the problem with that is that hezbollah's military strength is stronger than the lebanese army, and hezbollah is also a significant partner (1/6 to 1/5 of the current seats in the parliament are held by hezbollah). so if siniora comes out strongly against hezbollah he risks the collapse of the fledgling democratic government in lebanon and likely then an all-out invasion by israel which would result in many more lebanese deaths. so for the stability of his position as well as the lives of many more innocents he can't do that.

Plenty hear have stated a desire to wipe out Iran by nukes. How is that any different?

They did warn the civilians to leave. I'm not sure taking out the infrastructure is the best move, either, but it's clear that Hezbollah is led from Syria and Iran, so physical and communication channels should be removed.

Yes, countries and territories come and go. It is ultimately irrelevant that the whole area, not just Israel, was Jewish before the Romans came in.

But Jews have maintained a continuous presence. They weren't always the majority, but they were there.

By the time the 1948 resolution took place, there were already 500,000 Jews living there.

They were willing to live with the Arabs in peace, but the rest of the Arab world asked those Arabs to leave while the extermination took place.

Why is it that it's acceptible (even desirable for a couple of people here - not you) that groups exist completely dedicated to the destruction of an entire race of people?

If countries and territories come and go, by your logic, then why is it not okay for the Jews to have their country recognized, even after 58 years? Or is it only okay if the Jews go, not if they come? There seems to be a double-standard in the international community when it comes to Jews.

Not only all out invasion by Isreal, but also Syria coming in to pick up the pieces, after it was kicked out last year. Don't believe for a SECOND that Hezbollah doesn't want a collapse of the Lebanese government. Siniora (and his party) is pro-US and anti-Syria, exactly the opposite of Hezbollah.

DaddyTorgo. Hey, thanks for the analysis. Not sure I agree that this excuses Siniora from not mentioning it but I can see his point of view.

yep. i should have mentioned that too.

It's not. ;)

You know, I'm not so sure the pigmentation of the average Lebanese is really that much darker than that of your average Israeli. I'm not sure why Noop feels like he has to play the brown person race card here, but it's totally irrelevant to the situation.

If anything, Noop ought to side with Israel here. They're clearly the minority in the region, and have suffered for their race in an equally, if not more, brutal manner, and more recently to boot.

But maybe it's just color blindness...

I forgot the [sarcasm] tags.

Just saw this, pertains to our discussion on Siniora.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13853565/

Pertinent text is

Trying to defuse the crisis, Lebanon’s prime minister indicated he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah guerrillas — a move that might risk civil war.

I am sorry if my post to Jon made you think I was talking about Israel. Believe race has nothing to do with my non-support of Israel's actions.

a civil war that the government would lose. the lebanese military does not have the capability to fight hezbollah, let alone the mindset necessary. hell, probably a good portion of the lebanese military either actively or tacitly supports hezbollah either physically or financially.

Yeah, I might be misuderstanding your meaning then.

May have been a little bit of a strong statement. As for nukes, I never want to see the day of nukes being used.

Personally, if it was proven that terrorists were bringing supplies into Iraq through Kuwaiti ports and the Kuwaiti government was unable or unwilling to hinder it, I would not see a problem with using force to stop it only if (a big if given our intel lately) we had intelligence to confirm it.

Hezbollah uses the highway, airport, and seaport to bring in supplies and weapons. The Israelis, which has the best intel group in the world, have intelligence to prove this. The Lebanonese military is either uncapable or unwilling to take control of those targets. To defeat an enemy, you have to cut off their "blood supply." Under the Geneva Convention, those are military targets.

You may disagree with the level of force being applied. You may even think that the retaliation was illegal. I don't have a problem with that. I don't like anymore than you do. However, the Jewish military is conducting their operations in accordance with international law.

The Israeli military, you mean? Israel is 16% muslim...

If they are citizens of the country, aren't they Israeli?

They are Israeli.

His quibble is that duckman called the IDF "the Jewish military." as opposed to "the Israeli military" or the "Israeli Defense Force."

Oh ok. Didn't catch that.

