http://www.counterpunch.com/No Place for Non-Jews in Fortress Israel
Marriage Ban Closes the Gates to Palestinians
In approving an effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians this week, Israel's Supreme Court has shut tighter the gates of the Jewish fortress the state of Israel is rapidly becoming. The judges' decision, in the words of the country's normally restrained Haaretz daily, was "shameful".
By a wafer-thin majority, the highest court in the land ruled that an amendment passed in 2003 to the Nationality Law barring Palestinians from living with an Israeli spouse inside Israel -- what in legal parlance is termed "family unification" -- did not violate rights enshrined in the country's Basic Laws.
And even if it did, the court added, the harm caused to the separated families was outweighed by the benefits of improved "security". Israel, concluded the judges, was justified in closing the doors to residency for all Palestinians in order to block the entry of those few who might use marriage as a way to launch terror attacks.
Applications for family unification in Israel invariably come from Palestinians in the occupied territories who marry other Palestinians, often friends or relatives, with Israeli citizenship. One in five of Israel's population is Palestinian by descent, a group, commonly referred to as Israeli Arabs, who managed to remain inside the Jewish state during the war of 1948 that established Israel.
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can we call Israel a gated community
can we say both countries are in the sway of the religiously insane
(the most insane of all is Saudi Arabia where the men are so afraid of women they try to pretend they don't exist.)