UPDATES 7 pm Israel time, Sunday, December 7 2014:
—>The election date seems more certain as of today as efforts by Netanyahu to form an alternative government have apparently failed.
On the “Left”, both the Labor party (Herzog) and Yesh Atid (Lapid) are striving to get Tzipi Livni to be the second person on their lists. Why is anyone’s guess.
On the “Right”, it appears that Gideon Sa’ar is ever closer to challenging Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Likud primary.
Gideon Sa’ar (photo: Haaretz).
The prospect appears to terrify Netanyahu so much that he is trying to have the primary at the end of this month instead of in January in order to make it more difficult for Sa’ar to organize.
One last note: in your humble servant’s opinion, perhaps the time has come for a changing of the guard in Likud. Much of Israel is suffering from Netanyahu fatigue–and Gideon Sa’ar might be the better choice to lead Likud to victory.
—>If you want to hear why Naftali Bennett should be Prime Minister of Israel, take some time and listen to this long exchange between Martin Indyk and Bennett at the Saban Forum in the past few days (click here).
TODAY’S BLOG:
The graph speaks to an almost unbelievable situation.
Stop and think about it for a moment. The government deported 438,000 people last year. 83% of them never had a hearing–they were just unceremoniously dumped back across the southern border to fend for themselves.
According to one human rights NGO, 363,000 of the above deported individuals “did not receive a hearing, never saw an immigration judge, and were expelled through rapid administrative procedures which actual immigration officer acted as prosecutor, judge, and prison.”
Meanwhile, the government continues expanding the apartheid fence:
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One section of the fence.
All to block out people who just want to work in the country:
And what happens to infiltrators who are not captured and deported? They are likely to end up in prison. Does it surprise anyone that the country has the highest incarceration rate in the world–about 500 people for every 100,000 residents according to the Justice Ministry?
If you think that is bad, the incarceration rate for one particular minority is 3,074 per 100,000–six times the national average.
We could go on and on. Suffice it to say that the human rights situation is abysmal.
Your humble servant would like to thank Amnesty International, the U.S. Department of Justice, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security for statistics used in this blog today.
Did I forget to mention something? Oh yes, the above graph is of UNITED STATES deportations to Mexico and Central America, the above pictures are of the border fence between the UNITED STATES and Mexico, the incarceration rates are those in the UNITED STATES, and the special group mentioned is African Americans in the UNITED STATES.
Every time we hear American diplomats criticizing Israel’s human rights record, and every time we hear talk of sanctions against Israel because of human rights violations, it would serve us well to remember how extraordinarily hypocritical these American diplomats are.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.