Israel passes controversial funding law

BBC News, by Bethany Bell, Jerusalem, 23 March 2011

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The Israeli parliament has passed a law that allows the state to deny funding to institutions that question the country's existence as a Jewish state.

Nakba Day - as Palestinians call it - is an
important date in the political calendar

Civil rights groups say the law restricts the freedom of expression of Israel's Arab minority, which makes up about a fifth of Israel's population.

The controversial law brought in by the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party was passed by a vote of 37 to 25.

The new law has been called the Nakba bill, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

Palestinians use the term to refer to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of them fled or were forced from their homes.

Under the new law, groups involved in activities that deny Israel's existence as a Jewish state can be prevented from receiving public funding.

Those activities include marking Israel's Independence Day as a day of mourning.

Civil rights and Israeli Arab politicians say the law is undemocratic and unfairly singles out Israel's Arab citizens.

The current version of the law is more moderate than the original, which called for prison sentences for anyone holding Nakba memorial events.

Related Article:

"The End of History" – Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

(Subjects:Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Muhammad, Jesus, God, Jews, Arabs, EU, US, Israel, Iran, Russia, Africa, South America, Global Unity,..... etc.) (Text version)

"If an Arab and a Jew can look at one another and see the Akashic lineage and see the one family, there is hope. If they can see that their differences no longer require that they kill one another, then there is a beginning of a change in history. And that's what is happening now. All of humanity, no matter what the spiritual belief, has been guilty of falling into the historic trap of separating instead of unifying. Now it's starting to change. There's a shift happening."

(Live Kryon Channelings was given 7 times within the United Nations building.)