Should Israel Call Itself a Jewish State?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

Sweden doesn’t define itself as the nation-state of the Swedish people. Japan doesn’t describe itself that way either.

Of course no one disputes the ethnic claims of those peoples over their sovereign states, nor does anyone assert that they have stolen those lands from their rightful owners.

As we know, that’s not the case with the claims of the Jewish people’s right to the state of Israel, even though they constitute some four-fifths of its overall population.

Hence the recent decision by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to make that constitutionally explicit, even though most people – except those who subscribe to the “anti-Zionist’ creed that terms Israel an illegitimate  “apartheid” country-- already assume that.

Yet this seemingly common-sense legislation has been called “controversial” and “nationalistic,” and denounced even by some of Israel’s friends. The apocalyptic rhetoric claiming this was the end of Israeli democracy was uncalled for.

As a “basic law,” it joins a dozen other powerful laws that form Israel’s constitution, which, like Great Britain’s, is uncodified. 

The legislation, adopted on July 19, also makes Hebrew the country’s national language and alters the status of Arabic from an official language to a “special” one. (Many jurisdictions, including the province of Quebec, have similar laws.) 

In any case, it is not likely to have much practical meaning since a subsequent clause says that it will not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.

 “With this law, we have determined the founding principle of our existence. Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, and respects the rights of all of its citizens,” declared Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

But legislators from Israel’s Arab sector, which makes up about 21 percent of the country’s 8.5 million population, denounced the law as an expression of Jewish supremacy that turned them into second-class citizens.

Israel’s flag and anthem are already Jewish. And that’s little different from Christian and Muslim majority countries that display religious symbolism on their flags and anthems or define themselves religiously, as does the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Does the British Union Jack, with not one, but three Christian crosses, prevent Jews and Muslims from enjoying full freedom? In fact, the British monarch – who is also Canada’s head of state – is head of the Established churches the United Kingdom.

When we say that Germans or Greeks have a right to national self-determination, this does not preclude legal and political rights for any of its other citizens. The same is true of Nunavut, created as an Inuit jurisdiction, but with rights for all.

The new law does not rescind any previous law or Israel's Declaration of Independence, which already encompasses full equality of rights for all citizens. 

Israeli Arab citizens hold high positions in the Supreme Court, the Foreign Ministry, the health sector and even the Israel Police. The majority of the Arabs in Israel can work anywhere they wish, they can travel anywhere in the country. They vote in national elections and sit in the Knesset.

“I don’t agree with those saying this is an apartheid law,” said Amir Fuchs, an expert in legislative processes and liberal thought at the Israel Democracy Institute. “It does not form two separate legal norms applying to Jews or non-Jews.” 

Ever since its establishment in 1948 what had been the British mandate of Palestine, which at the time had an Arab majority, Israel has been grappling with the inherent tensions between its dual aspirations of being both Jewish and democratic.

Supporters of the law cite what they see as continuing threats: some in Israel’s Arab minority are demanding collective national rights, especially in those parts of the northern Galilee where they form a majority. 

Yet others propose creating a unified state in the old pre-partitioned Palestine which would, sooner or later, have a Palestinian Arab majority and thus put an end to a Jewish Israel.

Does no one remember that the 1947 UN partition plan called explicitly for the establishment in Palestine of Arab (that is, Palestinian) and Jewish states? They weren't going to be two "states of the whole people." And a Palestinian state today would, unlike Israel, still have no non-Palestinian minorities.

After all, when we speak of “self-determination,” who is the “self?” For Poland, the Poles, for Germany, the Germans. Israel was established as a home for the Jewish people. It has a right to legislate and determine its own identity, as any other country does.