Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family.
Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are very thorough. I doubt they really need this intrusion to determine if someone is a threat, as it is easier for them to just not grant access, but I suppose if someone really needed to get into the country they could be willing to divulge the information.
Security, in any form, is annoying. Implement two-factor on your gmail account, and it will occasionally annoy you when you have to dig out your phone for the code, and that's just to protect your email from prying eyes! What if you had to legitimately protect your life and the lives of your family? What kind of inconvenience would you accept for that protection?
(Edit) Why is this downvoted? What did I say that did not add to the conversation? Just because you disagree with me? That's rather childish. I think my point is rather poignant, that security is a necessary evil, and that for some it is more necessary than others.
Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family.
This is a really poor frame. People who disagree with this practice are not "Israel bashing," they're disagreeing with this policy. It's inappropriate to preemptively insinuate that those who disagree about a civil liberties issue are anti-Semitic.
Well, you know, it's just, I've been on the internet. People tend to take things to extremes. Tech people tend to be liberal, and most liberals in the US have an anti-Israeli view. I prefer not to divulge my political leanings (but just because I agree with someone else on one point does not mean I agree with them on any other) but I know a very great deal about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and its implications. I want to educate, and I don't want to see mindless bashing of Israel like I see on pretty much every tech forum where the topic comes up.
This is a free piece of advice: try not to display your allegiance so clearly and so early (especially not before any bashing comment has even appeared!) A better approach to educate is to calmly correct each factually wrong statement, ideally with references.
This way you'd avoid being classified early as a(n overreacting) shill, as that can only hamper your educational efforts.
So you're saying if someone were pointing a gun at your family, and you also had a gun pointed at them, you would refuse to use it out of a belief that you occupy some moral high ground?
I see that "non sequitor straw man analogy" is the special on the menu today.
So, to be clear, I'm not saying anything about guns pointed my families. I'm talking about people's natural right to privacy and the overreach of government. These two things have nothing to do with each other and your attempt to connect them is both misleading and disingenuous.
Well, since you weren't clear, and still aren't, straw man it was. Your point is what? That privacy is sacrosanct? That we should live in a world where libertarianism rules all? What is your point? Stop me anytime.
We're talking about the same thing here. Security abuses privacy, but is necessary. My point was, and still is, that for some it is more necessary than others. As we in the US and Western Europe don't live under constant threat to our lives, we accept less. However, Israelis do live under that threat, so they accept more.
That seems like a digression. The tourists in question were presumably unarmed, both literally and figuratively. Yet they had the metaphorical gun pointed at them anyway.
I'm guessing that an implied part of your point is that because they had arab names, they might have had metaphorical guns? Yeah. That's the part that drew the downvotes.
I'm not sure asking for email credentials is a "metaphorical gun". 99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs. You suggest that profiling is wrong (and it is! Don't we all wish we lived in a world where it wasn't necessary!), but it works. It's stopped countless terror attacks.
Not sure I want to get involved, but I'm curious - given that you separated "Israeli" from "Arab" (are there not Israelis who are also Arab? Why are you mixing citizenship with ethnicity?), using the same scale, what is the percentage of violence committed against Arabs by Israelis? Don't some of those fall into the category of "terror attack"? Isn't there a power imbalance which prevents Arabs from profiling and being able to restrict what Israelis can do? If Arabs were able to profile and exclude certain classes of people, wouldn't that help stop further "countless terror attacks" against them?
If I understand your view rightly, I think you are in favor of having the Israelis out of the West Bank, as that would reduce the overall amount of attacks. Is that correct?
"are there not Israelis who are also Arab?" Yes. And in fact, many serve in the Knesset, and the army.
"Why are you mixing citizenship with ethnicity?" It's the ethnicity that they use to profile.
"using the same scale, what is the percentage of violence committed against Arabs by Israelis?" I don't know. More Arabs are killed by other Arabs than by Israelis. If you're talking about just Palestinians, yes, it would be by Israelis.
"Don't some of those fall into the category of "terror attack"?" No. No. No. That's the biggest problem with education about the conflict. How do you define a "terror attack"? I define it as violent acts towards civilians with the intent of causing mass psychological damage. Israel does not commit such acts. They attack military targets in the Gaza Strip, and sometimes kill civilians, as any army in the world has had the difficult issue of doing. A British soldier stood up in the UN and proclaimed that during the last Israeli/Gaza offensive (operation cast lead), Israel did more to protect Gazan civilians than any nation has ever done previously (http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKI...). He was referring to the Goldstone report, which was later rescinded and apologized for.
