RO: Palestinian jailed for being Palestinian

[Damuri Ajashi]

I think the suspicion is that if had been Jewish and married, he would not have been arrested for a philandering one night stand while if he had been Palestinian and single he would have been.

Partially true. If he was Palestinian and single, the woman may or may not have sued, depending on what exactly pissed her off. If he was Jewish and married-Same thing. But, if she would not have slept with him if he was married and Jewish and she did sue him, he would have gotten convicted too. If he was Palestinian and unmarried, and she sued him, he would once again be convicted. If he claimed he was a giant-squid hunter, and the woman had earlier made a pledge to never sleep with anyone who has not killed at least 5 giant squid, he could very well be convicted again. (Or she would go to a mental assylum).

Its tough to prove either way but in this case, judging just from teh stuf that we know so far, it smells fishy.

That's exactly the issue: the case is "fishy" if you assume that the court etc. are all acting on racist motives, and "not fishy" if you don't make that assumption.

In short, it acts somewhat as a Rorschach inkblot test - one sees in it what one is predisposed to see in it. Once the actual facts are known, it cannot be said that it is, in point of logic, "racist" in and of itself (though of course the judge etc. may well be racist).

Then why is it being criticized so heavily inside Israel? Is there actually more recognition of the problems in Israeli society by Israelis than there are by Zionists in Texas?

 

[Villa]

The actual definition of rape is in the goddamned law, so what are you talking about if you're not talking about the goddamned law?

Come on - there are plenty of situations which people would agree on as rape, but which are not criminally defined as rape. Such as, for example, the Nebraska (?) headmaster who told female students he would ensure they did not graduate unless he screwed them (not punishable as rape under Nebraska law at the time) or the Pennsylvania 63 year old who, along with his wife, allowed a teen to stay with them so she could get out of juvie, and then told her if she did not have sex with him he would have her sent back.

I would hope we would agree that both those men are rapists, despite inadequately written laws. Moreover, in many jurisdictions now there is no crime of rape, just different gradations of sexual assault. Does that mean in those jurisdictions there are no rapists, only sexual assailants?

 

[Giraffe]

I've been savagely nibbled on for pointing out the facts about what people have said.

::falls down laughing again::

This is such a perfect encapsulation of the FinnAgain Filter in action. People are giving you shit because you're pointing out the facts! They don't like you because you're just too real for them! You tell it like it is!

Because, you see, people are routinely jumped on here for being too factual in their arguments. Yep, that's definitely the problem. You're just too factual for everybody.

 

[Damuri Ajashi]

Yah... you're making that up.

Right cuz you've never tried to justify Israel's acts by comparing them to what an arab nation might do under a similar circumstance.

...Like how you repeated something like a half dozen times how the UN created Israel ...you repeated your fiction, several times in fact. Each time changing it just a bit.

So now you're going to bring up stuff I said (and then shifted positon on after debate) in OTHER threads?

No, of course, after you admitted to instintually filtering any and all information through your standard anti-Israel mindset (also known as "bigotry") and that you had to fight to actually analyze the facts and not just fit them into reasons why you hated Israel (for which you blamed me, naturally), you've totally forgotten it. What luck!

Here, let me remind you.

Do you think taking a post out of context is going to make your argument more credible? Dude, you have about as much credibility on this board when it comes to Israel as Der Trihs has when it comes to religion. Its not that you don't know your shit, its that your lack of objectivity is fucking legendary.

Of course, I've criticized Israel, Jack's criticized Israel, Malthus has criticized Israel, Captain Amazing has criticized Israel, DSeid has... and none of them are bigots.
Funny, aint it?

You mean you criticized Israel when you said that you disagreed with Israel's blockade of coriander to Gaza? Those guys you mention who criticize Israel but are not bigots... They're not critics of Israel... they're apologists dude, they may be honest apologists but they are not Israel critics. Heck I've said good things about Israel, it doesn't make me an Israel apologist.

... you do realize that's his claim, not necessarily the gospel truth? And that the woman involved had a different claim? She claimed that he introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor (he's Muslim, and married), and that he was seeking a serious relationship. The court believed her, and found that would qualify as deception used to get sex, which is a crime.

