 1985, we saw Egyptian and Syrian and Lebanese TV programming as well as Israeli. Included were programming from England and Australia and wow! English humor may be suttle, but they were a lot racier than the USA was at that time. Today with more than 22 papers, "Reuters correspondent Tova Cohen described Israeli society in 2012 as "news-obsessed." Israel has a high newspaper readership rate, due to a combination of high literacy rate and a cultural interest in politics and current affairs. Average weekday readership of newspapers in Israel is around 21 papers per 100 people, although many Israelis end up reading more than one paper."
Surprisingly, Israel had no censorship except in matters directly involving military security. There were many Arab-Jewish cultural centers,usually under private auspices. Both people have cultural creativeness in drama, literature and paintings.
Unlike the rest of the world, but like the Middle Eastern tradition, Israel treats religious groups as entities with official standing. Delegated to these communities are matters of marriage and divorce. Each group has their own system of courts to deal with this so there are Rabbinical, Muslim, Druze, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, etc. The Muslim community as great autonomy including the power to administer religious endowments. In 1973, about 200 of the Muslim clergy were being paid by the State of Israel, like the clergy of other faiths. Services were held in some 90 mosques, and Muslim Friday prayers are broadcast on the national radio.
Perhaps this is why criminal Muslims in prison have been allowed to receive compensation for killing Jews for so long. This should be ended, or having autonomy for Jordan's religious people on the Temple Mount. It's a very giving and understanding law that Israel has for minorities but on the other hand its against their own best interests and security in my opinion. However, they are a Democracy and have not forgotten how they had been treated, not wishing to imply such feelings on others.
Today in the USA, women rule over men by bringing them up by their suspenders. Men have to change their ways of being sexualized men and watch out or they're being reprimanded harshly like never before. The sexes in the Middle East have always prevented such problems by their code of dress, particularly the hair coverings, something not affecting other countries, I note. Nowhere else is hair considered as having a sexual draw or stimulant, but the Middle East. Many women of both groups cover their hair. One can just about see what party they belong to by their identifiable head coverings.
Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath and is the official day of rest in Israel like it is Sunday in the USA, a Christian practice. Friday is the day for Muslims. Muslims and Christians in Israel have the option of closing their businesses on either day of Friday or Sunday.
Arabs in Public service and public office has been rising. It's increasing as more are finishing high school. In 1973 about 5,000 Arabs were civil service employees with about 70,000 Arab and Druzes serving as magistrates.
There are 120 members of the Knesset and 4 were Arabs and one Druze in 1973. Abdul Aziz Zuabi was the Deputy Minister of Health and Seif Aldin Alzuabi was Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, both Arabs. Jaber Muadi, Deputy Minister of Communications, is a Druze.
Police include Bedouin Arabs, Druzes and other minority group members. They perform ordinary police duties besides working with the Army in guarding the borders against infiltrators. As of 1973, there were 1,287 Arabs and Druzes in a total force of 13,882 persons.
Armed forces of Israel, the IDF (Israel Defence Force) has offered exemption from the draft to certain ethnic and religious groups. The Druzes and Circassians (Muslim sect) have decided to be just like any Jewish Israeli and do not accept the exemption. Most other Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, do stay out of the IDF. Individuals can volunteer for service and some do so each year. There are advantages in doing so in obtaining jobs after their service time. It's something important to put on their resumes.
I might add that everyone in Israel is duty-bound to go into the armed forces, even women of Israel. Religious studies have kept out many Jews, however, but this is changing. Even they must do their share.
71 years and we still have Arabs that have been stirred up by their leaders to want to follow the resistance to Israel's acceptance. "Palestinians refer to the events surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel as the Nakba, or catastrophe." They are the ones burning fields with their kites, including the burning of forests down that it took 71 years of planting and caring to become forests in such a hot climate. They only hurt themselves in the process of such hatred.