"Isn't there a power imbalance which prevents Arabs from profiling and being able to restrict what Israelis can do?" No, not at all. Try getting into Egypt with an Israeli passport. Multiple acquaintances that have were harassed by Egyptian police. In actuality, it is much more difficult for Israelis in Arab countries than it is for Arabs in Israel.
"If Arabs were able to profile and exclude certain classes of people, wouldn't that help stop further "countless terror attacks" against them?" What terrorist attacks?
"If I understand your view rightly, I think you are in favor of having the Israelis out of the West Bank, as that would reduce the overall amount of attacks. Is that correct?" I am 100% for a two-state solution with two people living side by side peacefully. Settlements in the West Bank are an issue that needs to be figured out. You have to realize that these "settlements" are sometimes small, and sometimes (like Ariel) are large cities with thousands of residents. It's not simple to just get them to up and move. Remember, Israel did that (The unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip) and all they have gotten in return is more than 9000 rockets and mortars fired on Israeli citizens.
(edit) Ah yes, downvoted for the inconvenient truth.
At this point I need to ask for clarification of your numbers. Where do you get the "99% of the violence" number? Is it a real number, or one that you believe is correct but have not verified?
For me, that number does not seem believable. For example, in 2007 there were 2,796 calls to the Rape Crisis Hotline concerning "Rape, attempted rape, Statutory rape", 386 for "Gang rape and sexual attacks", and 1,630 for incest. I suspect the same is true today, but I have not found more recent numbers.
It's very unlikely that incest is caused by an Israeli vs. a non-Israeli, but perhaps you don't regard that as violent. Do you regard rape as violent? I certainly do. Are 99% of those rape reports caused by non-Israelis? Or are they made up for by very large amounts of violence elsewhere?
I looked also for domestic violence reports, but that was hard to come by. From what I gather, it is poorly and infrequently reported, and criminal proceedings can take years to prosecute which discourages women from doing so. The UNHCR says "11 percent of the 688 women admitted to battered women's shelters in 2005 were Ethiopian (Haaretz 23 Aug. 2006). In addition, approximately one quarter of Israeli women murdered by their husbands in recent years have been Ethiopian."
688*0.11% = 75, so there must be at least another 7500 cases of Arab violence towards Israelis for your 99% number to be true.
For Palestinian women, it's even worse, but my goal here was to question how you determined the 99% number.
I put "terror attack" in quotes for precisely the reason you described - it is ill-defined. One definition says "the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal." Another definition says that attacks on military cannot be considered terrorists. Yet another says that if the main goal is to get money then it is likely not terrorism.
This is why I would rather use the term "violence" than the term "terror attack" and when you ask "What terrorist attacks?" I would rather refer to settler attacks like the one I found in Haaretz titled "Settlers attack Palestinians to avenge West Bank outpost demolition", which seems to fit your definition of "mass psychological damage", if only to a single town.
I found these http://old.btselem.org/statistics/english/Casualties.asp statistics. Various source question what "civilian" means, but it's enough basis for this discussion. It lists that 53 Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians in Israel and the Occupied Territories, while 254 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians (over a 12 year period). This is not 99%.
I noticed that you switched from talking about Israelis to talking about "Israel". Why is that? I easily found cases where a Palestinian was "shot and killed by settlers while harvesting his olives", and "killed by settlers who rioted in Hebron"; isn't that the topic we were on, and not state policy? But it is not hard to find other cases of Israelis instigating an attack even while Israel protects the Palestinians.
I see that you then switched the topic to "Egypt"; I thought you were using "Arab" as the term for non-Israeli people living either in Israel or the Occupied Territories, and that is how I meant to use it. If you want to include Egyptians in this category then surely this category is getting rather nebulous. How many Egyptians have served in the Knesset? What percentage of violence is committed against Israelis by Egyptians?
With your new definition, then certainly it's true that more Arabs are killed by other Arabs than Arabs by Israelis because there are some 300+ million Arabs in the world and only some 7.6 million Israelis. Would you clarify what you mean by "Arab" in this context?
Yes, I made it up. Wasn't it obvious? What I meant was that the vast majority of terror attacks in Israel are committed by Arabs. That's really indisputable. Why are you going off on a tangent to talk about rape? What does that have to do with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Domestic violence is a horrible problem everywhere, but I don't see why you're bringing it up here.