It's fine to object to the law, but at least keep the facts straight.

The woman involved accused the Palestinian of violently raping her...the prosecutors brought him up on those charges...the cops realized that evidence indicated that it wasn't violent rape and the woman might not have been telling the truth. Have I got this right so far?

Then when presented with an alternate story by the woman and the Palestinian guy's version of what happened, the court decided that the guy was obviously lying and the woman's second story must be the truth and the Palestinian guy goes to jail for 2 years for a charge that legal experts say is "used sparingly and even then in cases involving protracted deceit and a promise of marriage." because he claimed to be a Jewish bachelor looking for a serious relationship to trick the woman into having sex with him.

That's the problem though, this is a classic he said she said situation. What basis did the court have to believe her version of events? Whatever that might have been I would hope that it was hella compelling to cost a man two years behind bars.

Especially considering that the police had reason to believe the woman was lying about the whole violent rape thing.

The courts have convicted Jewish Israelis of this crime; to not convict solely because the lie involved a Palestinian lieing religious identity instead of job status (as it had in the past) when he is clearly guilty of the crime as the law is written, would be ugly.

From the article:
a charge that legal experts say is "used sparingly and even then in cases involving protracted deceit and a promise of marriage."

So in what situations have they used this law to send Jewish men to jail and did they rely on the word of a woman that lied to them the first time around?

Nope. They used blackmailed people into having sex, but the sex was consensual. IMHO sex has to be non-consensual for it to be rape.

Blackmail is a form of coercion isn't it? Consent obtained through coercion isn't really consent is it?

There may well be cases of unjust laws with institutionalized racist intent or effect in Israel - but this particular case is not one of them.

I agree, the law is facially neutral and was not conceived as a form of racism but on Monday it was applied in a racist manner.

That's very complementary.

Well you're sane the problem is that Israel seems to be run by folks like Magellan and Finn Again.

And in this particular case, there is no evidence of racism.

Not even after considering the sequence of events and the other cases when this law was actually applied?

True, but this case alone is not sufficient evidence that it is enforced in a racist manner.

I don't think it is enforced in a racist manner on a regular basis but I think it may have been in this case.

For the same reason there is here - because it appears, to the uninformed who have not actually thought about it, to be discriminatory.

I've thought about it a little bit and I agree that there is a lot on the surface that seems racist but might not be racist upon further reflection. For example, we might all think that the woman was racist but that doesn't make the verdict racist. But when you add in the fact that the court is relying on the woman's version of events and rejecting the man's version of events AFTER the woman had lied to police about violent rape, the if you add to that the fact that this charge is used infrequently and in more severer circumstances, it starts to look racist again.

But what he's saying isn't "racist", it is simply an acknowledgement of reality: the same would be true here in Canada - many Jewish women would be upset if they found out that their lovers were lying about being Jewish just to screw them.

I agree, a person can be as racist as they want about who they sleep with and if the courts had consistently been sending people to jail for lies of this caliber then its still stupid but its not racist. But when this charge had been reserved for protracted fraud that included promises of marriage and then applies it to a one night stand it kinda makes you go hmmmm.

Certainly, if the law was applied in an unjust manner, that would be evidence of prejudice in the system. But that has nothing to do with the law. If for example only Blacks are ever charged with murder and never Whites, the system is racist - but that doesn't mean the law against murder is racist.

I agree, I don't think the law is racist.

We only have a single case of someone being charged with this sort of rape for identity - that simply is not evidence of institutionalized racism.

I wasn't thinking solely of this incident when I compared the situation to apartheid. Not all of apartheid was facially discriminatory laws, it was more than that and I saw this as another example of that sort of thing.

Also not true. But, again, the fact that a small coterie who make up the dedicated anti-Israel brigade tend to use dishonesty, ignorance and malice as their weapons of choice doesn't mean it's somehow wrong for me to point it out.

Small coterie? More like half the board. You carpet bomb almost everyone that criticizes Israel.

