The Holographic Nation-State Law: Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2018— There is no connection between the substance of Israel’s newly passed Nation State of the Jewish People law, and the debate its passage unleashed.
The Nation-State Law: Hollow Spins on the Left: Erez Tadmor, Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2018— Let’s begin with the law “Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People”, itself.
From the Hebrew Press: On the Nationality Law: Dr. Mordechai Nisan, Arutz Sheva, Aug. 2, 2018 — The Knesset deserves much credit for performing an act of kindness towards the Jewish People this past week.
Hold the Heated Rhetoric, Please: David Weinberg, Israel Hayom, Aug. 3, 2018 — Take a deep breath, everybody.
On Topic Links
Netanyahu, Druze Leaders Reach Deal to End Rift Over Nation-State Law: Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2018
Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic?: Alex Grobman, Jewish Press, Aug. 2, 2018
Glenn Greenwald Keeps the Ugly ‘Dual Loyalty’ Accusation Alive: Adam Levick, Algemeiner, Aug. 2, 2018
Only Fake Jews Are Afraid of a Jewish State: Daniel Greenfield, Breaking Israel News, July 31, 2018
THE HOLOGRAPHIC NATION-STATE LAW
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2018
There is no connection between the substance of Israel’s newly passed Nation State of the Jewish People law, and the debate its passage unleashed. On the one hand, supporters of the law led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist that the law is a vital step in entrenching and protecting Israel’s Jewish identity. After the law passed last Thursday night, Netanyahu declared, “This is a pivotal moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the State of Israel. 122 years after [Theodore] Herzl published his vision [of a Jewish state] we affixed in law the founding principle of our existence.”
On the other hand, Arab members of Knesset theatrically condemned the law and claimed that with its passage, Israel had officially embraced “apartheid.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel is the heir of Nazi Germany. PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies said the UN should reinstitute its definition of defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as a form of racism. Israeli leftists, including members of Knesset, the supposedly center-left Zionist Union Party, backed by Haaretz, parroted the Arab-Turkish talking points with Hebrew accents. The American-Jewish leadership, like the New York Times, argued that the passage of the law is proof that Israel is on the verge of rejecting democracy.
Given the unreconcilable claims of the Right on the one hand and the Arabs, the Left and American-Jewish leadership on the other, it is imperative to read the text of the law itself. In reading you discover something remarkable. This a nothingburger without a bun, or a patty, a plate or a pickle. It does nothing new and it says nothing new.
Israel was the Jewish state for 70 years before the law was passed and it remains the Jewish state a week after it passed. The clause in the law which is supposed to render Israel an “apartheid” state deals with Jewish settlement of the land of Israel. Its language is weak and declaratory. It refers to Jewish settlement as “a national value.” In contrast, the League of Nations 1920 Mandate for Palestine explicitly enjoined the British mandatory government to “encourage… close settlement by Jews on the land.” Because it does nothing, the Nation-State Law is like a hologram. It means whatever you want it to mean. Which means that the maelstrom surrounding it tells us more about the sides to the argument than it tells us about the law.
What does the vacuous law tell us about the nationalist camp that has championed it since its first draft was written 14 years ago? It’s possible that members of the nationalist camp that promoted the law didn’t understand what they were doing. They thought that by legislating the obvious, they were, in the words of George Orwell, performing “the first duty of intelligent men.” They thought that by legislating that “The land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, where the State of Israel was established,” would protect Israel’s status as the Jewish state from those who deny its right to exist.
The problem with the Right’s narrative – that Israel’s Jewish identity is under attack and that steps must be taken to protect it – is not that it is wrong. Israel’s Jewish identity is under assault from post-Zionists and anti-Zionists in Israel and abroad. The problem is that far from protecting Israel’s Jewish character, the Nation-State Law serves as a red flag for Israel’s detractors, inviting them to attack it. This brings us to the law’s three groups of opponents: the Arabs and their would-be savior Erdogan; the Israeli Left; and the American Jewish leadership.
The Arab members of Knesset, like Abbas and his deputies are using the law as a means to sell their rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Erdogan uses his hostility and rejection of Israel’s right to exist to advance his goal of leading the Sunni Arab world. While there is nothing new about their positions, the law has given the Arabs an excuse to ratchet up their assaults. The distressing fact that Arab lawmakers have convinced many of Israel’s Druze citizens and its Arab citizens who seek to integrate into Israeli society that the law harms their civil rights redounds directly to the Arab Israeli lawmakers’ cynical, but predictable exploitation of the law to bash the state.
