Israel’s Druze Arabs criticise new nation-state law

August 3, 2018 Article

Israel’s new “nation-state” law has provoked anger among members of its most integrated minority, the Druze, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek corrective legislation.

Netanyahu has defended the law, which declares that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country, from fierce criticism at home and abroad.

But his conservative government appears to have been blindsided by the response from the Druze community, even though parliament passed the law on July 19 after years of heated debate in the Knesset.

In a further effort to calm tensions, Netanyahu convened a meeting with Druze community leaders in Tel Aviv late on Thursday but it was cut short because one of the participants, a retired senior military officer, had harshly criticised the legislation, Israeli media reported.

At a separate event in northern Israel, a Druze man had to be forcibly removed by police after he confronted and heckled one of the law’s main proponents, lawmaker Avi Dichter of Netanyahu’s Likud party who had started giving a speech.

Leaders of Israel’s main Arab minority denounced the law while Turkey called it racist and the European Union expressed concern. Netanyahu took this in his stride, saying it was needed to fend off Palestinian challenges to Jewish self-determination.

But criticism from Druze, who are also Arabs and practise an offshoot of Islam, has had more effect even though they make up only 1.3 percent of Israel’s citizenry.

“We see it as a discriminatory law which doesn’t give expression to our citizenship,” said Rafik Halabi, one of a delegation of Druze leaders who met Netanyahu.

“We told the prime minister unequivocally … we won’t be able to live in a state where part of its population, especially such a loyal and good population, feels excluded,” he said, after the delegation also met President Reuven Rivlin.

Druze communities are scattered around the region, including in Syria and Lebanon. In Israel, Druze men are drafted by the military unlike other Arab minorities, who often identify as Palestinian. Druze are also active in mainstream governance and media in Israel.

The law, which downgrades Arabic from an official language on a par with Hebrew and deems only Jewish settlement as a national priority, has prompted announcements by several Druze that they would no longer serve in uniform. Israel’s top general, Gadi Eizenkot, responded with a call not to politicise the military.

Netanyahu hastily set up a committee including ministers, officials and Druze community leaders to propose new legislation that will address their grievances and ease tensions. These changes appear designed to accommodate the Druze primarily, and not the much larger Israeli Arab minority.

“The team reached an historic outline that constitutes a revolution in the legal status of minority community members who serve in the security forces, particularly the Druze community,” Netanyahu’s media adviser said in a statement.

Akram Hasson, a Druze member of the coalition party Kulanu, said the work would take time. “There is still a long way to go,” he told Israel Radio.

DRUZE DIVIDED

Druze leaders are divided over whether the proposals will calm the tensions. A large rally by the Druze and their supporters is planned at a main Tel Aviv plaza on Saturday.

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, one of the committee members, said legislation would be presented when parliament returns for its winter session in mid October.

“To my delight, the Druze community has accepted the outline. We have agreed to work on the details and bring a set proposal to a vote,” he told the Ynet web site.

This would enshrine the Druze’s special status within Israeli society, recognise their service to the state and boost funding for their towns, villages and community institutions.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party also praised the Druze.

“The Druze community does not have to prove to anybody its loyalty to the state of Israel or the strength of the bond between us. Seventy years of statehood prove this beyond any doubt,” he wrote on Facebook.

Druze opposition lawmaker Salah Saed of the Zionist Union said he was not sure the crisis had been averted. “I have read the new proposal and I can live with it, but the problem is that I don’t believe the prime minister,” Saed said, fearing Israel could face early elections before the legislation is finalised.

Elections are set for November 2019.

“(Netanyahu) is stringing us along… We will not play into the hands of this government,” Saed added.

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Categories: discrimination, Druze, Druze Arab, Israel, minority, nation-state law, News, Religion

Jerusalem Gay Pride parade marches amid tight security

August 3, 2018 Article

Some 20,000 people turned out on Thursday for Jerusalem’s annual Gay Pride parade, flanked by police officers after threats by some Jewish activists to disrupt the celebration.

They waved rainbow flags and a few Israeli ones with rainbow motifs as they processed through the Jewish part of Jerusalem on a march that went off largely without incident.

