As the future of the newest round of peace talks hangs in the balance, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has reiterated what seemed to some to be a logical demand. Recognize Israel as the Jewish state, he said to the Palestinians, as a condition for extending the moratorium on settlement expansion and thus keeping the Palestinians at the table. The notion that the legitimacy of Israel's Jewish character somehow hinges on others' recognition has become a convenient and often used political billy club for the Prime Minister. Just last week, he announced his support for what amounts to a loyalty oath, an amendment to the Citizenship Act, which would require new Israeli citizens to pledge loyalty to a "Jewish, democratic state." The proposal was passed by his cabinet on Sunday.
The Prime Minister's demands, simple and straightforward as they may seem, are the long fuse to a tinderbox of complex issues involving our identity as Israelis and as Jews, the nature of Israel's democracy, and the rights of minorities not just in Israel but in an eventual Palestinian state. Instituting a loyalty oath and demanding external recognition of a "Jewish state" is the next dangerous step in allowing the ruling coalition of ultra-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox to define who is Jewish, who is Israeli, and who is "loyal."
As a political scientist by training and as the president of the New Israel Fund, I am all too aware that a word or phrase can touch off a new set of controversies on issues where many seem willfully determined to misunderstand each other. Careful analysis and historical sensitivity, on the other hand, can defuse seemingly intransigent demands and irreconcilable narratives, and provide the insight we so badly need in order to go forward.
Let's start with that simple phrase, "the Jewish state." It is a phrase no longer used by most progressive Israelis, and for good reason: Using "Jewish" as modifier for a state means defining "Jewish" to at least the satisfaction of a majority of Jews. And as any Jew in Israel or abroad knows, that's a centuries'-old conundrum.
Define Jews as a people -- which we are -- and you are immediately entangled in the extra-national definition of people related by blood and heritage, across national boundaries. Is Israel the state of American or Australian Jews, for example? Clearly not, although they have a continued stake in its well-being. Define Jews as a religion -- which we are -- and you relinquish self-definition to theocracy and, in Israel's case, to the harshest and most exclusionary ultra-Orthodox strictures on who is a Jew. Define Jews as a nation and you have a tautology, whereby Israel is the national expression of a nation - explaining and defining nothing.
Past the intricacies of Jewish self-definition is the problematic concept of a state that uses its majority population as the defining element of its political system. Although Jewish self-determination is the raison d'etre for Israel, in a democracy the state itself must be the neutral arbiter of its people's interests. And in Israel, more than twenty percent of the population are not Jewish; they are Palestinian Muslims and Christians, Bedouins, Armenians, Druze and others who, often for centuries, have inhabited the land. Additionally, more than 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union are not considered legally Jewish by the state because of their exclusion by the rabbinical establishment. The fact that Israel has no straightforward route to citizenship for non-Jews and no viable immigration policy mirrors the contradictions and inequities of a "Jewish state," in which the machinery of government is geared to the well-being primarily of the majority population.
The internal contradictions of the identity of "the Jewish state" are, of course, rooted in its tangled history. The land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river is the homeland for two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian. The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 acknowledged that reality, and is the legal foundation for Israel's existence and for the demand for Palestinian statehood. Indeed, war, occupation and the wrongheaded policies of two sets of leaders for too many years have prevented Israel's natural neighbor and geopolitical partner, Palestine, from attaining its own national self-determination.
Peoples, in the universal language of human rights, deserve the right to self-determination, and in most cases insist on sovereign control over their own destiny. In Israel and in what will someday be the independent state of Palestine, the correct description for these democracies should be the sovereign expression of the right of self-determination of the Jewish -- or Palestinian -- people. This definition diminishes the danger inherent in an ethnocentric definition of the state, and mandates an Israel that is responsible for the equality of all its citizens, as promised by its Declaration of Independence.
