what is this video?
here is something to watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPU4UN03t7E&feature=related

can someone translate it to english ?
its a shocking video very disturbing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=joFXpe6BmOQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEzvhvOcWEs&NR=1

Actually Taos, the point of the second video is to tell kids what not to do. The show was under big controversy a while back for a character picking up cats by the tail, but at the end of the episode, the woman on the left told the characters what they did wrong in the episode and the animals repented.

ahh
and this?

Arabic is not one of my 8 spoken languages. I am unsure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKJNCU5T7V4&feature=related

@HerrBayerischKaiser

There are several locations in Israel where only ultra-orthodox Jews live. They are not only "anti-Hammas", they are anti-everything that is not them. They do not recoginze the state of Israel, they do not pay taxes, they ignore Supreme Courth rulings, needless to say they do not serve in the IDF. They hate everything that is not them, everybody who do not live the way they do. They have their own education system, and there is an enormous segregation between men and women there - aginst the rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court.

I don't think you being German has something to do with what happened. Exactly the same thing can happen to anybody who is not one of them. Unfortunatelly, there is no harsh policy against these people, and this is one of the problems in Israel. The riots in such places can (and often are) errupt in a matter of minutes. It is enough for one of them to say in sinagogue that he has just seen a lady with pants going in their street, and hundreds of them will rush outside to expel the "offending" stranger (their women go with skirts and don't have any skin shown - very much like very religious muslims. In fact, when one of their kind was prosecuted for abusing her children, the media called her "Mother Teheran").

"they do not pay taxes"

I know this is going to sound like a very strange and thread-derailing question, but I am burning with curiosity... Baskineli, how does the taxation system in Israel work, and how are the ultra-orthodox able to avoid it? Wikipedia says there is an income tax and a VAT. Do employers withhold taxes from employees' checks for the income tax, as they do here in the USA? How do ultra-orthodox companies avoid having to collect the VAT or pay the corporate income tax? Wikipedia also says there are a lot of tax breaks for new immigrants. Are these resented at all by the Israeli population as a whole?

"They have their own education system"

How does the ultra-orthodox education system work? I presume it is some type of what we would call 'home schooling' in The States. Is it primarily parents directly instructing their children, or do the parents send their children off to someone in the neighborhood who does the actual teaching? Is there an Ultra-Orthodox home-schooling industry that prints/sells textbooks and the like?

Do the ultra-orthodox use normal Israeli civil courts to resolve disputes, or do they have their own courts? If so, is the judge and court staff paid, and by who? What about in criminal matters? I see uniformed Israeli police in the video HKB linked, and they are apparently not respected or feared all that much by the ultra-orthodox - if someone shoved a cop like that in the USA, they'd likely be shot on the spot (or at the very least, arrested - which apparently did not happen).

Obviously the ultra-orthodox are resented to seem degree by 'mainstream' Israeli society. How are they able to 'get away with' as much as they do? Is it the influence of the Shas party in Israeli politics? Or something else?

Sorry to pepper you with so many questions, but now that you've made me think about the situation, I am fascinated with it. It is very unusual to have such differences in a modern western (more or less) country.

Tolstoy, these are some great questions.

First, you have to understand that even among orthodox jews, there are quite a few groups. Not everything I will say here can be applied to all orthodox jews.

Regarding taxes:
These people rarely work. The men study all day in "Yeshivot" (very religious schools that teach only religious writings - I even can't call it a school). By men, I mean men of all ages - it starts with a very early age and can go on for the rest of their lives. They do receive some sort of social insurance. Since they have a lot of children (5 children is not considered much by their standards), they receive a enough social insurance for the living. Their women work in a lot of jobs and get paid with cash, and they work in very small businesses that operate in the community - I am not even sure they are registered as businesses. As such, it is very easy not to pay taxes, and in fact not paying tax is considered as something positive. There are no 'ultra-orthodox companies' as such, but only small businesses that operate to provide the immediate needs of this society.
New immigrants indeed get tax reduction, but for a limited amount of time and money.

Regarding education system:
The orthodox schools are funded by the government, but the study is mostly (95%+) religious. They only get to study the most basic math and the most basic English. The government tries to enforce so called "core-study" professions, such as math, literature, English, citizenship, but these schools rarely follow this program. This is one of the most hot-debated topics in Israel - whether the government should or should not support such schools.
It is definitely not home schooling.

Regarding courts:
The ultra-orthodox groups do not recognize the court, which is mostly secular. For any disputes they go to the community rabi. When it comes to crimes, the community often defends the offenders, hides them, and makes the task of finding the offenders extremely difficult for the police.

