Israel is Texas with less bounty hunters on ATVs
PBS show P.O.V. episode titled 9 Star Hotel
[Edit: If you can properly divide this post into logical paragraphs with proper grammar whilst keeping the original text, I will edit the post to match! Yeah, ha ha.]
We’re going to end up just like this. The police patrol the area in and outside what appears to me to be something crossed between a landfill and a construction site. As far as I can tell, that’s what it is. The town/city is called Modi’in. (The core town has a population of just 65,000.) One officer whispers too the cameraman “we’re looking for illegal workers”. The illegal workers they talk about? Mostly young men, I would guess in their 30s. They work illegally in the construction trade for Israelis during the day, and return to their camps (makeshift homes that appear to be made from tents and demolition scraps such as tin and fiberglass) at night. They possess very few things, one shows the group a toy car he is saving for his kid brother or a child he may someday have. I don’t know if they all are, but at least some of them are from Yata, Hebron. I don’t know enough about the workings of Palestine or Israel (or the Palestinian Israeli areas that seem to have been on the news since my birth), but whether it’s available or not these guys aren’t getting any government assistance. That’s right, they aren’t on some form of welfare or food stamps. They work hard during the day for what they get and sleep on whatever they have at night. Obviously I don’t know enough about any of this to really present something meaningful about their situation, but I can apply it to ours. They live in a shanty town while they build massive apartment buildings and houses for others. It sounds to me like Texas. I don’t know the laws of Israel or Palestine. I know the laws of Texas and the U.S. What is the crime? Being illegals, they don’t pay taxes. (Oooh like they make enough money for that to matter. Look at how our income taxes work, they wouldn’t have had to pay in anyway. Why don’t our rich people pay more anyway? Oh, and don’t forget it’s not just illegals who get paid under the table, plenty of citizens do it too.) Being illegals, they’re mistreated and paid poorly. (The government must use this as a further excuse? They do what they can. If you want to help them, help them. Don’t pretend you’re helping them and then kick them in the dirt.)
I say, let a man work an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. I don’t care what race he is, what country his citizenship is from. I say, why tax income when you already tax purchases, sales, property, and everything else. Why must everything be us and them, when really it is simply us. We persecute ourselves. We are all human beings, act accordingly.
To view the PBS show this entry was about, visit http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/2008/05/2008_pov_preview_9_star_hotel.html
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nice post!!
Thanks. If you’re still around, check out the edit!
The Toy Car you talk about was probably stolen.
Most crime in Modiin is from these people. They also are a security threat. There was an attempted murder of a women a few months ago by one of these workers. 2 Days ago Palestinian car thieves tried to run down and murder a policeman, last year workers plotted to blow up a synagogue . These men are exploited by the building contractors to try get cheaper labour, while putting the lives and property of the residents of Modiin at risk.
Amazing how broad a generalization you can make without knowing someone. I love your use of “these people”. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are Israeli. If I’m wrong then my second choice is American. It seems to me those are the two nations whose citizens will immediately take up the fight, whether conversational or physical, when something may reflect poorly on Israel. I’m not going to say the toy car I saw wasn’t stolen. I don’t know that. I also don’t know that you are not reading this from a stolen computer. Frankly, I don’t really care. I’ve seen this situation my entire life. I grew up around the Mexico/United States illegal trades. Sure, there are bad apples. The world is full of bad apples, especially near the top. (Politically, not geographically.) Have you heard of Hutto? T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility. It was this great idea the U.S. came up with. They let a for-profit company create a prison specifically for illegal immigrants. Children included. http://www.citizenorange.com/orange/2007/12/don-hutto-how-the-ice-stole-ch.html Try to see things from an outside perspective. Some humans rape, pillage, and murder. Therefore ALL humans do, so we should condemn them all?!? You’d best hope whatever beings there are beyond humanity don’t see things that way.
ok, i have some authority on this subject, considering my current situation of living in texas and being so close to so many israelis. the difference between these illegal workers and the illegal workers in texas is that the palestinians would love to see the israelis wiped from the face of the earth. sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but the israeli government cannot ignore the palestinians in their state. in texas we do not have mexican immigrants crossing the border for work, specifically to raise money to fund suicide missions to kill texans. the war of palestinians and israelis is so complex, and i honestly don’t believe that either side is acting appropriately. it might be more acceptable for the government to find ways to gauge a palestinian’s motives for working in israel, but it would be impossible given that emotions are already running too high. maybe i’m not much a creative thinker, but the situation is really an impasse and i don’t think a solution will be possible unless each generation becomes less impassioned over the conflict than the one before, but that won’t happen because it is part of the culture of the entire area.