A sovereign expression of the right of self-determination is also the description that is consistent with a multicultural and diverse democracy, which is the real nature of Israeli society. Within that framework is the possibility -- and I would argue the necessity -- of recognizing the collective rights of national minorities. An Israel with a substantial indigenous minority can and should acknowledge the freedom of its Palestinian citizens to determine their education, culture and other aspects of their communal life. In a parallel manner, a Palestinian state could and should reserve collective rights and protections for a Jewish minority, if some of the settlers now living on the West Bank choose to remain in what will become an independent Palestine. These reciprocal sets of rights and responsibilities can provide self-determination for two peoples within geographically segmented homelands, while mutually guaranteeing the rights of each other's minority cohort.
But there are other requirements as well. Most Israelis, and I am one, accept that a negotiated version of the 1967 borders should represent the boundary between Israel and Palestine. But that does not absolve us of the responsibility to confront an earlier outcome -- that of 1948. This does not mean questioning the legitimacy of Israel, as some on the right fear. It simply means acknowledging that our independence came at the price of what Palestinians call the nakba (catastrophe). Understanding two narratives, even when they appear to be mutually exclusive, means that the victors acknowledge some responsibility for the refugee issue that has been a major impediment to peace for many years.
Seventeen years ago, the PLO acknowledged Israel's right to exist in peace and security, without even exacting Israel's recognition of its natural concomitant, a Palestinian state. Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu asks Palestinians, as well as all those who would become Israeli, to recognize a Jewish state as if that would somehow confer legitimacy or provide an answer to the conflict, ignoring the complexities that make such recognition both useless and impossible. Even if the Palestinian Authority were willing to make this absurd concession, it has no right to deny the rights of Israel's Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens, and it has no responsibility to define what Israel is.
That responsibility belongs to us, to Israelis. We must bring the right of self-determination of Jews to a balancing point with Israel's absolute obligation to remain an open, egalitarian and just democracy. Asking others to define us by our Jewishness will not make us more Jewish or more secure. It will not give us more legitimacy. Only we can decide who we are as a people. Only we can determine the nature of our multicultural and diverse society. Only we can mold our state, and our democracy.
Naomi Chazan is the former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, and currently the Dean of the School of Government and Society at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo and the President of the New Israel Fund.
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Is Netanyahu pro-ultra nationalists? I base that on this: "...Instituting a loyalty oath and demanding external recognition of a "Jewish state" is the next dangerous step in allowing the ruling coalition of ultra-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox to define who is Jewish, who is Israeli, and who is 'loyal.' " I haven't got that distinction clearly.
If Bibi is on the side of the radicals (ultra-nationalists and suchlike), then there is indeed a case for the electorate (citizenry) reminding him that he doesn't always speak for them. It is also good for Israeli citizens to guard against the continued international isolation such negative acts can cause to their already battered image.
However, the right to define themselves as they feel they ought to remains squarely with Israelis.
Palestine was a name given to the land by the Romans, after they have destroyed the Jewish state, in order to humiliate the Jews.
There were no Roman coins of "Captiva Palestina" only "Captive Judea".
And Israel is indeed denying any "right to return" of the Arab refugees.
And about loyalty oath - Does the US have loyalty oath for immigrants? I think they also have to take tests on American history (they must know the list of presidents - oh this is very important...)
The "loyalty" oath of which you speak goes like..."I pledge allegiance to the ....." developed by a socialist, Bellamy, but never referred to God until after WWII. It isn't the Israeli kind of oath; there is no punishment for getting it wrong.
What Europe should learn from the colonial period and conflicts in Europe?
Hopefully the Americans will not do the same mistakes.
*PEOPLE DESIRE TO BE GOVERNED BY THEIR OWN.
*ARTIFICAL OR IMPOSED BOARDERS ARE NOT PERMANET SOLLUTIONS.
*THEY ARE SEEDS OF ONGOING CONFLICTS.
A:unsolved conflicts
1:Quibec Frances?
2:Belgian Valones and Flames separation?
3:Scottish independence from UK ?
4:Balkans wars?
5:Caucuses?
6:Tibetan?
7:Burma minorities war?
8:African wars as result of European policy of slip tribes in artificial states?