The reason these groups can get away with all these things is that... well, you wouldn't believe it, but in Israel there is a great amount of tolerance towards minorities. The problem is that such groups become very big, to the point they have influence on the democracy as whole. Religious parties like Shas protect these people and deliver a lot of funds to them. In fact, Shas is almost always in the coalition - were there very few governments that Shas was not a part of. In addition, you cannot target a specific group, so if you want to pay less social security fees per child, other religious and more law-abiding groups with a lot of children will protest, and you can't really starve the children. These groups see giving birth to as many children as possible as a "Mizvah" - something God told to do.

Not all religious people behave like this. There are dozens of groups, some big and some small, some even are not considered groups, that religious jews divided by. There are "religious-light" Jews, which behave almost as secular people, with the biggest difference is that they don't work at Shabbath and don't light fire/light on Shabbath. There are more religious groups which send their children to schools divided by gender - school for boys and school for girls. I can go on and on...

Unlike what people tend to think, the Israeli society is very diverse. I did not even start to talk about Arabs, Beduins and Druze and the difference between them (for example, most Arabs don't serve in the army due to: 1. it is inhumane to force an Arab to confront someone who might be his family and 2. there is always the issue of loyalty to the state of Israel; while most Druze and some Beduins do serve in the army). There is the so-called "Beduin problem" - the Beduins, being mainly nomadic, have lands in southern Israel (the Negev desert) and their rights to some of the lands are not recognized by Israel since these rights originate fromthe Ottoman period and most of them don't have papers that confirm they own this land. Furthermore, the more modern Beduins, mostly people of age 40-, are more accustomed to living inside cities and they are not connected to the land as their fathers are.

Heh, you can write a lot of books about the Israeli population...

If you have more questions, please feel free to ask.

this great tolerance to minorities is becaause of the the electoral sistem
120 members in what can be called "congres"and elected by citycens of all kind of religion and way of life
many small political parties make the 61 members needed to form the goverment and that is the door for many kind of negotianions between the diferent parties for every govermental position and budget
.thats how for example religious parties can force the goverment to aprove or not certain laws and from the oposite side an other arab partie can do the same
political situation of israel is just complex as the demografic
but baskinelli can explain that better
ortodocs=parasites to israel

Taos, you are essentially correct.

When Israeli citizens vote, they vote for a party. 120 members form the Knesset, which is sort of a congress.

Example: suppose there are only 3 parties, and the parties received the following votes: Party A got 55 places in the Knesset, Party B got 50 places and Party C got 15 places. In addition, suppose there are 20 places for ministers - ministers are chosen from the Knesset members.

The party with the most places (Party A) gets the first attempt to assemble a coalition. It has three options - to go with Party B, to go with Party C or to go with both. Naturally, Party B, which is larger than party C, will want more ministers from its rows. So, it makes sense for the leader of Party A to form a coalition with Party C, which has only 15 members and will ask for less than the bigger Party B.

There are 2-3 big parties in Israel. Likud (moderate right), Avoda (Labor - moderate left, they had a high collapse in the last elections which threw them to the 4th party in its size) and the new party called Kadima (something between the previous two). In addition there are a number of mid-size parties, such as "Israel Beitenu" (Our Home Israel - Liberman's party), Shas (very religious), Mafdal (less religious but nevertheless religious) and more.

Most coalitions are formed when a big party and a few medium-sized parties join together. If I am not mistaken, there was only one time, in the 80's, when two big parties formed a coalition, and we had prime-minister rotation after two years (the elections occur once in 4 years).

The religious parties (and Shas is a great example) almost always get to be in coalition, and this is how they get most of the funds they want.

you forgot something very unique to our sistem:
if the smallest party says the goverment must be relelected (like kind of we dont trust your way of doing things)
and is brougth to be voted by the congres members and more then half vote for new elections
so can be a situation where a small party of 5 members joins the oposition with 58 or 15 ,20,18
baskineli please explain

This is very interesting, as I spent time with some Druze in Lebanon. So, with Israel having to defend themselves with exterior threats, how can they stand with groups like this erupting into riots interiorly? I hope that made sense, as reading now I have second guesses of how clear that English was.

Dear Baskinelli,

Why would you say Labor Zionism fell in popularity? Why has Revisionist Zionism gained such prominence? Even Kadima, which is considered a moderate party these days, is a Revisionist formation. Kadima was Jabotinsky's slogan. I'm just puzzled as to why Israeli society has become so conservative.

Thanks guys, this discussion is very enlightening. I'm American, so I hear a lot about Israel but it is always very superficial.

i think that if more ppl knew israel better,the worldwide opinion on israel was better because i think is a great country despite all the problems between the diferent israelis believes and ways of life
so many cultures in so small place
diversity of foods (all kind of foods from all over the world)exotic restaurants,art,music so diverse and autentic,the modern and the old meet and creates diferent arquitecture stiles
israel is a fusion of everything ,only few kilometers and you will be floating in the dead sea,sliding on snow in the mont hermon,or diving with dolphins at eilat

Baskinelli +1 for info

@HerrBayerischKaiser
This is a good question, how can Isral stand with such groups. The problem is that these are very powerful groups that can tip the equation either way. There is a very delicate balance. For example, there is no public transportation in Israel, even in secular cities, starting of Friday mid-day and ending Saturday night, not to hurt religious feelings of the very religious people. It is a status quo the secular part wants to change and the religious part wants to keep.