The amazing thing about the rhetoric of leftist Israeli lawmakers is its radicalism. Without the Israeli accents, it would be hard to distinguish statements by Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg and editorials in Haaretz from denunciations of the law by Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh. The close resemblance of the Left’s talking points with the Arab narrative reflect a profound, and fast-paced process of radicalization that the Israeli Left has undergone over just the past few years. Case in point is the self-proclaimed “Zionist Union” Party’s response to the law.
In 2014, Zionist Union MK Shelly Yacimovich wrote a letter regarding the then circulating draft of the law to the bill’s author, then-Kadima MK Avi Dichter. The draft bill circulating then was more substantive than the law passed last week. Yacimovich told Dichter that while she couldn’t see anything objectionable about the law, she couldn’t understand why its passage was necessary given that it was merely an aggregation of laws that were already passed.
In her speech in the Knesset plenary ahead of the law’s passage last week, Yacimovich did a full about face. She referred to the law that simply aggregates previously passed statutes, “racist” and “xenophobic.” Likewise, Zionist Union leader Tzipi Livni condemned the law she once supported in the most extreme language. It is hard to align Yacimovich and Livni’s positions with even the lowest common denominator definition of Zionism. How can it be racist to define Jewish settlement of the historic Jewish homeland as “a national value”? Of course it is a national value. If it weren’t Israel would never have been established in the first place.
This brings us to the American-Jewish leadership. The Jewish Federations of North America lobbied strongly against the bill. In an email to members, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the JNFA Richard Sandler said the Jewish Federations, “were disappointed with the law that ultimately passed.” The Federation’s Israel office sent out a detailed explanation of the law to members. While the language was careful, it strongly intimated that the law is racist for making Israel’s Jewish character explicit. The Philadelphia Federation’s letter to its members alleged that the law’s provisions “are a dangerous check on Israel’s democratic principles.”
Like the self-proclaimed Zionist Union’s condemnation of the law as racist, the American-Jewish response marks a stark departure from past responses of the Jewish Federations and other Jewish groups to Israeli laws and policies. For Israel’s first 60 years, the Federations, like the other major Jewish groups weren’t quick to air their disagreements with Israel’s elected officials. Their gut response was to support Israel and let others attack it. Now the longstanding instinct has been turned on its head. Underlying the Federation’s reactions to the law is a profound discomfort with the fact that Israel is the Jewish state and intends to remain the Jewish state. This pronounced discomfort speaks to a profound shift in Federation values from Zionism to post-Zionism.
Moreover, as Sandler noted, the Federations were intensively engaged in the legislative process. As a consequence, their representatives and leaders knew the law changed nothing in the status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. That is, they knew that the law was an anodyne statement of principles that did nothing more than enshrine the situation that has existed in Israel since its founding. And yet, they hate it. From the nationalist camp’s perspective, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Nation-State Law and the controversy it sparked and intensified demonstrates that its members and leaders have forgotten the lessons of the past…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE NATION-STATE LAW: HOLLOW SPINS ON THE LEFT
Erez Tadmor
Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2018
Let’s begin with the law “Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People”, itself. I have read the interesting arguments of the critics of the law and have not found a single practical argument that holds water. Nothing. Zilch.
The driving force behind the new left-wing hysteria is the protest of the Druze officers. The “Nation-State” law had been under discussion for four years. The drafting addressed countless objections over dozens of hours of debate and hundreds of columns in the press. A week after the draft was approved as law in its third reading in the Knesset, someone came up with the idea to get 100 Druze officers to say they are now second-class citizens. They then ran this spin over hundreds of hours of broadcast, culminating in a burst of kitsch sentimentality by Riyadh Ali of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC).
Sometimes though, even the slickest of campaigns runs into a snag. At precisely the same time in a competing channel, Shivel Carmi Mansur took the wind out of the sails of the campaign, stating that the Druze have no problem with the law and that there is nothing discriminatory about it. Facts are apparently irrelevant. When you want to, you can completely eliminate facts that were on a prime-time, ratings-leading Friday newscast, and thrust upon the agenda an emotional and heartbreaking monologue of Riyadh Ali from the ratings bottom-feeding IPBC Friday News broadcast.
So the left-wing’s current Ace in the hole is that the “Nation-State” law does not include a reference to the Druze, and thus turns the Druze into second-class citizens. This argument raises several questions: Why should the Druze be included in the particular law and not the Circassians? What about the Baha’i? Or the Bedouin? Many of whom serve the country. Or how about the Black Israelites? Not to mention the nearly two million Israeli Arabs that the left wing spin doctors tossed under the bus, just to trick some center-right people who feel bad about their Druze brothers-in-arms.