Ultra-Orthodox right-wing Jewish protesters, who were kept on the sidelines well away from the march, held up banners, including one that read: “Do not anger the God of Israel.”

In 2015, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death and wounded five others and was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. A rally at the end of Thursday’s parade opened with a minute’s silence to honour the girl, Shira Banki.

Parade participants protested against legislation enacted last month that denies gay male couples equal rights for support in surrogacy.

“I think this surrogacy law is a symbol of inequality and (shows) that the government has still failed to realise that the LGBTQ community in Israel is equal to anybody,” said Ofer Erez of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance which organised the parade.

“We are here today to stop asking for equality and start demanding it.”

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Categories: Jerusalem, LGBTQ, LGBTQI, March, News, Pride

Vatican changes teaching to oppose death penalty in all cases

August 3, 2018 Article

The Roman Catholic Church formally changed its teaching on Thursday to declare the death penalty inadmissible whatever the circumstance, a move likely to be criticised in countries where capital punishment is legal.

The 1.2 billion-member Catholic Church had for centuries allowed the death penalty in extreme cases, but the position began to change under Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.

The Vatican said the change to its universal catechism, a summary of Church teaching, reflected Pope Francis’ total opposition to capital punishment.

According to the new entry in the catechism: “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

The Church was working “with determination” for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, the new teaching says.

The new provision is likely to run into stiff opposition from conservative Catholics in the United States and other countries where capital punishment is legal and many believers support it.

Last year, 53 countries issued death sentences and 23 of them executed at least 993 people, according to Amnesty International, with most executions in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.

In the United States, 23 people were executed, a slight increase from 2016 but a low number compared to historical trends, Amnesty said, adding that it was the only country in the Americas that carried out executions.

Capital punishment is banned in most of Europe, with Belarus the only European country that carried out executions last year, Amnesty said. By the end of last year, 106 countries worldwide had banned the death penalty.

Recourse to the death penalty, following a fair trial, had long been “an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good,” the new catechism says.

“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” it says, adding: “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

In a letter to bishops, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which enacted the change, said it was aimed at encouraging “the creation of conditions that allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect”.

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Categories: capital punishment, Catholicism, death penalty, doctrine, Forgiveness, justice, News, Vatican

France votes to outlaw sexual harassment

August 3, 2018 Article

France voted to outlaw sexual harassment on the streets, leaving cat-callers and aggressively lecherous individuals facing potential on-the-spot fines of up to 750 euros as part of tougher legislation to fight sexual violence.

Lawmakers approved the law in a second reading late on Wednesday, days after outrage erupted in France after a man attacked a young woman, Marie Laguerre, when she responded to lewd noises he made at her outside a Paris cafe.

“Harassment in the street has previously not been punished. From now on, it will be,” Marlene Schiappa, gender equality minister and architect of the new legislation, told Europe 1 radio on Thursday.

An early draft of the bill had said that minors under 15 would be assumed not to have given consent to sex with an older person. But the new law states that sex between an adult and a person of 15 or under can be considered rape if the younger party was judged not competent to give consent.

France’s highest legal authority, the Conseil d’Etat, had advised that the previous version could be ruled unconstitutional.

The legislation will also give underage victims of rape an extra ten years to file complaints, extending the deadline to 30 years from when they turn 18.

Some critics say the harassment measures will mark an end to French romance. Schiappa last year told Reuters the government was not looking to stamp out flirtatious behaviour and “kill the culture of the ‘French lover’”.

“What’s key is … that the laws of the French republic forbid insulting, intimidating, threatening and following women in public spaces,” Schiappa said on Thursday.

Schiappa said France needed to stop tolerating sexual harassment and violence like the attack on Laguerre last week. Laguerre, 22, was punched by a passer by when she told him to “shut up” after he wolf-whistled at her.

Laguerre has received praise from the French public and abroad for her courage in standing up to her aggressor. She has created a website ‘Nous Toutes Harcelement’ (We are all harassed) for other victims of sexual harassment to recount their stories.

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Categories: catcalling, female, Feminism, gender, News, sexual harrassment, Women's rights