@Putin33
"Labor Zionism"? I wasn't talking about it, I was talking about the Labor party ("Avoda" means "Labor" in Hebrew). Regarding your question of Labor Zionism vs Revisionist Zionism, I actually had to look at Wikipedia to understand the differences. I don't think many people in Israel *understand* the difference. Why do you think Israeli society has become conservative, and in what ways?

@Zarathustra and Sicarius, NP. Feel free to ask more.

Right, well Avoda grew out of Mapai/Labor Zionist movement. But Labor is so weak right now and even they don't act much different than Kadima or Likud. I can only assess a society through its voting/polling habits. It is very surprising that even though Kadima split off from Likud, the past two governments have been Kadima & then Likud. I would have expected that there would be too many rightwing parties for any of them to thrive, and Labor would be strengthened by that fact. But instead Labor is the 5th largest and the 4 biggest parties are all very conservative. Labor has only 8 seats after Barak split to form a centrist party like Kadima is for Likud.

I'm just curious as to why you think Labor has become so very weak. Surely there are issues in Israel besides national security.

That seems difficult. Having to deal with such home troubles with enemies of plenty abroad. Is there any paranoia issues in the Israeli homefront?

Kaiser,

Do you support independence for Bayern? Or are you a federalist?

I support Bayrisch independence, but as long as Poland has Ost-Prueßen I am a Federalist. Danzig and Ost-Prueßen are German, they should not be in Polish hands. I also want a free homeland for the expelled Sudetenlanders. Until then, we can't be strong apart.

@HerrBayerischKaiser
Yes, it is difficult. We are living in a tough region with tough problems. However, it is a bad idea to ask Diplomacy player regarding paranoya ;-)

@Putin33
The labor party had (has?) no real leaders and they had a lot of quarrels inside the party. They have an image of a small and unreliable socialist party. You have to understand the background, though, to understand what happened. Historically, there was a decades-long stand between Likud (right wing) and Avoda (left wing). Then Ariel Sharon has split Likud and formed Kadima, which positioned itself in the middle, between Likud and Avoda. Since a lot of people were disappointed by Avoda, they decided to vote for Kadima, which was closer to their views than Likud.

Since Likud is more rightist than Kadima, it is more likely for them to go with Shas (right-wing religious party). Therefore, usually the Likud voters are more religious than Kadima voters. The less-religious Avoda voters felt they have no real alternative and voted Kadima.

That's probably the biggest load of historical revisionism I've seen here in a while. Poland and Two Germanies concluded several pacts reaffirming the Oder/Neisse border, including the German–Polish Border Treaty from 1990 which declared, among other:

"- the frontier between them inviolable now and hereafter, and mutually pledged to respect their sovereignty and territorial integrity;
- that they have no territorial claims against each other and shall not raise such claims in future."

This treaty was opposed by grand total of 13 people in Bundestag. What you believe is a fringe belief that no serious politician in Germany supports. It's in direct contradiction to international treaties your governments agreed with during the course of last decades.

Regarding the expelees, yes the whole process was nasty and unnecessarily bloody. That you as Bavarian complain is beyond me though since these people were the ones that transformed the agrarian backwater Bavaria was since times immemorial to high-tech center of whole Germany. They were qualified workers and professionals and they settled in Bavaria after they were expelled.

Regarding Beneš decrees, they are as Germans say "totes Unrecht", a measure from past with little historical relevance to today's situation. It was also OKed by Potsdam conference, you'd like to renegotiate the Nazi surrender in 1945? It's also true that the decrees didn't take away the Czechoslovakian citizenship from Sudeten Germans, they lost it already in 1938 when they became citizens of the Third Reich, which was the stated goal of their most popular party at that time, they wanter that to happen (apologies to Sudeten socialists who were the only organized group without shit for brains at that time).

If this forum wasn't attended mostly by Americans, you would be already torn apart. Try posting some American equivalent here, say, Confederacy revisionism demanding renegotiation of the ACW results.

Sorry, Bask, that was aimed at our dear Kaiser.

Nice read. Where are you from, ulytau?

I'm from the Czech Republic so I'm a tiny bit interested in the issue. Only a tiny bit because this is a really fringe voice Kaiser supports here. It's also the first time I hear some German wants the East Prussia back, let alone both East Prussia and Sudeten. That's really in direct contradiction to the international course Germany took in last decades. The fact that Kaiser is afraid of Poland is even more fantastic, both countries are in EU and NATO. Such a feeling is unprecedented and would only have a parallel if Turkey joined EU and Greek-Turkish hatred still continued.

+1 uly, high time somebody tore that overbearing jerry off his high horse.