9:Kurds independence in Turkey& Iraq?
10: Kashmir ?
11: Chasing of Christians and others in Muslim countries?
12;Civil wars Lebanon artificially created by France?
B: Solutions example
1:Czechoslovakia split into Czech and Slovakia.
2 Swiss is famous coexistence between German, France.A canton has been spleet into: Jura-France and Bern-German.
3: Turkey and Greece don’t fight for the last 90 years following the population exchange between these two countries. Approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Turkey and about half a million Muslims from Greece were uprooted from their homelands.
4:Turkey force partition of Cyprus into a Christian and Muslim control areas is a problem or the solution?
.
C: LEASSONS FOR SOLVING THE ISREAL – ARBS CONFLICT!
1: Minimize of conflict continuation while defining boarders.
2: Muslims governed by Arabs.
Jews and others governed by Israel.
3:Israel will hand over to Palestinian government land inhabited by Arabs from Israel, the Jews from settlements will be governed by Israel.
Arabs and Jew will remain in their current homes nobody will move physically.
One of several good and important points you make concerns Israel coming to terms with the Nakba consequence of its creation. I have always argued that such a recognition will go a very long way to heal the deep wounds of dispossession much like Germany's recognition of of the wrongs inflicted by the Nazis helped heal the relationship between the two countries.
quote:
"...But that does not absolve us of the responsibility to confront an earlier outcome -- that of 1948. This does not mean questioning the legitimacy of Israel, as some on the right fear. It simply means acknowledging that our independence came at the price of what Palestinians call the nakba (catastrophe). Understanding two narratives, even when they appear to be mutually exclusive, means that the victors acknowledge some responsibility for the refugee issue that has been a major impediment to peace for many years."
This was a very well written, well thought out, and enjoyable article. The paragraph above was particularly important IMO. Primarily because, since clearly requiring the PLO to say that they support Israel being a Jewish state is meaningless (except perhaps in symbolism - in a positive way to some and a very negative way to others) then perhaps Netanyahu should be called to answer exactly why this is so important and answer the many legitimate questions that this requirement of this has sparked. Obama as well since he has chosen to support this request and has yet to fully explain why.
Driven from their homes. Starting with the massacre of civilians in the open village of Deir Yassin by Jews- followed by many other massacres and many other killings.
q> . Palestinians had little or no desire for their own state, and indeed, the 1948 war initiated by the five Arab powers
Five Arab countries who watched the UN give away more than half of Palestine to a minority population.
It is no longer 1948. It is 2010, and the boundaries were defined by 1967. Israel started the Six Day War and stole the land of Palestine and has occupied that land for 43 years. Spare us the anti-Semitic rhetoric. If Israel wants to have peace, it will abide by the numerous UN resolutions it agree to abide by when it became a member and relinquish this land they grabbed in 1967.
The President of the Republic takes the Oath in the following terms:
"In the Name of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate. Faithful to the great sacrifices and to the memory of our martyrs as well as to the ideals of the eternal November Revolution. I do solemnly swear by Allah the Almighty that I will respect and glorify the Islamic religion..."
Let us hope that Israel never adopts this kind of theocratic stance.
As long as the Israeli concept of "Jewish" is inclusive of ethnicity and culture, not just religion, it's OK by me.
If you believe (or try to make me believe, I guess....) that ANY president in ANY democratic elected country "truely" goes by his/her oath... yeah, you heard about the bridge I'm trying to sell on the other thread, didn't you? ;)
Too late.
Since it is a theocracy anyway, it should not be unexpected.
It will be fun if the right requires all citizens to take the pledge- that is what some have proposed.
You seems to utterly uniformed on criteria necessary for definition of theocracy.
You M.O. is to throw any negaticve slogans against the people of israel without even consideration for rationality of such statements. In shor--windbaggism.
Here's an example of a theocratic Oath of Office
President of Algeirs Oath of Office on Inauguration:
"In the Name of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate... I do solemnly swear by Allah the Almighty that I will respect and glorify the Islamic religion... etc"
Get it?!