The answer is very simple: the “Nation-State” law does not deal with the Druze, the Bedouin, Circassians, Israeli Arabs, Baha’is or any minorities at all. What it does is pour content into the concept of the nation-state of the Jewish People and anchors it in a Basic Law that, in the Matrix created by former Chief Justice Barak, will eventually acquire the status of a constitution. The main purpose of the law is to determine that Israel’s national identity carries no less constitutional weight than the important weight given to individual rights.
The claim that this is a nationalistic law, racist or discriminatory, because it does not include the word ‘equality’, is absurd at best and a post-Zionist fraud in the more reasonable case. The reason for this is simple: the “Nation-State” law is not the only law in the book, nor is it the only Basic law in what is supposed to be the basis of the future constitution.
Alongside the “Nation-State” law is the existing Basic law: “Human Dignity and Freedom”. It doesn’t mention ‘equality’ either, and not by mistake. The term was dropped from that law after dozens of hours of discussions on the subject, precisely out of a concern that eventually came about: that if ‘equality’ had been included in the law, the courts would interpret it in opposition to the legislature’s intention and use it to sabotage the Jewish character of the state. The omission of the term ‘equality’ from the “Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty” did not help. The Supreme Court interpreted the law as if it meant ‘equality’, using this contrived value in an act of Judicial activism to pass obstructive rulings, such as in the Ka’adan v. Israel Lands Administration ruling, that undermined Jewish settlement.
Equal rights advocates are brewing up a public storm and trying to stick a wedge between the Druze public and the state, because the law that deals with the definition of national identity, makes no reference to equality. They never said a word over the 26 years in which there was no balance in Israel’s constitutional structure; when the rights of the individual were granted constitutional supremacy, and the Jewish identity of the state was trampled on by the judicial system over and over again.
The reason they are howling is clear: the “Nation-State” law does not create a constitutional distortion but instead corrects the existing constitutional distortion. It attempts to create a balance in a warped constitutional system, one in which individual rights have become an axe in the hands of the post-Zionist elite to chip away at the national identity of the state.
In the old situation, one Basic Law reigned supreme – the “Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom”. It allowed the judicial system to advance decisions without attaching even minimal consideration to ensuring the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. Now, the new situation created with the establishment of the “Nation-State” basic law, requires that the courts and state authorities act to ensure the preservation of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. If the State of Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”, then the old situation was a distorted and unbalanced situation, while the new situation is a balanced one. Everything else is spin, demagoguery and sentimental drivel designed for useful idiots…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
FROM THE HEBREW PRESS: ON THE NATIONALITY LAW
Dr. Mordechai Nisan
Arutz Sheva, Aug. 2, 2018
The Knesset deserves much credit for performing an act of kindness towards the Jewish People this past week. It passed a basic law establishing something that goes without saying, but it turns out that what goes without saying needed to be enunciated, stressed and cemented into law.
At a time when both official and unofficial elements, by means of obvious and secret machinations, have set the undermining of the definition of Israel as an unqualifiedly Jewish state as their objective, an ideological and national floodgate has been created in the name of a principle that is unequalled in its significance for Israel’s existence. This country, it avers, will not become just a “country of its citizens” whose main ideology is “man’s honor and freedom” nor will it become a bi-national state.
We will not have a state whose amorphously defined democratic regime feels it can freely threaten the Jewish-Zionist ethos of Israel. Facing the unceasing Arab struggle to uproot the country, along with the flood of foreign workers who have infiltrated from Africa, it is incumbent upon us to build an impenetrable wall, at least on declarative and ideological levels.
Every Israeli involved in what happens in the Jewish state can differentiate between those who identify with and contribute to its security, defending it internally and overseas, from those who try to harm it. The vote for the law is not an act against tried and true allies whose respect and support strengthen the state in its struggle to survive and grow. After all, in a lighter vein, when I chose to marry my wife, it did not mean that I hate all other women.
Our leaders do not have to apologize for passing a law whose aim is to establish the state solely on the basis of Jewish nationalism in the Land of Israel. The sky did not fall down, the tidings of the Jewish state’s miraculous rebirth can be broadcast with pride, the ingathering of the exiles will radiate the uniqueness of the Jewish people as they come home. This law is a cause for celebration, not for vilification and divisiveness as the left and center have tried to encourage since its passing on July 29,
What bore witness to the greatness of the hour, albeit by means of irony and intentional malice, was the sight of Arab MKs tearing the law to bits in front of the cameras. If anything, this showed beyond doubt how necessary and important the law is. The Arab MKs displayed their real opinion of Israel and their unending subversion, support for Hamas and the Mavi Marmara, their serving as microphones for terrorists and IDF haters, are justification enough for a clear and precise Nationality Law…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
HOLD THE HEATED RHETORIC, PLEASE
David Weinberg
Israel Hayom, Aug. 3, 2018
Take a deep breath, everybody. Israel is not on the edge of a precipice. Israeli democracy is not in a tailspin. The country is not going to soar or crash no matter what the Knesset decides on laws relating to the nation-state, surrogacy, haredi draft, illegal immigrants, conversion, settlement, or a pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Western Wall. Israelis are not making choices between good and evil. There are legitimate positions on all sides of these issues.