I agree that it was an escalation and I'm not really sure what Israel could do, other than what they're doing, to respond. Perhaps their response could have been more moderate, but I can see the tactical importance of shutting down the airport, sea ports, and roads. For one, it makes it more difficult to get the soldiers out of Lebanon and two, it makes it more difficult for Hezbollah to get reinforcements. Although with the obvious pre-planning that went into the kidnapping, I'd be surprised if the soldiers were still in Lebanon anyway.

So what happens now? Is the goal of all that oppose Israel to get them to leave? Or is it to actually kill every Israeli? What is Israel's goal? Is it to be recognized as a country and left alone to live in peace? If that's the case, then how can such two such polar opposite aims be reconciled?

I'm curious if anyone here has any great ideas on how to achieve peace?

As an odd trivial aside, here's a little tidbit that kind of relates to the semantic turn here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Arab
Arab citizens of Israel are Arabs who are citizens of the State of Israel. Israeli Arabs are full citizens of the State of Israel, with equal protection under the law, and full rights of due process ... The majority of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are exempt from military service. ... in practice, only a small percentage of Israeli Arabs served in the military.

note: The phrases "Palestinian Arab citizens" and "Arab citizens of Israel" are used synonymously in the Wiki article

Interesting page. I clicked on the Arab-Israeli War. This was interesting on that page:

After the United Nations partitioned the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, the Arabs refused to accept it and the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq, supported by others, attacked the newly established State of Israel. It was the first in a series of open wars in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As a result, the region was divided between Israel, Egypt and Transjordan.


Of course, I went on to read about the Ottoman Empire through clicking on the British Mandate of Palestine. Very interesting overview on the Ottoman Empire (did not know much about it).

this movie was made in 1994 and the main enemy was Islamic Terrorists who wanted to create a jihad in america because we "kill their women and children, and rain fire from far away like cowards."

Way ahead of its time, I think.

Bah.


1985


1986

Chuck was kicking terrorist ass 20 years ago.

Lee Marvin looks like he'd rather be somewhere else.

HAHA SERIOUSLY!

You keep saying 'terrorists' 'terrorists' 'terrorists'. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't this recent confrontation touched off by the kidnapping of uniformed Isreali soldiers? There's been a low scale war between Hezbollah and Isreal for 25 years. Every day they look at each other across the border and think of ways to kill each other.

Israel has a right to defend themselves. But that doesn't mean that they can't do it stupidly. Of course the Anti-Israeli forces are the aggressors, Israelis are the ones that have the territory being fought over. And you can't look at a 3-1 kill ratio and with a straight face make the claim that Israel has been turning the other cheeck. Both sides are filled with over the top rhetoric

Jesus, on FoxNews the host just said it was obvious that this is a proxy war between the US and Iran. Insanity.

"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"
-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

The noble Israelis had the same rhetoric back when they were driving out the Palestinians. Of course, now that they have what they want, they are just victims.

Wow, dude, you're really out there. The Galilee quote is usually attributed to someone else, but it's generally assumed to be made up.

There was no active war between Israel and Hezbollah. If so, there would have been fighting over the last few years. Even much of the Arab world isn't trying to justify the attack and kidnapping.

There would be no "overreaction" if the terrorists weren't sending rockets daily at civilian areas of Israel. If that's not terrorism, then terrorism doesn't exist.

The Israelis have been quite restrained. If they weren't, far more people would be dead. They have the superior weaponry. If the weapons available were reversed, Israel would be gone in a minute.

Since I've been open about my background, could you give me a little of yours. Are you Syrian? Iraqi? I'm just curious. You seem very biased on this issue. I know I have a bias as well, but I've tried to provide as accurate a depiction of the history in the region as possible along with my opinion that Israel's response is completely justified.

Maybe he's a muslim.

I went through and tried to research each quote. If that one is incorrect, here is another one:

"What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place, and casualties. If we know the family, we must strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent."

There have been attacks between Hezbollah and Isreal back and forth since the former's inception. Israeli troops occupied southern Lebanon as late as 2000. Operation Grapes of Wrath was in 1996. Here is a CNN story from this Feb about Hezbollah and Israel trading rocket attacks:

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/me...rael.violence/

Do you have a source that says that rockets were being sent in daily to Israeli civilian centers from Hezbollah? The CNN story I linked to above seems to imply that rocket attacks from Hezbollah, while not completely uncommon, are notable, and the one it does describe is attacking an IDF outpost. In fact, most of the recent attacks than I am seeing have been against military installations.