Israel sits among at least 22 of the known 48 Muslim majority states of the world. They have not accepted any Palestinian Muslims into their countries for many reasons, among them wanting to drive out the Jews of Israel and take over the land. Being Jews were native-born originally in a much larger land of Israel, and have not succeeded in being accepted in any other country without a lot of anti-Semitism, and with the fear of another Hitler-type arising, such as is happening in Iran, they need and prefer to hold onto Israel. Their neighbors are just now starting to be accepting, and we hope, this will continue and even improve. Israel does have much to offer the Middle East. iran's ambitions and hatred of Israel is bringing many over to be more accepting of Israel, at least for now.
Resource: JEWISH DIGEST, January 1976-Israel: A pluralistic Democracy from American Jewish Committee Background Memorandum p. 22-24 of 22-26.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-status-of-arabs-in-israel
https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/founding-of-the-state-of-israel-may-14-1948#.WKeWS_krLIU
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/israel-statistics-and-facts/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/israel-population/ ****
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Israel
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| Look at all these races. There exists a few of each one living as citizens of Israel. Pashtuns have now been realized to be from the Lost Tribes of Israel and are being considered next, no doubt, adding to such a pluralistic society. Russians, Arabs, Americans, English, and yes, I personally know of one Jewish gal with some native American Indian genes as well living in Israel. Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern Europe and Sephardic Jews from Spanish speaking countries. The Boat people have entered Israel from the Orient, needing refuge and got that and jobs. |
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| A Masai Jew, my friend, who has my admiration |
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East since its declaration of being a state again on May 14, 1948, and they take Democracy quite seriously. They have pondered this and hoped for it for over 3,000 years. It's their religion! Much of this is Judaism at it's best. Civil liberties prevail. There is equality among citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds unlike any other place in the Middle East.
The 1972 census showed that she had 3.2 million population consisting of 2.7 million Jews which meant that 85.1% was Jewish. There were about 359,000 Muslims that made up 11.2% (about the same as Blacks in the USA). All or nearly all were Arabs. There were most of 80,00 of them saying they were Christians which was 2.4% and most of them also Arab, and about 39,000 Druzes and others making up 1.3%. The Druze people are an Arab group that broke away from Islam in the 10th century.
Today Israel's population is at 8,487 (2018). Whoops, it grew this year of 2019 to 8,592,755, according to the UN. Finally we had 6 million Jews, the number we lost after WWII. When Israel was established again in 1948, they had 600,00 Jews, the number Moses entered Canaan with on their 40 year trek from Egypt to Canaan.
According to Wikipedia, the present population is larger. "The demographics of Israel are monitored by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The State of Israel has a population of approximately 9,021,000 inhabitants as of May 2019. Some 74.24% are Jews of all backgrounds (about 6,697,000 individuals), 20.95% are Arab of any religion other than Jewish (about 1,890,000 individuals), while the remaining 4.81% (about 434,000 individuals) are defined as "others", including persons of Jewish ancestry deemed non-Jewish by religious law and persons of non-Jewish ancestry who are family members of Jewish immigrants (neither of which are registered at the Ministry of Interior as Jews), Christian non-Arabs, Muslim non-Arabs and all other residents who have neither an ethnic nor religious classification."
Israel's population today includes " the population of Israel to also include Israeli settlers living in the Area C of West Bank and the Muslim residents of East Jerusalem and Area C, who have Israeli residency or citizenship.
By 1949 at the end of the Israeli War of Independence, there were only some 160,000 Arabs in Israel. The increase is due mostly to more births and partly to the readmission of thousands of Arabs who fled when the Arab states attacked Israel telling them to leave and that they could later return to claim Jewish homes and property because of their winning .
Israel's 1948 basic constitutional document, the PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE, provides complete equality of social and political rights for all citizens regardless of creed, race or sex, and guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, as well as of language, education and culture.
It specifically invited Arab people living in Israel to help build the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all institutions. There is no institutionalized discrimination against Arabs or other minorities. All groups freely exercise all citizen's rights, including the right to vote and to run for public office.