 

[Damuri Ajashi]

I think there's an expectation that the law is a lot more granular than it really is, and that causes confusion. In reality, people do things all the time that are technically prosecutable as one offense or another; they just aren't prosecuted.

So, for instance, Honesty, the reason it can be called fraud to lie to somebody in order to get sex is that, loosely speaking, fraud only means lying to somebody to get something out of them. So why wouldn't it be? The law doesn't say "but not if it's something obvious like 'I've got a huge wang'" or otherwise require that it be particularly egregious. Ordinarily, that kind of discretion is exercised by some combination of the victim, the police, the DA, and the courts. If all of them feel like taking it seriously, there's nothing preventing a perfectly by the book conviction for it, which shocks people because it doesn't match their expectations, only their expectations are naturally based on the practical enforcement of the law, and not the letter. It's the same with rape -- "but that's OBVIOUSLY not rape!" The thing is, rape has a definition, and the things that fit it do fit it.

I don't mean to say that the question "why would this be prosecuted" isn't a good one; just that the question "how is this (crime X)" is generally pretty easy to answer.

For example. Smoking pot was illegal in California when I was in college. The enforcement seemed to be a bit... uneven. How many white college students do you think spent time in California jails for smoking pot? How many poor black guys?

 

[Wile E]

She had sex with him 10 minutes after meeting him? Honestly, she doesn't sound all that picky.


Good Catholic girls wait at least 30 minutes after meeting a guy before having sex with them.

 

[Babale]

Nobel Peace Prize, only President to make and advance towards peace in the middle east. Shit like that.

Noble peace prize is a freaking joke. Obama may have been making plans to do something, but he certainly has done nothing yet. I'd rather not turn this into a hijak, but neither he nor Carter deserve the prize any more than you or I do.

Maybe because they aren't lies. They may overstate things sometimes but a lot of people honestly believe that there is racism against and oppression of Palestinians. If you want to dissect Jimmy Carter's book, I am sure you can find things in there that are incorrect but you use language that assumes evil intent right out of the gate.

I'd link a list of all the balant lies Carter wrote, but I know you'll just ignore my link, so what's the point?

The reason people don't think that was lying is because they read the actual post and while the OP could have titled this thread some other way, in the context of his post, its not the sort of thing that would cause most people to start their response with "So the OP starts by lying about the basic facts of the issue, this is good."

I'm not answering for Finn, but IMO the thread title is a sort of Yellow Journalism, which is a type of dishonesty.

Oh, and BTW? He was arrested for lying about being Jewish and for lying about being unmarried. So I thing we should change the title to "Married Man Arrested for Lying About His Marital Status in Order to Seduce a Woman". But that would cause much less outrage, huh?

As of this moment, FinnAgain has used the word 'bigot' seventy one times in this thread, although I may have missed some. As a public service, here is a brief list of synonyms for 'bigot' which will hopefully make his posts a little less tiresome.

Maybe because the term "Bigot" is deserved here? If you prefer, we could get a mod to change each use of the word to a different synonym. Would that make you happy?

He uses that term so that he can claim that he never accused anyone of racism or anti-semitism I suppose.

No, he uses that term because it's the correct term to use in this situation.

 

[PrettyVacant]

And it isn't too hard for a Palestinian to "pass" as a Jew if they want to. Jews come in all shapes and colors from Black to lily white and many other shades.

Plus the fact that DNA has revealed Jews and Palestinians are of the same population, not similar or close but the same population:

The shared genetic heritage of Jews and Palestinians

Which doesn't make all this weird at all.. It was weird before, with DNA it's way beyond weird.

 

[Villa]

An intelligent conversation could be had over whether this law is good, well-intended but poorly written, or completely dumb even in concept. BUT neither the law nor its application in this case is racist, or Jim Crow, or apartheid, and portraying it as such reveals more about those who claim it than it does about Israel.

We simply don't know that. This law is not racist in and of itself, but nothing in this thread has shown anything either way about its application. Sayign that Jewish men are charged under this law does not show application is not racist. To show that, you would need a situation where a Jewish man lied to a Muslim woman about his religion, and he was similarly charged.

