Israels constitution

How Jewish a state?

The government wants a controversial law that would deny equality to
Arabs

Nov 29th 2014 | JERUSALEM | From the print edition

ONE week Israels prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his ministers honour a
Druze policeman who died protecting Jewish worshippers being hacked to death in a
Jerusalem synagogue. The next they approve constitutional legislation that would
enshrine his inferior status in relation to Jews.
A bill approved by the cabinet on November 23rd, and sent to the Knesset, seeks to
define Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, enhance the role of
traditional Jewish law (which gives Jews preferential rights) in Israeli legislation and
limit rights for non-Jewish citizens to individual rights according to the law (thus
denying Arabs national rights as a minority).

On the face of it, the representation of Israel as a Jewish state is nothing new. It was
defined as such by the UN, at the partition of British-ruled Palestine in 1947. And the
Israeli state was built by Jews, for Jews. In a country where one in four people are not
Jewish, all of Mr Netanyahus ministers are Jewish and only one speaks decent Arabic.
The Law of Return grants citizenship to migrants with one Jewish grandparent;
Palestinians exiled in 1948 are banned from returning.
But the new legislation goes further. Israels independence declaration pledged to
ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants. In the
various drafts approved by the cabinet, with a 14-6 majority, the word equality was
omitted and democracy placed second to Jewishness. Arabic was demoted from its
status as an official language, alongside Hebrew.
The move is increasing political tensions. Two of the five coalition parties in Mr
Netanyahus cabinet have opposed the bill and threaten to bring down the government.
Israels president, Reuven Rivlin, has warned against making Palestinians feel as Jews
did in exile. A spokesman for Americas State Department says: All citizens should
enjoy equal rights.
Mr Netanyahu has yielded a bit (some think he always intended to), saying a new draft
would reassert that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, and leave the status of
Arabic unchanged. But he insists the law is needed to deal with two issues. One is the
refusal of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to recognise Israel as a Jewish
state in stalled peace talks. The other is the aspiration of some Israeli Palestinians for
autonomy, particularly in the Galilee, where they comprise the majority.
Critics accuse Mr Netanyahu of playing politics and trying to woo hard-right members
of his Likud party as he seeks re-election in primaries in January. And he is also
keeping one eye on the prospect of an early election, as his coalition fractures.
Human-rights groups warn that, without an express right to equality and the inclusion
of international law as a source of inspiration for legislation alongside Jewish law, they
will be powerless to challenge traditional interpretations that discriminate against nonJews, women and homosexuals in the Supreme Court. Liberal Jews fear that
embedding Jewish law in legislation would speed Israels transformation into another
Middle Eastern religious state. What Jewish law are they talking about, asks one liberal
activist: the law to love ones neighbour as oneself or to execute homosexuals? For

their part, some orthodox Jews worry that the bill reduces religion to nationalism. The
bills veneration of symbols like the flag and the anthem is idol-worship, wrote a
rabbi.
Most alarmed of all are the 1.6m Palestinians (and Druze) with Israeli citizenship. Will
I be subject to Jewish law? asks one Muslim student. In the occupied territories,
meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Palestinians umbrella body,
says the bill forgets the Palestinian historic narrative and abolishes Palestinian
existence.
A posse of current and former security officials fear that the bill could spread recent
violence from Gaza and East Jerusalem into Israel proper. Prised apart by their
politicians and the spate of attacks, Israels Jews and Arabs grow ever more frightened
of each other. I no longer know who to trust, says a Jewish housewife, who has
stopped taking Jerusalems tram to avoid Arabs. Leading rabbis have issued rulings
not to employ Arabs. Customers ask me whether Im a Jew or an Arab before they get
into my cab, says a taxi driver.
Shabtai Shavit, a former chief of the Mossad spy agency, wrote that the zeal for Jewish
nationalism could yet destroy Zionism: The nation of Israel is galloping blindly in a
time tunnel to the age of Bar Kochba and his war on the Roman Empire. The zealots
failure, he noted, led to 2,000 years of Jewish exile.

From the print edition: Middle East and Africa