Compare this with what happened in Lebanon, the little state north of Israel which was made up of Christian and Muslim Arabs which has killed off or chased out most Christians. Christians were always a minority there but the President had to be chosen from them according to their rules.
Compare this with other Arab states and look for Jews. They are not allowed to even visit Saudi Arabia, and since all the states had attacked Israel since its inception, are enemies because of religion and have carried on a religious persecution since then.
Saudi Arabia 100% Muslim Iran.......98% Muslim
Somalia........100% " Tunisia...98% "
Maldives.......100% " Comoros 98% "
Mauritania......99.99% Muslim N Cyprus 98% "
Turkey...........99% " Pakistan.97% "
Algeria......... 99% " Iraq........97% "
Morocco........99% " Tajikistan 97% "
Afghanistan...99% " Libya.......97% "
Yemen......... 99% " Etc..........96% to 50%
But No Jews......or Christians.
Jews had to leave their Middle East homeland when Israel was created in 1948. They were kicked out. Jews had been living pretty much as 2nd class Jews there anyway with some stiff laws, such as not being able to have a building higher than the Muslims. They had to endure fewer pogrom and had no rights at all in eastern Europe, faring better in the Middle East. This is another reason why our fore-fathers thought we stood a better chance of a RETURN to the Middle East on our ancient homeland. Now, of course, the Palestinians want not only our ancient beginnings of Judea and Samaria but all of Israel as well.
In Israel, Arabs and other minorities freely exercise all citizen rights including the right to vote and run for public office. Anyone who lived in what is now Israel in 1948 and has lived there since is an Israeli citizen. That was 71 years ago, so few today would be natural born citizens. But I digress.
Persons of any nationality or creed but excluding known criminals and similar undesirables, people showing hatred against Israel such as Norman Finkelstein, may come to Israel to live, and may become citizens after a specified waiting period of of 3 years in most cases. Finding he was denied entrance, Finkelstein has recanted his position. He challenged Joan Peters book, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, while I praise it and her. He even called Alan Dershowitz's book, A CASE FOR ISRAEL, a fraudulent book. He has been a man with his head in the sand, refusing to believe the facts these people had found, and he himself only criticized Israel with false facts, a PhD who hadn't really done the job of finding the truth, well at all. This is a good lesson: follow the wrong and hateful people and you do not get to the truth.
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| Temple Mount, scene of 1st and 2nd Temples where Jews are not allowed to pray if seen praying by Jordan officials AND our detractors call US RACISTS? |
Shavua Tov From The Temple Mount! More than 100 Jewish pilgrims ascended the Temple Mount this morning. Today is the fast of Shiv'ah Asar b’Tammuz, (the seventeenth of Tammuz) , beginning the three week mourning period over the destruction of both the first and second Holy Temple. Click here to see photos. (Update-7/26/19) It doesn't say they were saying prayers orally to be seen or heard. Read Josephus's description of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and you would easily mourn for 3 weeks; it was horrendous!! from Temple Mt. Info. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgxwDqTXmwlfNvQxfXLpJrjXBWgjv Glad to see this attempt. To keep the peace in 67, Moshe Dayan made this deal with Jordan, giving them the reigns over the Temple Mount. A Saudi Arabian came to see it and Palestinians attacked him. Now see if you can understand this surprise. Middle Easterners do not think in a block on all subjects.
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Hebrew is the official language along with Arabic. On the floor of the Knesset (legislature) Arab members speak Arabic. All Knesset proceedings are conducted with simultaneous translation from Hebrew into Arabic or vice versa. Citizens may use Arabic in any court of law or government office. Children in schools study both languages. Arab children can be seen helping Jewish children and vice versa in the after hours. They are said to be similar languages but with very different alphabet scripts. As a rule, an Arab's pronunciation of Hebrew is far far better than mine with my American accent.
