Democracy In The Middle East?
The BBC tells us about the Anger over Palestinian Nakba ban proposal
Israeli campaigners and left-wing lawmakers have condemned moves to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the Nakba – the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation.
On Sunday a government panel backed putting the bill, proposed by the party of far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, before the Israeli Knesset.
A Labour minister opposed it; Hadash, a mainly Arab party, called it “racist”.
…Under the proposed legislation, people caught marking the Nakba could be jailed for up to three years.
Lieberman was one of the people behind the action that excluded Hadash from the recent election, something that had to be overturned by the Israeli supreme court. Waiting in the wings is his requirement that everyone in Israel take a loyalty oath.
Lieberman is a recent immigrant with an interesting CV for a foreign minister – working as a bouncer in bars in Romania. But I shouldn’t be too hard on Lieberman, because he and his party aren’t the worst in Netanyahu’s coalition. His party only advocates apartheid, not ethnic cleansing.
