Comments on: Confessions of a voting virgin

By: aristeides

aristeides — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:48:34 +0000

Exactly how does the Israeli voting work, anyway? You take a slip of paper and put it into the box? Then somebody counts the slips of paper?

Seems pretty lo-tech.

By: rsgengland

rsgengland — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:45:21 +0000

Not sure what comments are a jumble, but if that’s what you think, ok.
Reference to Cyprus was in relation to a comment on military occupations.
The PA was the first step on the path to democracy.
If Arafat had not instigated the second intafada, who knows where we could have been today (although you will no doubt trot out the normal excuses about why that is all irrelevant).
Both Abbas and Hamas preside over regimes which have lost their political legitimacy by overstaying their election mandates.
During the British Mandate the Jews held elections and built the organs of a functioning state.
The Palestinians just moan and complain, but seldom do anything of their own volition to improve their lot either financially or politically.
You may deny or excuse it, but that is the reality.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:00:56 +0000

Palestinians are not able to practise democracy because they live under military occupation. Under that occupation, to give just one example, it’s technically illegal to take part in *any* demonstration; and a Palestinian – including an Area A resident – may be arrested for doing so if the IDF chooses it. The will of the army is the highest law.

Your comments are a jumble of the usual deflection tactics (as though the absence of Palestinian civil rights can be magicked away by a quick reference to Cyprus) with a lack of knowledge about what the term ‘military occupation’ actually means in this context, as shown by your apparently sincere belief that Palestinians have the ability to craft a democratic society in spite of being subject to the army/Civil Administration. Rather than looking to neocon US watchdog groups for information, you could read about what military law in the Territories actually entails.

By: rsgengland

rsgengland — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:14:19 +0000

The latest FREEDOM HOUSE listing has Israel as the only FREE COUNTRY in the Middle East/North Africa.
Always using the term ‘brutal occupation’ is a misnomer.
Try all the Islamist occupations of Muslim lands for brutality.
What has happened to the brutal occupation of Cyprus by the Turks.
Or did the Greeks just leave.
And also is Arab on Arab violence and brutality irrelevant.
The Palestinians should be able to vote a legitimate government into Gaza/West Bank and resume negotiations…..
Problem is Israels neighbors work on the basis that ‘ONCE POWER IS OBTAINED BY VOTING, HANG ONTO THAT POWER AT ALL COSTS.
When democracy is properly practiced by the Palestinians, your comments may carry some weight.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:03:33 +0000

Not just any old emigrant Israeli, but ‘someone who bleeds blue and white’, no less. Presumably blood in that colour is more valuable than the ordinary kind, you know, the kind that spattered the ground near the separation barrier just last week when the army shot some kid in the back. I wonder whom his parents would vote for if they actually had any political rights under the system that killed their son.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:17:02 +0000

So basically what you are saying is that an Israeli who chose to emigrate to another polity should be valued above a Palestinian who is forced to live under a brutal military occupation that they have no voice in?

By: Harvey Jackson

Harvey Jackson — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:07:18 +0000

where can I see the ballot cards for todays election?