That no one has shown that doesn't mean the law is applied in a racist manner, but absent that it isn't possible to say that it is not so applied.

 

[The Facts]

The jews are racist? Why, I'm shocked!

Poor dude is lucky they didn't try to forcibly circumcize him.

 

[amanset]

I would hope we would agree that both those men are rapists,

Nope. They used blackmailed people into having sex, but the sex was consensual. IMHO sex has to be non-consensual for it to be rape.

Then again, for what its worth, I disagree with classifying sex with a minor automatically as "statutory rape" as I believe it devalues what rape actually is. Much like your two examples do.

 

[amanset]

Well he's posted several times in this thread since I asked - including replies to posts posted after I asked. I guess FinnAgain isn't going to get back to me and let me know exactly what my "blatant" lies were about.

Does anyone else know? Because I'm utterly stumped.

I guess in the long run it is a good thing. Do I really want another "discussion" with him where he ignores anything I say regarding Palestinians, accuses me of lying, bigotry and being part of an anti-Israel movement, and finishes with the inevitable semantic discussions as his actual points make less and less sense?

Probably not. It is almost the weekend after all and that hot, young Belarusian I've been seeing is cooking dinner for me at her place tonight.

 

[FinnAgain]

The jews are racist? Why, I'm shocked!

It sure is interesting what sort of people these threads almost always bring out.
Yes "The Jews" are all sorts of bad things, preach it!

 

[Gyrate]

It does. As far as I know, it forbids anyone from using deceit to get someone to sleep with you.

It'd be interesting to see that come into play in a statutory rape case where a minor girl lied about her age in order to seduce an adult man. Both parties could technically be guilty of raping each other.

 

[Villa]

Nope. They used blackmailed people into having sex, but the sex was consensual. IMHO sex has to be non-consensual for it to be rape.

From something I wrote on this:

From the day of her fourteenth birthday (after which time he could no longer be charged with statutory rape in Pennsylvania), Mlinarich subjected the girl to a string of sexual assaults. When he wife was out, he insisted that the victim undress. When she refused, he "threatened to send her back to the detention home if she did not comply." Commonwealth v. Mlinarich, 542 A.2d 1335, 1337 (Pa. 1988). Mlinarich twice failed to rape the victim, failing to achieve penetration, while she "experienced pain and 'scream[ed], holler[ed]' and cried." Id. Eventually he succeeded in penetrating her, as well as forcing her to engage in oral intercourse, each time under the same threat of being sent back to the detention center.

I'm glad that satisfies your definition of consensual sex. It sure as hell doesn't satisfy mine.

 

[FinnAgain]

Rather obviously yes, people are giving me shit because I'm pointing out the facts (several, including yourself, have admitted in fact that you don't care at all about the facts and you're merely giving me shit because I'm pointing them out.)
If I wasn't pointing out that bigotry is bigotry or dishonesty is dishonesty, people like you wouldn't be spazzing out. That seems fairly elementary.

And no, you and a few assholes are not "everybody", despite your delusions of multiplicity. You just spazz out when certain facts are mentioned, like that many of the arguments we've seen have been based on dishonesty and bigotry. You flail about aimlessly when that's pointed out, because, well, that's your damage. God only knows why you and others can't bring themselves to condemn bigotry and dishonesty, but gets their panties in a good ol' bunch if it gets pointed out.

Good use of the bandwagon fallacy though, add flavor.

Then why is it being criticized so heavily inside Israel? Is there actually more recognition of the problems in Israeli society by Israelis than there are by Zionists in Texas?

Oh FFS... it's getting a lot of controversy in Israel because there are lots of divergent opinions. Of course you're assuming that, gee, maybe that's proof that Israel is bad and racist and blah blah. You're still not getting it. Malthus is treating you with kid gloves and that evidently has no effect either. You've admitted that you have a natural anti-Israel bias that you habitually stick new facts into and have to work against. He pointed out to you that you're merely assuming the worst about Israel and then constructing hypotheticals to justify that. Now you're doing the same thing, again.