Yes it would be. But since they do have the superior military, the Arabs are 'gone' from Israel. Israel has what it wants. If they wanted more, they would take more. It's not like Israel has some kind of grand benevolance any more than any other country.

I'm an American, my father's family goes back to the 1700's. You keep saying I am 'out there', and 'biased', but my feelings on the issue are parallel to those of most of the world, save for the United States. As in most conflicts, there is equal blame to go around. Your history of events is a decidedly pro-Israeli one. I am not going to condone attackes by Hezbollah/Hamas on civilians, but I'm not going to condone them by Israel either. You continually refer to them as 'terrorists' because they attack civilians, yet ignore that the Israelis have killed three times as many civilians as them.

I don't condone all of the actions by Hamas or Hezbollah, but I understand. It is fact that a number of people were forced through circumstances to leave their homeland. If the UN voted to make NH a Muslim theocratic state, you'd probably be pissed and either leave or want to fight to get your home back. If the world then funded and equipped the new Muslim Republic of New Hampshire with a top flight military...well, you'd have limited options. You either fight a guerrilla war or give up your home. Ask the various state militias out west what they would do.

It's a cycle of violence, it's like a barfight. One guy says something, the other guy says something back, one of them pushes the other, one of them grabs the other, one of them punches, etc. In the end it's both of their faults. It's not like the Palestinians are pissed just because the Israelis are Jewish, they weren't going around pre-WWII and searching out Jews to kill around the world. You have to recognize the powerful psychological impact of having your home taken away from you, the same impact that created the Zionism movement in the first place.

I wonder when "why do you hate America?" will make an appearance.

yabanci. I'm not sure where you are coming from. I thought Solecismic and Mr. Bigglesworth were having a fascinating, respectful exchange.

Can you express your pov a little better?

Solecismic. My comment about "countries and territories come and go" was specific (sorry if it wasn't clear) to arguments pro-Israeli folks make about "we were here first", implying that they have every right to be owners of the land. I don't think that is a valid argument, there are multitudes of historical examples where this type of "fact" is null and void. May not be fair but that's the way it is.

I did not mean that statement to imply that Israel does not have a right to exist or to be recognized.

Right or wrong, the powers that be at the UN allowed the State of Israel to be created back in the 40's. That is what legitimizes Israel, not the historical claim.

It helps to know where someone is coming from. Yabanci's taking that question out of context.

Mr. B., much of the world remains heavily anti-Semitic. The UN continues to focus on Israel, but ignore the violence that starts the cycle.

It helps to know why you're on the Arab side of this. This is about the creation of the state of Israel in the first place, then the subsequent refusal to allow people in who left back in 1948.

What is it about 1948 that troubles you? The Arabs declared war because they opposed the two-state solution, yet the Jews had been there continuously for thousands of years, and actively immigrating there for more than 50. Do you dispute that? Because there is no Muslim theocracy in New Hampshire and never has been.

There's no history here, no call for one, no situation where that would be even remotely appropriate. And if there were, I'd certainly leave and try and make the best of my life and not spend the rest of my life attacking Muslims women and children.

Muslims were welcome in Israel. In fact, today, they still make up 14% of the population, and have full citizenship rights. They're super-citizens in many ways, in that most aren't required to serve in the military, as Jewish citizens are.

In 1948, when the Arab nations attacked, most Muslims left voluntarily, at the request of the attacking nations. Their choice. The Israelis, in many cases, begged them to stay. Do you dispute this?

No one seems to care about the hundreds of thousands of Jews displaced by that war who had been living peacefully elsewhere in the Middle East. That's because Israel took them in.

The Palestinian refugees weren't all taken in. At least half, probably much more, weren't. They suffer not because Israel won't take them back, but because the Arabs want them to suffer as an excuse for attacking Israel. That's the crux of this problem. They now number at least four million. Israel couldn't possibly take them in even if it wanted to. Do you dispute this?