There is no problem in Arabs maintaining their own culture and tradition. Arab children attend schools where classes are in Arabic and their history and culture are freely taught if they wish. They also attend public schools.
In 1976, there were 24 daily newspapers of which 4 were in Arabic. Numerous Arabic books and some 20 Arabic magazines were published. The radio and TV featured daily programs in Arabic. Living in Safed from 1980 to 1985, we saw Egyptian and Syrian and Lebanese TV programming as well as Israeli. Included were programming from England and Australia and wow! English humor may be suttle, but they were a lot racier than the USA was at that time. Today with more than 22 papers, "Reuters correspondent Tova Cohen described Israeli society in 2012 as "news-obsessed." Israel has a high newspaper readership rate, due to a combination of high literacy rate and a cultural interest in politics and current affairs. Average weekday readership of newspapers in Israel is around 21 papers per 100 people, although many Israelis end up reading more than one paper."
Surprisingly, Israel had no censorship except in matters directly involving military security. There were many Arab-Jewish cultural centers,usually under private auspices. Both people have cultural creativeness in drama, literature and paintings.
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| Jewish women of Israel, on the left from Tel Aviv, on the right from Jerusalem. |
Perhaps this is why criminal Muslims in prison have been allowed to receive compensation for killing Jews for so long. This should be ended, or having autonomy for Jordan's religious people on the Temple Mount. It's a very giving and understanding law that Israel has for minorities but on the other hand its against their own best interests and security in my opinion. However, they are a Democracy and have not forgotten how they had been treated, not wishing to imply such feelings on others.
 |
| What I saw from 1980-85 were Arab women with white scarves tied under their chins. |
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| Muslim woman belief in total covering Here at the wall, the woman in black could be Jewish. |
Arabs in Public service and public office has been rising. It's increasing as more are finishing high school. In 1973 about 5,000 Arabs were civil service employees with about 70,000 Arab and Druzes serving as magistrates.
There are 120 members of the Knesset and 4 were Arabs and one Druze in 1973. Abdul Aziz Zuabi was the Deputy Minister of Health and Seif Aldin Alzuabi was Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, both Arabs. Jaber Muadi, Deputy Minister of Communications, is a Druze.
 |
| Druze IDF soldier |
Police include Bedouin Arabs, Druzes and other minority group members. They perform ordinary police duties besides working with the Army in guarding the borders against infiltrators. As of 1973, there were 1,287 Arabs and Druzes in a total force of 13,882 persons.
 |
| Ethiopian Jew, Muslim, English Jew, Christian all are in the IDF. |
71 years and we still have Arabs that have been stirred up by their leaders to want to follow the resistance to Israel's acceptance. "Palestinians refer to the events surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel as the Nakba, or catastrophe." They are the ones burning fields with their kites, including the burning of forests down that it took 71 years of planting and caring to become forests in such a hot climate. They only hurt themselves in the process of such hatred.
Israel sits among at least 22 of the known 48 Muslim majority states of the world. They have not accepted any Palestinian Muslims into their countries for many reasons, among them wanting to drive out the Jews of Israel and take over the land. Being Jews were native-born originally in a much larger land of Israel, and have not succeeded in being accepted in any other country without a lot of anti-Semitism, and with the fear of another Hitler-type arising, such as is happening in Iran, they need and prefer to hold onto Israel. Their neighbors are just now starting to be accepting, and we hope, this will continue and even improve. Israel does have much to offer the Middle East. iran's ambitions and hatred of Israel is bringing many over to be more accepting of Israel, at least for now.
Resource: JEWISH DIGEST, January 1976-Israel: A pluralistic Democracy from American Jewish Committee Background Memorandum p. 22-24 of 22-26.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-status-of-arabs-in-israel
https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/founding-of-the-state-of-israel-may-14-1948#.WKeWS_krLIU
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/israel-statistics-and-facts/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/israel-population/ ****
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Israel
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