T. Belman: I published in 2023 this article
“Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State”. What does it mean?”
Check it out.
by Dr. Norman Bercichevsky
Herzl and most of the other founding fathers of Zionism did not subscribe to the idea of a ‘Jewish state” for all Jews solely representing a distinct Jewish nationality, but an eventual state of, by, and for those Jews who, for whatever reasons did not or could not assimilate or whom the nations among whom they lived would not allow it. He expressed his confidence that those heroic Jews who willed it so, would get and deserve their state, while those who rejected it would have an alternative—assimilation or a continued existence as ‘Jewry,’ a community living largely according to centuries old traditions in a ghetto like existence of choice.
To continue to speak of Israel as the homeland of the “Jewish nation” and conflate it with Jews everywhere does not accord with reality. It does not correspond to the facts. The highest representatives of their nations in the role of Argentina’s former Foreign Minister, Hector Timmerman (a “Jew”) and the former “Jewish” American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, both carried out policies detrimental to the State of Israel in order to advance the policies of the states in which they are citizens and whose interests they are sworn to advance. At the same time, as in the past, Israel will remain the primary address for those Jews for whom their heritage however interpreted would be protected and transmitted from generation to generation embracing three thousand years of history.
In 2018, Israel passed a controversial new “nation-state law” (by a small majority of 62-55, 2 abstentions) in the Knesset proclaiming that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people,” mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development” is nothing more than the original goal of the Balfour Declaration to provide a Jewish National Home. It was not necessary to spell these goals out during the previous 70 years of Israel’s existence as a nation but It has given a weapon to anti-Semites. They seek condemnations of Israel as if it were ignoring its commitment to treat all citizens equally, one that Israel has ensured much better than many nations in Europe following the promises made at the end of World War I to protect their minorities. Prior to this law, Israel’s attempts at integration of its religious and ethnic minorities should have deserved honest recognition and praise, as has been documented and provided by many non-Arab and non-Muslim Israelis who occupy all laders including positions of prestige, influence, ministerial posts and have had the courage to speak the truth (see five biographical sketches below).
For some American Jews, Israel has become an embarrassment, one that threatens their self-image as profoundly liberal and understanding of others’ grievances. For them, the Israelis, as fellow Jews, living amidst the cauldron of a strident, militant, exclusivist Islam and the legacy of repeated Arab nation-state failures, should alone shoulder the burden and responsibility of giving up much of their sovereignty for the delusion and illusion of rescuing the “Palestinians” and thus, helping to ensure what they believe will be a “peaceful world order” although their parents and grandparents overwhelmingly celebrated and many rejoiced at the rebirth of Israel in 1948, regarding it mystically as partial compensation for the Holocaust.
A future based on the criteria of language and territory alone and a state with equal rights and obligations for all citizens may be unachievable but it remains the vision Herzl and other Zionists held as the most desirable goal for all its citizens in harmony with the accepted views of democratic states. It would still ensure its Jewish heritage and traditions just as the largely Catholic identity of Poland or Italy without any religious tests based on halacha (Jewish religious law).
In 1998, the Israeli Supreme Court reached a unanimous decision (endorsed by the two modern Orthodox judges who were members at the time) that the wholesale exemptions from conscription granted to ultra-Orthodox males “Creates a deep rift in Israeli society and a growing sense of inequality. The current situation has created an entire population that is not integrated into the labor market and is increasingly dependent on state stipends.” Efraim Halevy, 78, served as head of Israeli Mossad under three prime ministers and negotiated the peace treaty with late King Hussein of Jordan in 1994. Yet, even such a pillar of the Israeli defense establishment and spokesman for the official Zionist ideology of the State proclaiming it as the “Homeland of the Jewish People”, publicly noted with dismay how Jewish Orthodoxy has moved to the extremes in Israel. He speculated that with the continued growth of non-Zionist Orthodox communities, Zionists could conceivably become a minority in Israel even without the Arabs. Speaking at a military academy meeting commemorating fallen soldiers and said
We have today a situation in Israel in which hundreds of thousands of Israelis do not have a personal status in the country. They are not recognized technically as Jews… When they want to marry, they have no way to marry and have to go outside the country. Their Jewish identity is not recognized by the state. These are very serious problems, because in the end this could be a major split inside Israeli society.
Those who doubted the ability of “the Jews,” to defend their homeland, still regarded in 1948 by most of the world as a religious community, also doubted the survivability of Israel as a nation to defeat more powerful and numerous enemies on the field of battle over the course of four more wars, absorb massive immigration increasing its population many fold, creating a powerful productive economy and achieving outstanding successes in the fields of science, medicine, technology, and agriculture all the while integrating a diverse population through the medium of the Modern Hebrew language, a modern education, economy and culture.
In 1947, when Stalin was convinced that the Zionists would evict the British from Palestine, the Party Line turned about face. Following Soviet recognition and aid to Israel in 1948-49, both the Daily Worker and the Yiddish language communist daily in the U.S. Freiheit (Freedom) outdid one another to explain the new party line in that…. ”Palestine had become an important settlement of 600,000 souls, having developed a common national economy, a growing national culture and the first elements of Palestinian Jewish statehood and self-government.”
A 1947 CP-USA resolution entitled “Work Among the Jewish Masses” berated the Party’s previous stand and proclaimed that “Jewish Marxists have not always displayed a positive attitude to the rights and interests of the Jewish People, to the special needs and problems of our own American Jewish national group and to the interests and rights of the Jewish Community in Palestine.”
Israel’s “legitimacy” can not therefore be weighed in the balance with regard to how much “injustice” was done to the Palestinian Arabs. The lack of such an independent political state is entirely of their own doing as is the maintenance now of three separate entities—Gaza, the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Like other struggles between the Germans and their neighbors—Poles, Czechs, French, and Danes, the final borders determined for all time the political framework of coexistence and not by appeals to the past and debates about who suffered a greater injustice.
The prospect for the future is that the growing facility of a flourishing and prosperous society based on fundamental equality of rights AND obligations for all citizens to use Hebrew by both the Arab and Orthodox sectors contributes to a greater sense of a shared identity of common citizenship. Israel is younger than such veteran colonial states as Argentina, the United States, Australia, or Uruguay where a sense of common nationhood was established through generations of effort unifying immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds. On the other hand, Israel is a much more mature modern state than countries such as the Central African Republic, Angola, Sudan, Madagascar, Chad, Belize and East Timor and probably several dozen others that lack any clear historical continuity or sense of nationhood. They were created amidst conflicts between native indigenous peoples and migrants, rival tribes, wars, great power colonial interests and imposed languages.
A recent best-seller, “The Last Israelis” by Noah Beck, sets a scenario aboard an Israeli nuclear submarine with a “mixed” crew of 35 sailors, three of whom are a Christian Arab, a Druze and a Vietnamese-Israeli “gay,” all responding loyally to the call of a common unabashed patriotic sentiment to defend their homeland and give very plausible reasons for doing so. They portray a growing sense of Israeli civil society that is more powerful than differences of origin, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation just as Americans of diverse ethnic, racial and religious origins do. This work of fiction has already described the reality of the children of hundreds of “temporary” foreign workers who have lived in Israel for many years, are not Jewish but speak Hebrew fluently, strongly emotionally identify with Israel and seek to serve in the IDF but who are threatened with deportation because they have no status as permanent residents.
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