http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/05/eritrean-refugees-at-israeli-egyptian-border
One of those days when I'm especially ashamed of what my home country does. Not sure if it's mentioned in the Guardian article, but last night some Israeli civilians tried to approach the fence to give the refugees some food, and the army refused to let them through or even pass the food on for them, apparently on official orders.
And people I know are defending this, or at least deflecting it with "yeah but why aren't you criticizing Assad for his atrocities?" or "but isn't Egypt even more responsible for this situation?".
Also, caffeine and nicotine withdrawal. Just kill me.
In Romney's America™, Mexicans will be treated in a similar manner on our Great Wall of Texas.
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Yeah, not really convincing me of the rightness of this action with those red herrings.
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Yeah, not really convincing me of the rightness of this action with those red herrings.
My policy of A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES seems to still be the best possible option.
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:27:57 PM
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Given their history, what on Earth would lead you to believe anything of the kind?
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:25:51 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Yeah, not really convincing me of the rightness of this action with those red herrings.
My policy of A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES seems to still be the best possible option.
It certainly seems so. I tend to be a bit more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israelis, as a rule, because of the massive power disparity between the two, but I don't for a minute think it would be any different if the Palestinians had American military support and a state with which to oppress the Israelis. Also the history of the Jewish people really means the Israeli state should know fucking better, but apparently that is not the case.
VERBL, to what extent do you think these refugees are being denied entry due to the upsurge in anti-African racism and violence in Israel? I notice there have been some...disturbing incidents lately, which seem to comfirm that justifying states in ethnoreligious rather than civic terms leads to racism and ethnic conflict.
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Within internal discourse, yes, this has become a standard argument you basically hear any time you criticize anything the government or army does. Okay, when it's about how the government's policies even fuck over Israeli Jews, you hear this less, but still sometimes. ("If you hate it so much here, why not go live in Syria?")
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:33:27 PM
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:27:57 PM
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Given their history, what on Earth would lead you to believe anything of the kind?
I would
LIKE to, but I won't.
The whole construct of that country is bullshit.
Quote from: VERBL on September 05, 2012, 04:37:23 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Within internal discourse, yes, this has become a standard argument you basically hear any time you criticize anything the government or army does. Okay, when it's about how the government's policies even fuck over Israeli Jews, you hear this less, but still sometimes. ("If you hate it so much here, why not go live in Syria?")
"If you love refugees so much, why don't you go live there?"
From where I'm sitting, things are looking a bit volatile over there. I'm reminded of 2004 in America, which is never a good thing to be reminded of.
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:37:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:33:27 PM
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:27:57 PM
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Given their history, what on Earth would lead you to believe anything of the kind?
I would LIKE to, but I won't.
The whole construct of that country is bullshit.
So is ours. Not the point.
The point is how they act NOW.
Members of the forum should probably refrain from bringing up our current treatment of Native Americans, on account of my American Exceptionalism™, so shut up.
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:39:00 PM
Quote from: VERBL on September 05, 2012, 04:37:23 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Within internal discourse, yes, this has become a standard argument you basically hear any time you criticize anything the government or army does. Okay, when it's about how the government's policies even fuck over Israeli Jews, you hear this less, but still sometimes. ("If you hate it so much here, why not go live in Syria?")
"If you love refugees so much, why don't you go live there?"
From where I'm sitting, things are looking a bit volatile over there. I'm reminded of 2004 in America, which is never a good thing to be reminded of.
I maintain my response to that, and recommend it to Verbl:
"Because this is my home. YOU get the fuck out."
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:35:08 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:25:51 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Yeah, not really convincing me of the rightness of this action with those red herrings.
My policy of A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES seems to still be the best possible option.
It certainly seems so. I tend to be a bit more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israelis, as a rule, because of the massive power disparity between the two, but I don't for a minute think it would be any different if the Palestinians had American military support and a state with which to oppress the Israelis. Also the history of the Jewish people really means the Israeli state should know fucking better, but apparently that is not the case.
That's what I meant.
Then I remember the meaningless revolts they pulled on the Romans and what happened then. Not that you should judge the entire Jewish faith on the crackheads, but the crackheads ain't helping the cause, here. Zionists = crackheads.
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:39:00 PM
Quote from: VERBL on September 05, 2012, 04:37:23 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:24:54 PM
So Israeli defenders of this action are essentially saying they should be held to the same standards as a shaky military dictatorship with a political leadership made up of religious extremists or a man butchering his own civilian population?
Within internal discourse, yes, this has become a standard argument you basically hear any time you criticize anything the government or army does. Okay, when it's about how the government's policies even fuck over Israeli Jews, you hear this less, but still sometimes. ("If you hate it so much here, why not go live in Syria?")
"If you love refugees so much, why don't you go live there?"
From where I'm sitting, things are looking a bit volatile over there. I'm reminded of 2004 in America, which is never a good thing to be reminded of.
"If you hate America so much, move to Canada." ?
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 04:35:08 PM
VERBL, to what extent do you think these refugees are being denied entry due to the upsurge in anti-African racism and violence in Israel? I notice there have been some...disturbing incidents lately, which seem to comfirm that justifying states in ethnoreligious rather than civic terms leads to racism and ethnic conflict.
