What Does It Mean To Have A Jewish State
March 10, 2016 § 2 Comments
Pew on Tuesday released its study of religion in Israeli society and there are enough interesting findings and figures in it for me to mine a year’s worth of posts. The headlines have focused on one finding in particular though, which seems like a good place to start. Pew found that 48% of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel” while 46% disagreed. Looking at the poll’s crosstabs, this difference of opinion is reflected among most demographic groups with a few exceptions, and it has led people to understandably raise the question of what this means for Israel’s non-Jews and whether Israel has already chosen to prioritize Jewishness over democracy. It is a question that must be dealt with, and it goes to a larger question of what it means to have a Jewish state.
There is context to Pew’s findings on Israeli Jews’ attitudes toward Arabs. The interviews were conducted between October 2014 and May 2015, so while the current lone-wolf terrorism phenomenon is not responsible for the numbers on Arab expulsion or transfer, the polling did begin a couple of months after the most recent war in Gaza and concurrent with the start of vehicular attacks in Jerusalem and the particularly horrific massacre at a synagogue in Har Nof. The polling question itself is also more ambiguous in the original Hebrew used by Pew in the actual questioning than in the English translation and uses wording that is often interpreted by Israelis to refer to compensating Arabs to leave rather than expelling them (מישראל ערבים להעביר או לגרש צריך). The wording also leaves unclear whether this means all Arabs, or only Arabs that commit or support terrorist attacks. In addition, this comes against a backdrop of some Israeli Arab politicians openly cheering on Israel’s avowed enemies, which was demonstrated starkly this week when MKs from Hadash and Balad condemned the Gulf Cooperation Council’s decision to label Hizballah as a terror group on the laughable theory that Hizballah only seeks to defend Lebanon’s territorial integrity (that Israel is not occupying any part of Lebanon according to the United Nations doesn’t appear to matter).
Nevertheless, none of this really matters. It explains why Israeli Jews responded ithe way they did, but it does not and cannot justify it. The number of Israeli Jews that expressed support for expelling Arabs needs to prompt serious introspection. It is the ugly equivalent of Trumpism, no less worthy of condemnation and concern than the nativist throngs who cheer Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. or tell non-white protesters at his rallies to go back to where they came from. The ongoing terrorism against Israeli civilians and the 67% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who support knife attacks on Israelis are only going to harden Israeli Jews’ attitudes toward Arabs and make this situation even worse, but it is an impulse that must be resisted. Israel is a Jewish state rather than a state for only Jews, and Israel’s founders never envisioned it otherwise. Part of having a Jewish state is running that state in accordance with Jewish values, which involve treating the Arab minority in Israel with respect and absolute equality. Democracy demands no less.
Part of having a Jewish state is also focusing on the state’s raison d’être, which brings me to whether democracy also demands that Jews receive no preferential treatment in Israel at all. Shibley Telhami in the Washington Post noted that 79% of Israeli Jews agreed that Jews in Israel deserve preferential treatment, and added, “so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.” This may seem to make sense at first glance, but the analysis quickly breaks down. As Brent Sasley wrote for Matzav last week, Israel is an ethnic democracy and debating what it means to be Israeli is not a rejection of democracy but a quest to figure out the social and political boundaries of the state. Unless one believes the canard that Zionism is racism, the fact that Israel gives equal rights to all citizens but gives advantages to Jews when it comes to immigration – or that Israeli Jews would like to receive official preferential treatment in other areas – does not make Israel non-democratic, nor does it make Israel racist. It is a manifestation of why Israel exists, which is to right the wrong of millennia of persecution, discrimination, expulsions, and attempts at extermination around the world.
