Netanyahu condemns UNESCO decision

 Suddenly, every news website in Israel is reporting PM Netanyahu's press release, criticizing a UNESCO decision allegedly claiming that Rachel's Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are mosques that have no part in Jewish heritage (The initial citing of the decision appeared in Israel Hayom. Netanyahu's press release is a headline in Haaretz and ynet, if to link just two.) According to the press release "[t]he attempt to detach the people of Israel from its heritage is absurd. If the places where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish nation are buried, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah and Rachel some 4,000 years ago are not part of the Jewish heritage then what is?"  
Of course, a reading of the UNESCO decision itself reveals that it only reaffirms the fact that the two sites "are an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories" (here is the full decision). There's nothing there about Muslim or Jewish heritage (not with regards to those two sites, anyway). Just a statement that they are both located in one region and not in another - a simple statement that the Tomb of the Patriarch and Rachel's Tomb are in the West Bank, not in Israel.
But, hey, when everyone involved in this conflict has every interest of making it more religious than it is - who cares about the facts if there's a chance to gain some inflammatory PR instead?

Is Gay Equality Equal?

A few days ago the Israeli Supreme Court issued a decision that forces the Jerusalem Municipality to fund the Gay Rights March organized by the local glbt (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual) organization - the Jerusalem Open House (Ynet report here, the full decision in Hebrew as a pdf file here). This decision is great news, I think, for anyone who supports glbt rights and equality. However, when I read the decision I felt troubled by it. In pragraph 54 of the decision, Justice Amit mentions that "the Israeli law regarding the gay community and its members reflects the changes that the Israeli society had gone through over the years. The Israeli society believes that the law must be indifferent to sexual orientation..." (my translation). Then Justice Amit goes over important milestones in the history of the gay struggle for legal equality in Israel and concludes, in paragraph 55, that "there's no wonder that scholars described the 1990's as the 'gay decade'... it should be mentioned that Israel's approach towards its gay population is one of the ways in which it proves it is a democratic and liberal state, unlike all other near and far states in the Middle East..." (again my translation).
Without addressing the motives of Justice Amit to compare Israel to its neighbors where such a comparison is completely irrelevant, these comments made me feel like Justice Amit, writing for the court, doesn't see glbt equality as a matter necessitated by a basic principle of justice. Rather, it is an expression of a public opinion that should be praised for its liberalism and acceptance. It should be appreciated.

And if you think that this is only an Israeli thing - yesterday the U.S. Senate voted against a bill that would allow to repeal the 'don't ask don't tell' policy of the U.S. armed forces (here). What I found amazing is not that the bill was repealed but that the bill itself made the repeal of the policy dependent on the outcome of a poll conducted by the Pentagon to survey the opinions of soldiers and find out if the change of policy would not hurt troop morale.

Somehow, glbt equality seems to be perceived as different from women's equality or racial equality. There were always people against them - but I don't think that those supporting them felt like they are doing someone a favor or that such equality depends on public opinion or the willingness of the voters to accept such equality. Is equality something that everyone deserves or does equality depend on the current beliefs of the crowd? Cause if equality should only be given to those who the public sees as equal - doesn't that make equality redundant? I mean, equality is worth something only if the political institutions are forced to provide equal rights to those that the public desires to discriminate. Otherwise, is equality a protection against discrimination at all? Is it even a right?