I think the treatment of this particular bunch of refugees is just an extension of the government racists' rhetoric.
The upsurge in racism and violence was directly encouraged by members of the coalition (particularly notorious racist MK Ben-Ari and notorious idiot MK Regev) and by Minister of Interior Yishai.
From what I've read, there appear to be two main reasons. First, this concerning the entire coalition, the more headlines are about Africans, the less lefties are busy condemning destructive socio-economic policy; instead we're talking about people who much of the public doesn't care about in the first place, as usual, as we used to do when we only talked about the Palestinians.
Second, this concerning probably only Yishai and a few other key people, the influx of Africans has been undercutting the cheap labor import industry, by which you take some absurd sum from a poor southeast Asian, bring them to Israel, and get the Ministry of Interior to let them work there...for a while. It's a turning-door system by which they're usually only legal for a year or two, then they stay illegally but their spot is filled in the next batch of legal migrant workers nonetheless. And apparently Yishai gets some important kind of support, possibly even bribes, from this industry. Starving Africans mean even cheaper labor is available, and worse yet, they get imported by Egyptian smugglers rather than Israeli "businessmen".
So obviously, something has to be done about these filthy foreigners who come, push down real-estate prices, take our jobs, rape our women, and spread diseases. Think about the families!
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:40:14 PM
I maintain my response to that, and recommend it to Verbl:
"Because this is my home. YOU get the fuck out."
Yup. I try to remember to say that, but I have the disadvantage of actually living in Germany for the past five years, and in any case I tend to instead lecture them on my right to speak out against injustice and stuff like that... Frankly, it's no wonder the Israeli Left is in demise, we have a culture of being total losers in political debates.
Quote from: VERBL on September 05, 2012, 04:51:58 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:40:14 PM
I maintain my response to that, and recommend it to Verbl:
"Because this is my home. YOU get the fuck out."
Yup. I try to remember to say that, but I have the disadvantage of actually living in Germany for the past five years, and in any case I tend to instead lecture them on my right to speak out against injustice and stuff like that... Frankly, it's no wonder the Israeli Left is in demise, we have a culture of being total losers in political debates.
I know the feeling.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:33:27 PM
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:27:57 PM
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Given their history, what on Earth would lead you to believe anything of the kind?
Maybe it's something like the children who are raised in abusive homes who are more likely to continue the cycle of abuse when they have children of their own.
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:41:03 PM
"If you hate America so much, move to Canada." ?
Yeah, thanks for that... I'm still picking Janeane Garofalo out of my colon...
Quote from: v3x on September 05, 2012, 04:56:48 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 04:33:27 PM
Quote from: Suu on September 05, 2012, 04:27:57 PM
Honestly, I would like to believe that Israel should fucking know better.
Given their history, what on Earth would lead you to believe anything of the kind?
Maybe it's something like the children who are raised in abusive homes who are more likely to continue the cycle of abuse when they have children of their own.
I've been saying that ever since I heard about that correlation as a preteen. :(
Nowadays I like to think of it like this: trauma is a disease; like many diseases, it continues to exist by getting its host to pass it on to a new host. So back in the early 20th century a lot of Germans were traumatized by a pretty crappy few decades, and collectively Germany was traumatized by crushing defeat and humiliation in WWI, and they passed on their trauma to us Jews (with interest, probably, because they can't possibly have had it
that bad). And then we ran away and huddled together and started passing on the trauma to our new neighbors. And they're all fucked up now, too, maybe more than they were before.
http://972mag.com/asylum-seekers-trapped-on-egypt-israel-border-go-6-days-without-food/55182/ (see update at bottom)
The IDF Spokesman's Unit is saying that as of today they are being given food, too.
I always say that anything that can be vividly-enough described can become reality, which is why science fiction predicts the future. But I am starting to doubt myself, because it seems like human beings just can't get past petty tribalism and cruelty toward other humans.
Quote from: A Very Hairy Monkey In An Ill-Fitting Tunic on September 05, 2012, 07:04:41 PM
I always say that anything that can be vividly-enough described can become reality, which is why science fiction predicts the future. But I am starting to doubt myself, because it seems like human beings just can't get past petty tribalism and cruelty toward other humans.
Science fiction DOES predict the future. But we've been reading the wrong books.
Warhammer 40K is science fiction. Not all hope is lost.
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 07:32:18 PM
Warhammer 40K is science fiction. Not all hope is lost.
Warhammer 40K is half the population of the world as we speak.
Only without the cool shit.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 07:33:15 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 07:32:18 PM
Warhammer 40K is science fiction. Not all hope is lost.
Warhammer 40K is half the population of the world as we speak.
Only without the cool shit.
True. I've heard some speeches as of late which do compare to:
"It is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself."
Update: a few days ago, the IDF and government announced that the two women and one minor boy were let into Israel (now held in a presumably awful prison of some sort, but at least not being starved to death) and that the rest of the group, all men "turned back".
