Israeli High Court Overturns Arab Party Ban

January 21, 2009

Comments

The Israeli Supreme Court has overturned the ban on Arab political parties which was enacted earlier this month.

Israel’s Supreme court overruled on Wednesday a parliamentary panel which had decided to bar Israeli Arab parties from running in next month’s parliamentary election.

The court issued its decision in response to an appeal filed by Arab politicians against the ban. A spokesman for the Courts Administration said judges overturned the ban in an unanimous vote Wednesday.

Definitely a good move, but I’m not sure it will undo the damage to Israel’s reputation that came from putting forward the ban in the first place.

4 responses to “Israeli High Court Overturns Arab Party Ban”

caj

January 21, 2009 at 4:30 pm

I wonder why they did it…not that it is a bad move at all but you have wonder at the timing!!!!
Is it to make Israel look more favorably in Pres Obama’s eyes after the carnage caused by them in Gaza?
We’ll see!!
tom p

January 21, 2009 at 6:17 pm

Definitely a good move, but I’m not sure it will undo the damage to Israel’s reputation that came from putting forward the ban in the first place.

Yes there are some sane voices in Israel too (more than a few, I might add). If one believes in Democracy, one must believe in democracy for all.
yetanotherjohn

January 21, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Checks and balances. Democratic nations tend to have them. What’s the status of Jewish political parties in Gaza?
fredw

January 22, 2009 at 12:51 am

yetanotherjohn – there are no more Jewish political parties in Gaza than there were Nazi political parties in the Warsaw ghetto, and for the same reasons.

I am a fairly harsh critic of Israel, but this supreme court decision goes a long way towards convincing me that Israel may someday be a real democracy. There are some rational people in Israel, it is only the fundamentalists running things that are screwed up – kind of like Iran.