It must be said: Israel is more stable and moral, and much saner and more judicious in handling its external challenges and internal disputes than our politicians give it credit for, and certainly more so than what is believed by Israel’s overheated critics abroad, both Jewish and gentile. It is important to say this because desperate politicians are revving up hysterical campaigns that portray Israel as a country in danger of going down the drain; a country threatened by dark forces; a country where “religious extremists” and “ugly nationalists” seek to “turn back the clock” and to “impose” and “dictate” their “intolerant” views on a beleaguered society.
Haaretz newspaper, for example, contemptibly has taken to calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “apartheid prime minister,” and wildly alleges that he has “given up on democracy.” The new opposition leader Tzipi Livni intemperately asserts that the government is driven by “radical nationalism,” and controlled by “extremist elements.” Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer of B’Tselem and the Israel Democracy Institute claims Israel is becoming a “darkness unto the nations.” U.S. Reform rabbi and former president of the Union for Reform Judaism Eric Yoffie insultingly says Netanyahu “serially chooses the path of stupidity, political convenience and moral obtuseness,” alongside the “weak, cowardly, unprincipled and self-serving politicians” of the current coalition.
From the other side the political spectrum, the invective is not much prettier. Base right-wing politicians have taken to labeling just about everybody in the opposition as “anti-Zionist” and “defeatists” who “steer Israel towards diplomatic suicide” and “want to bring back Marxism.” Radical ultra-Orthodox politicians smear anybody associated with liberal religious denominations in Israel or abroad as “assimilationist,” “neo-Christian,” and “worse than Hitler.”
As Israel moves into election season (probably this winter), I fear the overwrought rhetoric is only going to worsen. The choice before the electorate, we will be (wrongly) told, is between Zionism and extremism, between liberal democracy and illiberal theocracy. We’re going to be bombarded with bombast about this being a turning point in the battle for Israel’s “soul” and a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. All of this is nonsense, tempestuous and dangerous drivel. Not only should we ignore such defamatory talk, we must reject it from every flank of the political spectrum.
Instead, let us remind ourselves and outside observers that Israeli democracy has strong institutions and foundations, that there are reasonable points of view on all sides of the current debates, and that the public here is wiser and more substantive than the screechers give it credit for. Let us remember that the contours of Israeli diplomatic, military, economic and social policy are relatively constricted by realities – including regional threats, the fecklessness of Israel’s Palestinian neighbors, and the inevitabilities of coalition politics. The actual differences in policy between another Netanyahu-led coalition government and, say, an Avi Gabbay-led coalition government, are likely to be more cosmetic than real…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
On Topic Links
Netanyahu, Druze Leaders Reach Deal to End Rift Over Nation-State Law: Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2018—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Druze leaders have reached an “historic” agreement over the rift caused by the recently-passed Basic Law: Nation-State of the Jewish People, one that involves a new plan to pass a law that anchors the status of the Druze and Circassian communities in Israel.
Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic?: Alex Grobman, Jewish Press, Aug. 2, 2018—There seems to be no end to the myths surrounding the Jewish state. Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, an occupier of Palestinian Arab lands, and an international war criminal. On December 28, 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry added another canard to this litany when he warned that if Israel rejects a two-state solution, “it can be Jewish or it can be democratic-it cannot be both.”
Glenn Greenwald Keeps the Ugly ‘Dual Loyalty’ Accusation Alive: Adam Levick, Algemeiner, Aug. 2, 2018—Even before the birth of the modern State of Israel, Jews have stood accused of not being sufficiently loyal to the nations in which they reside. Its contemporary manifestation, however, almost always centers around the notion of dual loyalty: a charge that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation.
Only Fake Jews Are Afraid of a Jewish State: Daniel Greenfield, Breaking Israel News, July 31, 2018—The Palestinian Authority’s basic law and draft constitution states that “Palestine” is an “Arab” entity, that “Islam is the official religion”, that “Islamic Sharia” is the basis for its law and Arabic is its official language. Unlike Israel’s nation-state bill which defines the Jewish State as Jewish, there’s been no criticism of this PLO document. And the media has not labeled it as divisive or controversial.