Hamas was the group sending daily rockets, from Gaza, into Israel. They pledge to do the same from Judea if Israel leaves that land as well. Why? Because they want the conflict to continue. You see, the bottom line here is that Hamas and Hezbollah and all the terrorist groups don't give a damn about land. It's all about removing the Jews from the Middle East. That's all they care about, that's all they've ever cared about.

The more Israel "disengages" - their term for leaving the occupied areas - the more they're emboldened. While the rest of the world congratulates Israel for taking the huge step of leaving Gaza, Hamas stepped up their attacks.

The violence will end the second these terrorist groups stop the attacks. I can't see how any one can look at history and think Israel is targetting civilians. All the civilian deaths are in response to direct attacks. Why so many? Because the damned terrorists want just that.

They purposely launch their attacks close to civilian population centers in hopes that if the IDF does target them, a couple of children go with them. The group on the beach who was killed last month was less than 1/4 mile from the site where the latest unprovoked rocket had been launched.

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why people in America support Hamas in any way. Their actions have cause so much suffering on both sides.

I agree Hamas/Hezbollah are chickens**t when they attack from civilian areas and when they attack civilian targets. It is true that Israeli attacks cause civilian casulties but Hamas/Hezbollah starts off with that intent.

They are in a low-intensity war and I do believe military targets/leadership are fair game. I believe the attacks and kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers were within bounds, just like targeted assasinations/attacks on the Hamas/Hezbollah.

• You know, I don't recall a mention of the "terrorist organization PLO/Fatah". Has Hamas strangely legitimized the PLO/Fatah as the moderate force?

• Also, after sleeping on it, I want to take back my statement about making a distinction on Gaza civilians vs Lebanese civilians. Gaza civilians (that do not actively support/participate with Hamas) should be sympathized with. Sorry.

There's really nothing more to be said about Israel's intentions beyond this.

Here's something interesting which I thought about today.

If Israel just attacks Gaza (Palestine), Lebanon and maybe Syria, they really don't solve the problem which is Iran. However, if this escalates enough to involve Iran, then you will see U.S. involvement. I'm wondering if Bush /wants/ to goad Iran into war because then he has a reason to get involved.

Israel may step up it's operations in Gaza if the Hamas wants Israel to. But that is nothing new.

Attacking Syria doesn't mean much unless you mean by way of marching an occupying force into Syria, which has never happened. Not sure of the benefit there to begin with, but if you know what the benefit would be, I'd be interested to learn about it.

But regardless, if Iran does get invovled, what exactly does that mean? Declare war on Israel? What does that do? The only way Iran can attack Israel is through their terror group already located in Southern Lebanon--Hezbollah. If Iran can wage war against Israel in a way they aren't already doing so, I'd like to learn about that too.

I am not sure that anybody "wants" to go to war with Iran, I think that most people (including the President) feel that it is inevitable and the military would be crazy not to prepare for it.

If a war with Iran does not start as a result of the current problems, it will probably kick off when Israel bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.

i heard in an interview today the leader of Hezbollah, saying that Israel was attacking them from the northern Occupied territory of Palestine.

I think that that goes back to the crux of the problem. Even if israel stops, whatever, gives them chunks of land here and there, that they (the Palestinians, Lebanese, and basically surrounding arabs who agree with the anti-zionist doctrine) will ALWAYS view the jews as occupiers of their lands (which is the whole of israel).....

They can cry foul over over-reaction, cry foul over settlements in "their" lands, cry foul over a border fence...but in my mind they are all strawmen, because in actuality, no matter what, they will continue to attack the Jews that are in Israel because they want every last man, woman, and child gone from "their" land of Palestine.

So in essence the actual solutions to the long term problems are few. Jews leave, Jews put up humongous fence and deal with constant attacks (hoping that at some point one of the surrounding arab countries who lean to the extreme dont lob a nuke their way), or Arabs finally agree to let the Jews have some land too.

Some commentator was saying unless there is a ceasefire (unlikely), Israel will have to move into Southern Lebanon to stop the rocket attacks. Thats my vote, give the civilians a last, clear warning to leave Southern Lebanaon, tell Hezbollah to fight like men or run like girls, and then go in and take out their grunts ...