To understand why Israeli Jews believe they should receive preferential treatment, one only needs to look at the Pew numbers on anti-Semitism. 99% of Israeli Jews view anti-Semitism around the world as common, 64% view it as very common, and 76% say it is increasing. The first instance of religious persecution in recorded history was committed by the Seleucids against Jews, giving rise to the Hasmonean revolt and the Hanukkah story. Jews during the Middle Ages were expelled at various times from England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. History’s most devastating and unprecedented genocide was carried out against Jews. Israel was and is deemed necessary to guard against the historically inevitable, and to suggest that Jews should not be able to ensure that Israel remains majority Jewish or that Jews don’t deserve a little affirmative action is to be remarkably blind to Jews’ travails. Few fair-minded people deride the United States’ claim to providing full equal rights for all its citizens because of admissions and hiring preferences for minorities who were subject to past injustice or mistreatment. That Jews have their own state rather than being a minority elsewhere does not change the basic rationale that makes it acceptable to give Jews in Israel a boost the way that affirmative action is acceptable here. It is not racist to have a Jewish state, and it is not racist to worry about what happens if that state one day is no longer majority Jewish.
Nobody should downplay the survey results showing unacceptable levels of intolerance toward Arabs in Israel. Intolerance of minorities is indeed fundamentally antidemocratic, and those attitudes can never be allowed to manifest themselves in Israeli policy. But nobody should turn other numbers in the study into an indictment of Israel as an inherently racist or antidemocratic project. To do so is not only to ignore acceptable practice right here at home, but to ignore the long and terrible history of why Israel is necessary in the first place.
Is It Wrong To Want A Jewish Mayor Of Jerusalem?
February 25, 2016 § 5 Comments
When Labor leader Buji Herzog rolled out his unilateral disengagement plan a couple of weeks ago – a plan that I think can be a positive step if it incorporates a number of critical components – he made a comment during a Knesset debate that rankled people and drew condemnations for appealing to racist logic. The comment was that if separation from the Palestinians does not happen soon, Jerusalem risks having an Arab mayor, with the obvious implication that this would be a bad thing that should be prevented. So at the risk of plunging into treacherous waters on this topic, is it wrong to want the mayor of Israel’s capital to be Jewish?
A simple answer might be yes. While discrimination and intolerance exist in Israeli politics and society – as they do in the politics and society of every country on Earth – Israel’s testament to being a democracy is that it has full political rights for all of its citizens. As there are Arab members of Knesset, Arab judges on the High Court of Justice, and Arab officers in the military, there is no reason why there cannot or should not be an Arab mayor of Jerusalem. To warn against such an eventuality is to transform Israel from being a Jewish state into a state only for Jews. It is easy to see why people took offense at what Herzog said.
But in this instance, this particular simple answer is insufficient. Let’s begin with some context. The idea of separation is not only Herzog’s main selling point but the animating idea behind the withdrawal plan itself, since it views separating from the Palestinians as soon as possible as so crucial that it throws out the Oslo framework with which the Labor Party is so strongly associated. The premise behind this is twofold, one that deals with the here and now and one that deals with the bigger picture. The here and now is the current security breakdown where violence has returned to Israel’s streets, and so Herzog is repeating an idea that has been largely associated with the right, which is to retreat behind a wall. The bigger picture is the more interesting one though, because it deals with the central principle of Zionism, which is the establishment of a Jewish state, and whether Zionism is a legitimate political movement.
When Herzog warned against the looming danger of an Arab mayor of Jerusalem, I don’t think this was a dogwhistle meant to appeal to anti-Arab sentiment. I get why some may think so, given the plain language involved and coming against the backdrop of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s infamous and abhorrent election night exhortation to rightwing voters to come to the polls and counter the Arab voters “coming out in droves.” I certainly cannot say definitively that Herzog wasn’t drawing from the same ugly well. But my reading of his comment in the larger context is that separation from the Palestinians is needed to secure the Zionist dream, and his invoking of Jerusalem was a clumsy shortcut to making that point. Zionism is nothing more and nothing less than an expression of Jewish nationalism, and the dream of Jewish nationalism necessarily involves Jewish officials exercising sovereignty in a Jewish state. Does it mean that only Jews are allowed into the political arena? Nope. But it’s not outrageous to express a wish that the mayor of the Jewish state’s capital city be Jewish, particularly given that Jews were barred from the Holy Basin when it was under Jordanian control between 1948 and 1967.