And one of the reasons it's receiving opposition is because the law itself is pretty damn silly and this is probably an unintended consequence of how it's written. And yet again a valid debate on the actual issues is obscured because so much time has to be spent simply fact checking. if we could've done away with the "ZOMG, Jim Crow Apartheid!!!" and "Palestinian jailed for being Palestinian and the woman thought that merely sleeping with an Arab made her dirty!" nonsense, folks could've actually raised sane objections to the law.

 

[FinnAgain]

I said you post like a lunatic.

Which is stupid enough, but no, you're still lying. You made specific claims as to specific responses to mere "disagreements over anything related to Israel".
You simply made that up.

Your feigned non-comprehension over why "You do X, Y and Z in response to A, B and C" is a factual claim where as "I do not like how you post" is an opinion is, shall we say, unimpressive.

I'm honestly not sure what your argument is, beyond making my case for me by following your standard pattern of calling me a liar, troll and bigot.

You are rather obviously trolling. You started by lying about me, since I pointed out you were lying, you get to claim that, gee, isn't it awful, I just called you a liar! Why, that proves your argument (and was, of course, the point behind your troll whereby you lied about me simply to bait me into calling you out).
You're also lying about how I called you a bigot, naturally so you can troll on that point too and crow about how, (zounds!) I pointed out that you're lying and I didn't call you a bigot.

Just a bit of standard bullshit that gets tossed around in these debates. The only claim more laughable than the lie that nobody can criticize Israel without being called a racist/bigot/whatever is the claim that nobody who criticizes Israel does so out of bigotry/racism/whatever.

And, of course, showing what kind of a person you are, you ignored the lie in the OP that I pointed out (no, nobody was arrested and jailed for their nationality, that was made up) and instead spewed your bullshit about how it was just horrible that I pointed out that it was a lie. And you ignored that the two people in this thread who I've called bigots are:
1) a guy who has simply made up some bullshit about "Jim Crow" and invented an imaginary situation which he claims proves his hatred of a nationality, but which he can't cite and won't cite because it's fictional. One hopes that your stupidity and malice is situational and you're not always this dense.

It's telling that if it wasn't Dio voicing his anti-Israel bigotry, but something like "[black people] can be counted on to do [negative thing], and I don't have to prove this because, after all, everybody knows that [black people] are bad." then of course people would object.
But when it's "[Israelis] can be counted on to [totally ignore their own laws if an Arab Israeli is wronged] and I don't have to prove this because, after all, everybody knows that [Israelis] are bad." well, how dare anybody call that bigotry!

2) a guy who admitted that his instinctual reaction to any new information is to try to fit it into a narrative that seeks to demonize a national group.
Again, it's telling that it wouldn't fly if he said "I don't think I used to be so knee-jerk [against gays] but [people who defend gays] are turning me into someone who is instinctualy anti-gay. I don't spend time slowly digesting new facts into my gestalt of what is going on [with the gay community], instead I find myself trying to figure out how new facts can be incorporated into a narrative against [gays] and I have to make a conscious effort to retain objectivity and that really bothers me. I don't think this was the case before I encountered [people who defend gays]."

But if it's about how someone shows that kind of behavior towards Israel why, it's just awful to point out that it's bigotry.

So, aside from the fact that I'm correct and you're being a little bitch, yah, bangup job there Giraffe.

 

[Cort]

Maybe because the term "Bigot" is deserved here? If you prefer, we could get a mod to change each use of the word to a different synonym. Would that make you happy?

Yeah, actually it would. I don't know if the allegations are deserved and frankly, I don't care. This is just a message board, and this is certainly the wrong sub-forum for fighting ignorance but I like a good train wreck as much as the next guy and Finn's fixation on the word 'bigot' is tedious and weird. Giraffe is right. It's not helping his case.

 

[Laudenum]

If you read FinnAgain as a parody of extreme Israeli defenders, he is still completely OTT.

 

[Really Not All That Bright]

Are you contending that rape by fraud isn't a crime in America? Because I can assure you, it is in some states. See the (lengthy) article on this very topic I posted upthread.

Sure, but none of the situations covered by that paper are even remotely analogous to this one.