Also a few days ago – before the men "turned back" – some of the soldiers who were there were interviewed. One of them said something like "it's hard to see these people, thin as skeletons and all cut up, but they're a danger to our security and we're proud of protecting our country". Where they got the idea that these near-dead individuals were a danger is not hard to figure out in light of the very public high-level incitement I mentioned above.
Today, an organization called We Are Refugees, started by lawyers to provide asylum seekers with legal aid and get them their rights, took testimonies from the three.
They say that the soldiers went out to the group and started dragging the men across the older, smaller fence to the undisputedly Egyptian side of the border. Some of the men – all of whom were hardly able to move, after being starved, but tried to resist – begged the soldiers to kill them rather than return them to Egypt. The soldiers did not oblige. And tear gas was used on the group at some point(s), apparently before they "turned back".
This is beyond my ability to process. This is on par with stories one hears from victims of Nazi persecution (albeit on a smaller scale, so far at least.) I'm kind of in shock.
Quote from: VERBL on September 11, 2012, 06:57:33 PM
This is beyond my ability to process. This is on par with stories one hears from victims of Nazi persecution (albeit on a smaller scale, so far at least.) I'm kind of in shock.
No, it's not. If it were the Nazis, it would have happened inside a fenced compound, with the victims having been brought there expressly for the purpose of starving or murdering them.
This is an awful thing, but there are levels of bad between "unpleasant", "inhumane", and "death camps".
Yeah, fair enough. I kinda classed that under scale, but it's not really the same thing.
Quote from: The Dark Monk on September 05, 2012, 07:57:23 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on September 05, 2012, 07:33:15 PM
Quote from: Cain on September 05, 2012, 07:32:18 PM
Warhammer 40K is science fiction. Not all hope is lost.
Warhammer 40K is half the population of the world as we speak.
Only without the cool shit.
True. I've heard some speeches as of late which do compare to:
"It is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself."
Reason begets doubt, doubt begets heresy.
Heresy begets retribution.
ImperialAMERICAN
TM Thought for the Day.
Haaretz have now translated the piece that so shocked me yesterday:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/eritrean-migrants-tell-of-idf-violence-at-israel-egypt-border-1.464325
I think you undestimate the risk a starving refugee could pose. I mean, he is starving, right? What if he ate an Israeli soldier?
Yeah, didn't think of that, did you libtards?
I was about to say that in other news, 2,500 new Thai laborers are officially being flown into the country, but now I can't find a source for that. While searching, I found pretty amazing positive news in this area – that the state is refusing to bring in more Chinese workers because of complaints of abusive mediation fees and the refusal of China to allow international supervision. Instead a new load of 600 trained and certified builders are being brought in from Bulgaria and Romania, with clear contracts, having been informed of their rights.
It's still absurd that cheap labor is being imported while even cheaper labor is being dragged kicking and screaming across the border to die, but the fact that the uproar about the abused Chinese laborers made this kind of difference, in fact that the state of Israel is doing anything at all for any workers to have clear contracts and know their rights, makes me both hopeful and very suspicious.
Didn't Israel have a pretty big unemployment problem a couple of years back? I seem to recall a tent city, mock guillotine executions of political figures and so on.
I can't imagine importing foreign workers is helping that situation or the resentment to foreigners issue, though no doubt it is helping to line the pockets of Israeli businessmen and women.
Oh, the claim on FB was about 2350 Thai agricultural workers by the end of this year (to help the Ministry of Agriculture – and net the manpower industry approximately US$1.8bln), whereas the Bulgarian and Romanian laborers are for construction.
Estimates of the number of African asylum seekers are between 50 and 100 thousand, almost all of them not allowed to legally work.
Of course, regardless of which group is given this kind of underpaid work, they will basically be abused by their employers, and play a key part in keeping salaries down for the whole country.
Which is all kinda noise compared with the moral aspects of what the state is doing to asylum seekers, of course. As are the legal implications (dragging the Africans across the border is apparently in violation of two separate international treaties.)
Added after seeing Cain's post:
The source of the info about the Thais and the profit to manpower companies is from an "official" FB page of the social protest movement that started last summer. The problem is more underpayment and overworking than underemployment, and mainly just overall gross inequality. On average-heavy economic metrics, Israel is doing great. On metrics which show inequality, it's an unmitigated disaster.
Ah, now you say it, that does sound more familiar, yes. They were living in the tent city because they couldn't afford rent, not due to joblessness.
In some cases, yeah. But the biggest, most famous tent city was in the center of Tel-Aviv and housed mainly be people who had somewhere else to live but were protesting how ridiculously expensive it is to do so. That tent city (on Rothschild Blvd, the most expensive street in Tel-Aviv, and a very long one at that) also developed a pretty cool life of its own, and a lot of people joined just to be part of what was going on.
Eventually, it dwindled down, and then the people who really had nowhere to go were violently evicted by the city.
In some other places, smaller tent cities have been held up continuously since then, housing people who actually need them, but because they're not in walking distance from most media companies' offices, most people don't really know or care.
Oh, and I just read that the 2350 Thai workers isn't just some general thing, it's a government decision from today. Those bastards.