xaxam | The Petty Lie

The Supreme Lie

Yesterday's Ha'Aretz editorial titled "The Supreme Disgrace" makes me thinking that Gideon Levy or somebody from his ilk is on the way to the Editor-in-chief office. The combination of hysterical whining and outright impostures is stunning:

In light of such serious damage to the equal rights of Arab citizens of Israel, it does not matter at all what the ruling says or how instructive the position of the minority justices, led by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, was. It also does not matter that the decision to rob Israel's Arab citizens of the right to marry the person they choose and live with that person in Israel was made by a 6-5 majority.

The decision has formally nothing to do with the Arab citizens of Israel: if one of them wishes to marry American, Chinese or even Jordanian, the deliberations on granting citizenship will be absolutely standard and the outcome long delayed but finally usually favorable. Quite logically, if an Israeli Jew suddenly wishes to marry a Palestinian girl or boy (wink at Taly Phahima), (s)he will have the same problems with this law.

But not one single Western country discriminates against some of its citizens by passing laws that apply only to them, and that impose limits only on their choice of a partner with whom they can live in their homeland.

The same lie repeated again. Besides, it is worth noting that not one single Western country is engaged in an active war. Call me when Osama Bin Laden gets US or any other Western citizenship by the right of marriage.

Since 1993, 16,000 requests for family unification have been submitted. This number also does not justify the demographic frenzy at which the justice hinted.

Others prefer to move in quietly and then get their residence approved de facto. Alternative estimates put the number of Judea and Samaria Arabs who moved to Israel at 200,000.

It is tough to be impressed by the security rationale when recalling the approximately quarter of a million Arabs from East Jerusalem who were annexed against their will, and who have given rise to more terrorists and terror accomplices than did all those who entered Israel as a result of marriage.

Jerusalem is no Sichem (Nablus) and no Jenin: Israeli security has much more means to track down and uproot terrorist cells there. Besides, for all their anymosity towards Israel, the Arab Jerusalemites value all too much their status to jeopardize it by abetting terror. Suffice is to have one sane person in a family of the "hothead" to send a warning... Unfair but working.

Barak wrote things that the Knesset and the majority justices chose to forget: "Democracy does not impose a sweeping ban, thereby cutting off its citizens from their partners and not allowing them to live a family life ... It does not give its citizens the option of living in it without their partners or leaving the country ... Democracy cedes a certain amount of security in order to obtain an immeasurably greater amount of family life and equality."

Justice Barak does not cede an inch of his personal (professional) security or authority to anybody in fear that his rule over the appointment of new judges will be hindered. Yet he dismisses so easily others' security, putting narrowly understood democracy over consensual division between friend and foe.