From: shaig@Think.COM (Shai Guday)
Subject: Re: Ten questions about Israel
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 67
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: composer.think.com

In article <1483500349@igc.apc.org>, cpr@igc.apc.org (Center for Policy Research) writes:
|> 
|> From: Center for Policy Research <cpr>
|> Subject: Ten questions about Israel
|> 
|> 
|> Ten questions to Israelis
|> -------------------------
|> 
|> I would be thankful if any of you who live in Israel could help to
|> provide
|>  accurate answers to the following specific questions. These are
|> indeed provocative questions but they are asked time and again by
|> people around me.

I lived there until July 1992 so I think that on the whole,
my input is relevant.

|> 1.      Is it true that the Israeli authorities don't recognize
|> Israeli nationality ? And that ID cards, which Israeli citizens
|> must carry at all times, identify people as Jews or Arabs, not as
|> Israelis ?

Those are two separate questions.  Obviously, Israeli authorities do
recognize Israeli nationality for some purposes, e.g. passports,
consular services, etc...  ID cards have a field of nationality
which is a subdivision of the above.  Ostensibly, this field
is provided for sevices provided by the religious departments
of the gov't, though this is not the general case.

|> 2.      Is it true that the State of Israel has no fixed borders
|> and that Israeli governments from 1948 until today have refused to
|> state where the ultimate borders of the State of Israel should be
|> ?

From its onset, Israel's borders have been shaped and reshaped by both
war and peace.  As such, the Israeli gov't has always felt that defining
its borders is a step that is meaningful only after peace treaties have
been conluded with its neighbors.  There is no plan for "ultimate borders"
(is this a game like "ultimate frisbee"?) extending into  other countries.

|> 3.      Is it true that Israeli stocks nuclear weapons ? If so,
|> could you provide any evidence ?

Aside from what Vaanunu provided, no.

|> 4.      Is it true that in Israeli prisons there are a number of
|> individuals which were tried in secret and for which their
|> identities, the date of their trial and their imprisonment are
|> state secrets ?

If that is true, then by virtue of the question's subject, it is
unanswerable.  Anyone who claims its validity. is claiming an oxymoron.
That having been said, I deny the above.

You go on to ask quite a number of questions that show an obvious
bias.  Questions of the sort "Is it true that you entered your
mother's vagina?" which are based upon some kernel of truth, though
phrased in a way as to render them repugnant and cast aspersions
upon Israel.  Incidentally, the answer to the above is usually yes,
unless you were born via a C-section.

-- 
Shai Guday              | Stealth bombers,
OS Software Engineer    |
Thinking Machines Corp. |	the winged ninjas of the skies.
Cambridge, MA           |