Yes, there are Palestinians civilians killed by Israeli civilians. However, they are not state sponsored. When an Israeli civilian is killed in a terror attack, it is state sponsored. Palestinians democratically elected Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization. Fatah, in charge of the West Bank, also has a terrorist arm, called the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
Arabs are an ethnicity. Egypt was an example of an Arab dominant culture that does not treat Israel well (even though they have a peace agreement!).
You're really grasping at straws. If you want to defend the actions of terrorist organizations like Hamas, go ahead, but I'm not going to pay attention to it.
You said "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I brought up domestic violence because I thought the topic was on violence against Israelis, and that was a relatively easy topic to research.
Now you say that 1) you made up the number, and 2) you're talking specifically about terrorism. Okay, that's fine, but that's a different topic than "violence" and different than the "lived under constant threat to your life" which you started off with. You did say that profiling reduced terror attacks, but didn't say that it reduced the amount of violence. These two are not necessarily coupled.
South Africa, for example, has complex history of people divided by race, and where ethnic tensions and hatreds still run strong. In my 6 months or so in that country I met many people who "lived under constant threat to [their] life", for being outside at night, or in the wrong part of town, or while being carjacked or during a break-in while they slept at night. So no, it's not apparent to me that you are saying that all violent attacks, or that all threats to life in Israel are due to terrorism.
(It appears even that there are more homicides per year in Israel than deaths by terrorist attacks, but then as is often pointed out, every year over 10 times more people die in car accidents than died in 9/11 - some things we just get desensitized to.)
It looks like you are restricting 'terrorism' to state-sponsored terrorism. Surely al-Qaeda is the premier example of a stateless terrorist organization. Why can't the terrorist appellation also describe organized groups of settlers who, in violation of the law and counter to government policy, attack Palestinians?
I am not defending Hamas. I am attacking your rhetoric. You use absolutist statements, and you change your definitions somewhat when it serves your goals. I highlighted some of those changes. That annoyed me, and I do not believe it helps you achieve your goal of explaining your views to others like me.
If it helps, the statistics from btselem.org are quite clear that a large majority of the civilian Israeli deaths by Palestinians are done by people affiliated with the political organizations of the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, and elsewhere, and done in such a way that I have no problems calling it terrorism. But - and to get back to the topic I once thought you were making - based on those and other numbers, it seems significantly more likely that an Israeli will die of violence inflicted by another Israeli than by a non-Israeli.
I didn't change my definitions at all, you've just been overly pedantic. I wrote these things in break time between working. It wasn't an end-all be-all.
I'm sorry that I was not clear, but I thought it was obvious that I was talking about terrorism, as that is the main violent issue in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
It was not clear that you were talking about terrorism. The quote again is "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I now understand that you mean "terrorism" instead of "violence".
With that meaning, then yes, obviously there is little state-sponsored terrorism against Israelis by the government of Israel. But that seems rather a trivial statement, and I did not consider that that was your intent.
Rarher, I think they were saying that it would be prudent to be skeptical and cautious of anyone attempting to impose draconian laws or practices under the thinly veiled guise of "the british are coming" -- er sorry, "the baddies are coming".
You will notice this isn't about security but about identifying pro-Palestinian activists:
Quote: "The agent, suspecting Tamari was involved in pro-Palestinian activism, wanted to inspect her private email account for incriminating evidence. The 42-year-old American of Palestinian descent refused and was swiftly expelled from the country."
I don't support this sort of invasion of privacy, but FWIW most terrorists are grossly incompetent. We're not dealing with shadowy cabals of Dr. Evils, terrorists we've been able to apprehend have inevitably turned out to be strictly amateur.
What they lack in operational sophistication they make up in dedication and deadliness.
It's not going to help them determine how much of a threat someone is in terms of killing people. It's a very good way of determining how much of a threat someone's likely to be in terms of drawing attentions to the less savoury aspects of Israel's treatment of its Arab population.
I would demand that my government did go around and committed genocide on my neighbors. I would demand that they treat the palestinians as humans -- so they wouldn't want to kill me.
Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are very thorough. I doubt they really need this intrusion to determine if someone is a threat, as it is easier for them to just not grant access, but I suppose if someone really needed to get into the country they could be willing to divulge the information.
Security, in any form, is annoying. Implement two-factor on your gmail account, and it will occasionally annoy you when you have to dig out your phone for the code, and that's just to protect your email from prying eyes! What if you had to legitimately protect your life and the lives of your family? What kind of inconvenience would you accept for that protection?
(Edit) Why is this downvoted? What did I say that did not add to the conversation? Just because you disagree with me? That's rather childish. I think my point is rather poignant, that security is a necessary evil, and that for some it is more necessary than others.