The entire premise behind the two-state solution is to preserve Jewish nationalist aspirations, which are at risk in a binational state when that state is no longer majority Jewish. I will not condemn anyone who suggests that Jewish leadership of a Jewish state is a desired goal, since to do otherwise is to flirt with the idea that Zionism is racism. Nobody will blink in the future at the suggestion that the mayor of East Jerusalem – presumably the capital of an independent Palestine – be Palestinian, and that will be neither a racist nor an unreasonable expectation. Herzog was expressing the flip side of that sentiment in the present, albeit in an awkward manner given that Jerusalem is not currently divided between two states. I don’t read it as an attempt to disenfranchise Jerusalem’s Arab residents – and I’d note that the fact that Herzog brings up the possibility is evidence that he isn’t trying to do so – but as an inarticulate way of expressing that without separation, the Zionist goal of a Jewish state is in danger. I for one would have no problem with an Arab mayor of Jerusalem, but there is little question that Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem is an integral part of Zionism and powerful imagery to evoke.
What Herzog said was largely deemed to be an ordinary statement in Israel because it resonated with many Israeli Jews as a simple explication of Zionist aspirations. This is not because Israeli Jews are racists seeking to keep their fellow Arab citizens down, and it is not because the state would ever prevent an elected Arab mayor of Jerusalem from taking office. It is because they rightly and justifiably view Zionism as just as legitimate as any other form of nationalism, and Jerusalem represents the very heart of Jewish nationalist aspirations. It is no coincidence that Herzog didn’t warn about an Arab mayor of Haifa or Ashdod. I do not begrudge anyone who calls out Herzog for his comment, but it is simply not the same as Netanyahu raising the alarm about the looming peril of Arab votes. It involves a larger question of whether one sees Zionism as inherently racist or as a legitimate nationalist movement of a long-oppressed people.
The Thorny Question of Israeli Citizenship
May 15, 2012 § 2 Comments
There is a lot of buzz today over the decision by an Israeli court declaring that Judaism, rather than being born in Israel, is the appropriate determinant of citizenship for a petitioner who wanted his citizenship to be based on something other than his religion. Uzzi Ornan had asked the court to recognize his citizenship based on the fact that he was born in Palestine during the British Mandate and not on the fact that he was born Jewish since he says that he has no religion and thus does want to be classified as religiously Jewish. The court ruled that Ornan is Jewish according to the 1970 amendment to the Law of Return, which grants every Jew the right to move to Israel and automatically gain citizenship, and thus his self-definition is irrelevant.
This is not the first time that a similar case has come up. Ornan has tried this gambit before, and the court then noted that the determinant of citizenship is not a proper question for the courts to decide but is one that must be left to society. This idea is one that should be intimately familiar to Americans, as there is a long established tradition in U.S. legal history that courts may not rule on political questions that are best left to the executive and legislative branches. The issue of how to determine what makes someone a citizen of Israel certainly appears to fall into this category, and I think that the Haifa district court in this case did a good job of simply following the law it is written. It doesn’t mean that the law should necessarily remain this way, but rather that it is not the job of the courts to take up an issue that is clearly best left to the purview of the Knesset.
There are four ways in which to acquire Israeli citizenship: being born to an Israeli parent or being born on Israeli soil (although this second one is not automatic), immigrating to Israel and being subject to the Law of Return, being a former citizen of British Mandatory Palestine who remained following the establishment of Israel, and naturalization after residing in Israel for a set amount of time. Critics of Israel focus on this second path since it is open only to Jews, but as can be seen, citizenship generally is not restricted to only Jews (although it is easier for Jews to become citizens by virtue of the Law of Return). The problem that the court decision raises is that one’s Jewishness is determined based on a religious definition, which ipso facto makes Jewishness exclusively a religious category rather than an ethnic category. This is problematic both as a matter of history and policy.