Land, Ownership, and Luck

I think I never fully understood why land property was always dealt with differently from other kinds of property. Of course, buying houses and such is always more expensive than buying many other things, but still... to actually have a different set of laws to deal with those things?
I think that, in a way, the latest concerns about Arab and Jewish settlement and demolition plans in Jerusalem make me understand that difference a bit better.
East Jerusalem has been subject to four different legal regimes in the past century. First Ottoman, then British, later Jordanian (in 1948) and lastly Israeli (as a result of the 1967 war). In '48, the Jewish population of East Jerusalem fled to the western side of the city. In '67, the Arab population did the same, fleeing to other Arab cities in the West Bank and neighboring states. While those people could, generally speaking, take most of their belongings with them one thing always stayed behind - real estate. That's the one thing no one can carry with them. So, when everything you own usually goes with you and is subject to the same legal regime you are subject to - that's categorically not the case with the land that you own.
In the specific case of Jerusalem, both Jordan and Israel have laws that nationalize deserted land. When Jews left their land behind in 1948, Jordan nationalized them and gave them to Palestinian new residents. After the 1967 war, when Israel took over East Jerusalem it applied an exactly similar law on the property that was now deserted and, recently, gave back the property nationalized by Jordan to its original Jewish owners.
I'm sure this isn't how real estate law developed, or their historic justification. But this makes it clear to what extent owning land is different from owning other kinds of property. Ownership is a result of legal schemes. Look at the same house through the eyes of one legal system - it belongs to one person. Look at it through the eyes of another - it belongs to someone else. Unlike other movable property, the owner of land has so little control on what's happening to his or her property, cannot protect it, and cannot take it with them. Most of the time, we don't realize it. Most places are subject just to one legal regime - not only at one time but even through (at least recent) history. Only in certain cases, some unfortunate people see behind this veil of state-law connection. Some property has the bad luck of being in those place where one legal system chases another. In those cases remain the same, and so do the houses, but not the links tying them together.

On Facebook and Issues of Nationality

If you have a Facebook account (of course you do, who doesn't?) then you must know that in order to set up your account you must choose which social networks you are interested in joining. Now, the primary network anyone usually connects herself to is a regional network, and that is usually the city, the state, or the country one lives in. This has an effect on the profiles you gain access to, and those who gain access to your profile (usually, most profiles are set to allow viewing only by other people of the same network).
Interestingly, one can only be a member of one regional network at any given time. That means that I, as an Israeli student abroad, must affiliate myself either as in Israeli or as a New Yorker. For Facebook, I can't be both, but have to renounce one identity in order to adopt the other. You might say that I am an exception to the rule, and that most people live in one place, and have no need in access and affiliation with any social networks on the other side of the world. I'm sure that's less and less true with each year, but anyway, that's only half the point.

The other half is that some areas of the world simply don't follow the rule of such simple social/national connection. For example: Israel (surprise surprise). Lately, it appeared in the news that Facebook changed its regions database so that Israeli settlers in the West Bank would be able to list themselves as members of the Israeli social network, although they live outside the official borders of the state of Israel. In addition, Alquds Alarabi published a report today, stating that Syria will launch a campaign demanding a boycott of Facebook because it permits Israelis living on the Golan Heights to list themselves as Israelis (and here it is in English). And I can only guess that the same problems arise (in different magnitude, perhaps) in other areas of the world such as Tibet, Northern Ireland, or Quebec.

The thing is, that Facebook's networks are not about defining political borders and group nationalities. They are about an individual's social group - the individual who owns the account. When dealing with such an individual's nationality, applying geographical concepts starts to seem a little ridiculous. I mean, in the "real" world of facts of buildings and roads and electricity services, a city or a region can be a part of only one state, although sometimes which state that region is a part of is debatable. A person, however, can identify as belonging to more than one regional group. An ex-patriot would want to be a part of regional networks of both the the place he comes from and the place he is in now. Quite similarly, people living in places currently in political dispute would usually identify themselves one way or the other. It makes no sense to force the Golan Heights' Israeli citizens to belong to the Syrian social network, as they have nothing to look for there; their entire social connections lie within the state of Israel. At the same time, it seems important to allow the Druze population to identify as Syrian, according to their true identity, and following their actual lingual and cultural social connections.

So here's my point: in today's world social networking has less and less to do with geo-political borders. One might live on one side of the world and affiliate with a social group defined by its location on the other side. Two people living in the same region might have no social connections, identifying themselves as members of completely different (and sometimes conflicting) nationalities. This is why I find it funny that Facebook - a website that is (1) designated for social purposes and (2) has no existence outside the web - seems to cling so strongly to the "one person, one regional affiliation" conception. Seriously, don't the people in Facebook know that the internet knows no borders?

(For some more reading: the digital methods initiative)