Flasch186. My take is majority of regular, non-militant population around Israel want peace under the assumption something 'fair' (devil in the details) can be negotiated. Peace has essentially been established with Jordan and Eygpt. It's taking care of the militants/radicals that is the problem.

Dutch. I agree picking a fight with Syria is worthless. Syria is fairly secular which means (to me) Assad is a man of reason. Negotiate back the Golan Heights, bribe/threaten and I believe peace can be achieved with Syria. Iran is a different matter.

Ryan S. Bush announced Iran as part of the axis of evil in 2002. He has probably been working towards toppling that regime since then but was distracted for a longer time than anticipated on Iraq. He has 2 more years to create a legacy and I can see some hawks in the White House wanting to pick a fight. They just need clear evidence of Iranian involvement in the current crises.

Edited and rephrased. Anyone know any news articles about recent US military troop/naval movements around the Persian Gulf area?

...however, because of the militants tactic, which has not been stopped by the non-militant population, of being interspersed within the general population, the two can not be seperated. The militants, not only are amongst the general population, they actually run their organization throughout the same buildings, neighborhoods, and cities. If the "people" wont keep the militants from becoming their local government then I dont see an alternative other than warning the people over time, then warning the people to get out, and then punishing the militants when they act like an army (kidnapping, throwing missiles, spewing rhetoric based on their doctrine of hate, etc.)

What other alternative is there?

Hamas and Hezbollah have run amok amongst the territories in question and their Long term goal is the dissolution of Israel. Keeping in mind, that Israel's long term goal is NOT the keeping of land from the palestinians or Arabs, but to have a two state solution....what is wrong with that other than the fact that it doesnt agree with the idea of driving the Jews from the land, all of the land?

No one likes to see civilians die, but like Jim said....the minute the militants stop attacking the jews and sit down to draw lines of states, the fighting will stop outright.

Interesting article that mentions about the IDF reserve infantry division moved to border.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...ticle/ShowFull

I haven't called for the destruction of Israel. I haven't called Hezbollah innocents caught in the web of Israeli treachery. I think saying I am on the Arab side when my view is that both sides are at some fault is an incorrect characterization.

Ok, then what if the UN decreed California or Texas an Hispanic state? Many people would be pissed. Just because a group has been immigrating there for years wouldn't take away your right to be pissed that a body that you had no respresentation in decides that your home is now a theocratic state of another religion.

The problem here is the asymmetry between the two sides. Isreal has what they want, what they started out for with the Zionism movement. That makes it easy for them to say that they just want peace. It's like Saddam invading Kuwait before the first Gulf War. He had Kuwait, then wanted peace. By your logic, we would be the aggressors because Iraq would stop fighting as soon as we did. That's ludicrous.

Israel is also a much better equipped military that can do things like surgical strikes. Hamas and Hezbollah have shown a willingness to go after military targets if they can. They also attack civilians, because it is one of the only options available to them. If they had a modern tank and air force, I'm sure they would love to attack Israel head on. That doesn't mean that I support civilian attacks, but faced with the odds that they are, I understand, and it's been that way for centuries.

Because there hasn't been a working peace in the middle east for over 50 years now, you can make the case that both sides' tactics have not been all that great. I lot of pro-Israeli people talk about 'taking the gloves off', implying that the problem is that not enough force is being employed. The problem is that that theory can never be disproven. No matter what happens, they can just say that not enough force was used. The failure of the use of more force to create peace is not seen as the failure of the force doctrine, but rather as evidence that not enough force has been used. Matthew Yglesias talked about something similar to this recently, the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics.

MrBigglesworth. I do share some of your opinions but not the above. Hamas and Hezbollah can easily avoid attacking civilian targets (ex. pizza parlors and civilian buses). I would have greater respect for their cause if they limited themselves to military targets.

• Plenty of Israeli checkpoints around.
• If you can sneak into Israel and do a suicide bombing in a civilian bus, you can just as easily 'try' to do a suicide bombing at military vehicels/posts/barracks.
• Etc. Plenty of military targets, they choose to attack civilians. No honor in that.

