Reply #29: However, serious pervasive lawlessness does threaten the foundations of the state [View All]

[LeftishBrit]

Up to a point, crime is just crime - and then there is another point where the rule of law itself was threatened. Nowadays, crime in Chicago is, from what I know, just crime in Chicago. But when Al Capone and the mob ran amok in Chicago, one could have said that the city government was not fully sovereign. There is a difference between the USA and Israel here, in that America is much bigger and American government is far more 'devolved'; gangsterism threatened the rule of the Chicago city government greatly; of the Illinois state government much less; and the American government relatively little.

Israel, when it does not crack down on settler violence, is immediately endangering the Palestinians in the West Bank - and in the long term it may also be sowing seeds of a serious domestic-terrorism problem in the long term

In Gaza the point has already been reached where the rule of law has to a degree broken down.