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Whoa please tone it down. TIA.
I'm pretty sure that if an Israeli Arab marries a non-Israeli from the United States, they can live with their spouse in Israel, same thing with an Israeli Jew. I'm pretty sure there is an exception if the proposed marriage partner is a non-Israeli from Gaza or J & S, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure that this exception applies to both Jews and Arabs alike. Do you disagree?
I'm pretty sure that any Israeli citizen can live in any village provided that (1) they buy or rent a residence there; and (2) in the case of communities where approval by a committee is required, the committee approves them. Do you disagree with this? Are you saying that some of these committees make discriminatory decisions? Or are you saying that it's "racist" that Arab citizens are not allowed to have real estate handed over to them in situations where that real estate was (allegedly) seized by the state 75 years ago as a the alleged result of their relatives abandoning it?
I don't have the burden of proof here. The claim being made is that the Yashar Party is "racist."
Of course I disagree, don't be obtuse. A law that says you can only mow your grass and wash your car on Saturdays applies equally to Jews and Christians, but you can easily guess who its authors wanted to target.
This, but without allegedly.
Judging by the terms you use like "J&S", you are overwhelmingly likely to be an Israeli Jew. You know perfectly well that if Eisenkot had even mentioned the possibility of repealing either restriction, Likud-friendly media would've immediately crucified him (reference not intended).
Actually it sounds like you do agree that the law applies to both Jews and Arabs alike. But you are claiming that the intent and the effect was to target Arabs. Which of course is not true at all. For example, if an Arab Israeli citizen marries an Arab from Dubai, as far as I know there's no problem at all with the spouse moving to Israel.
We can argue about whether that's unfair, but it doesn't change the (apparent) fact that Arab Israeli Citizens are perfectly free to live anywhere in Israel they want provided that (1) they actually buy or rent a residence; and (2) if it's a community which requires approval of a local committee, they get approval from that committee.
Anyway, to clarify, would you say that a country is "racist" if it fails to adequately redress alleged race-based wrongs which took place in the distant past?
No, and in fact I had never heard of the "Yashar" party before this thread. Nor had I heard of anyone named "Eisenkot." In any event, I would not have asked you for evidence to support your claim if I were not very skeptical.
Anyway, it seems pretty clear now that you decline to supply evidence that Yashar supports the (non-racist) policies you have identified.
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Jim Crow laws were facially neutral too. It didn't stop them being racist.
The same is true of the national quotas in the 1924 Immigration Act in the US, or the "patriality" rules in the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts in the UK, if you think it is possible for an immigration law to be racist in the morally relevant sense.
It is very easy for a competent politician to write facially neutral laws targetting a specific ethnic group, particularly if they are okay with modest collateral damage (as the Jim Crow South definitely was - I'm less sure about the other examples).
As a point of information, I don't think this is correct. For example, a quick search claims this as part of a 1926 Atlanta ordinance:
Not facially neutral.
That may very well be, and I certainly don't deny that facially neutral rules can be discriminatory either in practice or by design (nor am I claiming that facially neutral Jim Crow laws didn't exist), but that brings us back to the problem of defining the word "racist." As Scott has pointed out, the word "racist" is strategically ambiguous. Bad actors would like to pivot back and forth between a broad definition (for tarring their enemies) and a narrow definition (to avoid having their allies similarly tarred). Or to use a gerrymandered definition for similar bad faith reasons.
Personally, I don't have a strong opinion about this. I am well aware that many countries (Israel, Ireland, Poland, Japan, etc.) are discriminatory in terms of who can become a citizen. Many many countries are discriminatory in terms of who can enter and live and work in the country. For example, in my country (the United States) citizens of the Marshall Islands can live and work in the United States without obtaining a visa.
Is this "racist"? I don't have a strong opinion, my main concern is consistency, more or less. When I see people accusing Israel of "racism" for having discriminatory citizenship rules and those people fail to speak up about, say, Japan, it strongly suggests that the criticism is not being made in good faith. That their true objection to Israel is something else. And the key to enforcing consistency is having a clear definition.
As alluded to above, Scott wrote a nice post a few years back about how the words like "racism" are strategically used by social justice types:
Social Justice And Words, Words, Words
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/
People call Japan racists all the time. There is inconsistency. That is something you are creating. People also call Argentina racists. People just talk about Israel more because it’s (1) a western nation (2) always doing war (3) has existing issues divided by racial lines
The best thing you can do to limit your country from constantly talking about race is to have killed all your minorities (basically Argentina) or to have never let in minorities.
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