The word Jew is derived from the Latin Iudaeus Greek Ioudaios, both of which were terms that originally denoted ethnicity and geography rather than religion by referring to residents of Judaea or the nation (but not religion) of Judaeans. In time, the term Judaean evolved into the term Jew, which had a religious dimension, but it was not always this way. Being a Jew has always meant a mix of things: ethnicity, religion, culture, and (in Antiquity) geography. While in some ways the Law of Return embraces ethnicity – a Jew is someone whose mother was Jewish – it is misleading since that is ultimately the religious definition; someone whose mother was not Jewish but whose father was is not considered to be Jewish according to halakha, and is thus not Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return without undergoing a conversion. Thus, the ethnic aspect of being a Jew is discarded, which may comport with recent centuries of Jewish history but certainly does not comport with what it meant to be a Jew the last time Jews had sovereignty over the territory that now constitutes Israel.
More relevant to today is the fact that making Jewishness an exclusively religious category inserts the state into making some weighty personal decisions that it should not be making. Ornan says that he is not a Jew and that he has no religion, but the state of Israel disagrees and is telling the world that Ornan is an Israeli citizen specifically because he is Jewish and not because he was born on Israeli territory. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the state is putting itself in the business of arbitrating someone’s personal convictions on religion? Israel officially labels Ornan a Jew when he himself say that he is not, which might be the province of rabbinical authorities to do but shouldn’t be something in which the state should be engaging. It is one thing to create guidelines to determine whether someone who declares themselves Jewish is indeed Jewish, but it is altogether another thing to foist Jewishness upon someone who renounces it. Like I said, I’m not sure that the court had a choice in this matter based on the way the law is written, but it is something that the Knesset should certainly debate and clarify.
One final aspect to consider here is why the question of citizenship is so important. As Marc Howard has pointed out, in liberal democracies political rights are no longer a prerequisite to social and civil rights; one need not be a citizen but rather only must be a resident to enjoy the benefits of the state, and thus some argue that political rights (and hence citizenship) are not as important as they once were as they are not required as a gateway to gaining social rights. Marc’s book presents an elegant and persuasive argument that this argument is wrong and that even in the EU citizenship still matters greatly, but in Israel this is even more acute given Israel’s nature as a Jewish state. The preference that Israel gives to Jewish immigration and the easier pathway to citizenship for Jews is precisely because of Israel’s Jewish identity, and thus what should be a somewhat abstract legal question over the proper basis for Uzzi Ornan’s citizenship becomes something much larger. Here’s hoping that Israeli society takes up this question and reopens the debate, because as anyone who has observed the wide variation in religious observance and identification in Israel itself knows, Judaism in the 21st century is much more complex than a simple halakhic formula suggests. I believe that Israel is correct to zealously guard its Jewish identity and I defend its right to do so without qualification, but Jewish identity is something that should be borne by choice rather than by the state’s fiat.
Netanyahu’s Smart Maneuver
April 12, 2012 § Leave a comment
Yediot reports today that Netanyahu is planning on responding to Abbas’s letter detailing Palestinian demands and preconditions for negotiations by dropping the one precondition of his own, namely that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Irrespective of whether this is a serious step toward reinvigorating peace talks, or just Netanyahu’s way of winning the battle for public opinion by highlighting Israel’s willingness to negotiate compared to Abbas’s obduracy, it is a good move. I have written before about why insisting on preconditions before negotiating is a bad idea, and by removing his, Netanyahu is bargaining from a position of strength.
Aside from the strategic aspect, dropping the demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is good policy as well, and Netanyahu should not let it become a sticking point should talks ever progress to a final stage. Israel’s status as a Jewish state is not dependent on any outside recognition of that fact, and demanding that other parties recognize it as such makes Israel appear insecure. Israel’s Jewish character does not require Palestinian validation, and Netanyahu’s years of incessant demands that Palestinians acknowledge Israel as Jewish has always seemed petty and nothing more than a naked appeal to nationalism. The Jewish connection to Israel is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, Israeli law and custom, and Israeli society. Whether or not Mahmoud Abbas wants to admit this fact or not is of no consequence, and Israel should not elevate any outside party’s views on this issue to the point where it becomes an obstacle to a successful peace agreement. Let’s hope that this negotiating maneuver marks an end to the era of Israel being more concerned with irrelevant outside validation than with doing everything it can to implement a viable two state solution.