1. Bush did not create Iran as part of the Axis of Evil. He just reminded us of that fact.

2. Bush has not been working on toppling the Iranian government unless Diplomacy and Toppling are synonomous these days.

3. What evidence are you using to suggest Bush/Bush Admin is picking a fight with Iran?

BTW - There already is clear evidence of Iranian involvement. Hezbollah is owned and operated by it's chief financier - Iran.

You're wording looks like an effort to directly blame the Bush Administration for the current crisis involving Israel and the Hezbollah.

I agree with you, but I think the crux of the problem is that H/H could attack military targets all the time, but they will never have a military victory. I think that if you look at history, every time that it has been beneficial to attack civilians, it has been done. A show on the history channel the other day about the military in the Bible said that it was possible that the Egyptians were chasing Moses because the latter had sacked a town on the way to Canaan. So while you can't support such attacks, I think that you can at least understand why they are being done.

Okay, not going to argue meaningless semantics here, lets agree to disagree here. If you want that point, please take it, lets move on to more substantial discussion points.

I did not mean to imply the Bush Admin was causing this crises. I am saying it would not surprise me if hawks in the Bush Admin wanted to make use of this current crises to pick a fight with Iran.

I've heard Hezbollah was owned by Syria and/or Iran. I suspect that it is not as clear cut as this. Sure there are influences, but does Hezbollah take their marching orders from Syria, Iran or purue their own interests with some influence from the other two. Probably the 3rd option.

Now, if it could be proven that there were some Iranian 'elites' that shot the missle that hit the Israeli ship ... that would be pretty clear cut act of war.

wiki, fwiw:

Hezbollah - Founded with the aid of Iran and funded by it, it follows the distinctly Shiite Islamist ideology developed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

The organization views an Islamic republic, on the Iranian model, as the ideal and eventual form of state. However, as their conception of an Islamic republic requires the consent of the people, and since Lebanon remains a religiously and ideologically heterogeneous society, their political platform revolves around more mundane issues. According to their published political platform in 2003, Hezbollah claims to favor the introduction of an Islamic government in Lebanon by peaceful democratic means.

Hezbollah supports the destruction of the state of Israel[62] and co-operates with other militant Islamic organizations such as Hamas in order to promote this goal.

Hezbollah has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States [63] the United Kingdom [64], the Netherlands[65], Canada [66][67], Israel and Australia [68]; the U.S. Department of State also accuses Hezbollah of killing up to 300 American citizens (over 230 of whom were U.S Marines in Lebanon). Hezbollah, however, has always denied any involvement in those attacks.[citations?]

The United Nations has called for the disbanding of Hezbollah's military wing in UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

The demographics of Israel and their implications on Israeli society and politics have always fascinated me. I think that it is a bit of a misconcepcion to automatically label Israel "the Jewish state", when it is a bit more complicated than that. In truth, I think the Israelis struggle as to whether it is more important to be a "Jewish homeland" or a western-style liberal democracy, or if one can truly be both without sacrificing either.

The 1,000,000 or so Arab citizens of Israel who decided to stay post-1948 are not going anywhere. Many of them stayed because Israel is their home, and probably had the attitude that "rulers come and go, but this is where I live", a good number probably also stayed suspecting that they would be better off in a western-style democracy.

In any event, the size of the Arab minority is such that if Israel were truly to emulate a western-style liberal democracy, Israel would move towards a definition of its society as a multi-ethnic, secular society. And this is not just an arab issue, as Jews in Israel are not homogeneous: they come from different regions of the world, with different cultural traditions, and different interpretations and practices of Judaism. The inter-ethnic and secular-religious tensions among the Jewish citizenry of Israel are real.

It does seem that Israeli social policy in the past decade have pushed towards the secular and multi-cultural. The Israeli government has made great strides in promoting multiculturalism via its affirmative-action and quota programs, especially for its citizens of Arab descent. I think that paying attention to redressing the problem of discrimination now will pay dividends for Israel in the future, especially if Arabs in neighboring countries will eventually see that Arabs in Israel are just as better off if not more, and have more rights and influence than they do in their own countries. Israel can certainly be a model in the region for what a multi-ethnic liberal democracy could look like.