The Declaration of Independence states that
Israel
is Jewish and democratic in equal measures.
Any law which therefore defines Israel as Jewish above all else (as
opposed to Jewish and democratic) makes democracy subservient to faith.
The conflict between religious and secular
jurisdiction over issues of personal status is complicated by Israel’s early modern history. When the new state was born it was less than
three years after the defeat of Nazism.
In Israel,
the Jewish faith, as a religious institution, was viewed as endangered. Israel’s secular rulers absolved
themselves of any responsibility for issues of personal status by encouraging
traditional religious bodies to exercise authority without statutory
boundaries. This sowed the seeds for
both the reinvigoration of orthodoxy and its political empowerment.
The state was conflicted - indifferent to
religious faith at the same time as it accepted the orthodox stream of Judaism
as the only one exercising legitimacy.
The state ignored the abuses religious hegemony created because it was
reluctant to become involved in a religious debate.
Any political culture is open to abuse but
an inexperienced, immature political culture without a tradition of legal
oversight and practical control will be subjected to continuous testing as to
the limits of what constitutes legitimate authority.
Once the period of ideologically led
consolidation was over (the first 20 to 30 years of independence) what had been
understandable “accommodation” in order to help to develop and give strength to
state institutions and bureaucracies became state sanctioned corruption. Transparency is not a welcome participant
amongst the political herd. As political movements, all parties naturally saw
abuse of political – economic power as a means of asserting and maintaining
their ideological legitimacy, however, patronage and personal aggrandizement
are all part of a corrupted political establishment.
I recall a group of enthusiastic and
idealistic young adults explaining their plans to a ranking member of the government
who “knowing what was ‘best’ for them” had no intention of acquiescing to a
single point they made. The arrogance of
a patriarchal political culture begets contempt for constituencies because
certainty of purpose is central to their political philosophy. There is no such thing as a transparent back
room deal! In a dysfunctional democracy politics is not the art of compromise
(the golden mean) but an act of will by an individual or a group exercising control
over the rest of us.
A misunderstanding of the nature of
democracy is at fault. Democracy is more than “one person one vote.” If the government fails to support the people
they lose faith in government. An
abusive culture is created that exploits tribal identification and within a
tribal culture, elites become more important than law (because influence is hierarchical
and authoritarian).
To quote Murray
Kahl:
“Emerging governments must demonstrate they can resolve
problems faced by the citizenry, such as crime, insurrection, general economic
growth, secure freedom and the rule of law.”
(And additionally, in Israel’s
case: terrorism and hostile missile
activity).
Democracies fail because they do not uphold the nations’
laws, no matter how imperfect those laws may be.
The Declaration of Independence is clear:
- Israel is to be a state of Jewish immigration aliyah and of "the ingathering of the exiles." This principle was set forth in legal and practical terms in the Law of Return, passed two years later (1950);
- Israel is to be a state of development for the benefit of all its inhabitants;
- Perhaps most importantly, Israel is to be a state based on the fundamentals of freedom, justice and peace, a state in which all the inhabitants will enjoy equality of social and political rights, along with freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.
The document continues: The state will be
guided by the principles of justice enunciated by “the prophets of Israel”
and it calls for the Arabs to participate in building the state.
The state was founded by secular people but
their big idea was imbued with Jewish ethical considerations as well as Jewish
historical visions. Israel’s founders could not have foreseen a
future where the states Arabs and the extreme Left would abuse their rights of
statehood or that Israel’s
external enemies would actively coordinate a campaign with Israel’s internal enemies in order to
delegitimize Jewish history and even, to deny Jewish attachment to Jerusalem as diplomatic
continuation of the war against Jewish independence.
So Israel can reaffirm the principles
of the Declaration of Independence. It
could also act on them in order to demonstrate their relevance.
Israel should attack the racist campaign of delegitimization, in
every forum, in every interview and in every debate. None of the fine words in Israel’s
Declaration of Independence are of any consequence if Israel’s diplomats and
politicians do not respond to every libel against the state and not just by
comparing its actions to its enemies, but also by attacking those in the Muslim
world and in liberal-left circles who undermine the principles of the
Declaration of Independence.
One of Israel’s former justice ministers
(Professor Daniel Friedman) said that “declarative laws don’t have the power to
solve theoretical or social disputes” but what he seems to have missed is the
whole point of having them in the first place.
They create a framework and a vision for Israel’s legislators to work
towards achieving.
Emerging states have a lot to prove. They must demonstrate they can resolve the
issues that confront their nation, equitably.
Issues of identity, unity and protection are all equal in importance and
underlying all of them is perception, which governs everything.
Failing states do so because they fail to
act on discrimination. But there is a greater
responsibility for minorities to integrate when a national framework already
exists. Integration does not necessarily mean assimilation. And because
discrimination in society can be from both sides what it also does not mean is
separate development and most definitely what it does not mean is separate laws
that run counter to the national ethos.
There is a difference between civil rights,
which remain equal and national rights that can be synonymous with a divisive
tribal identity. There will be people
who argue that to survive in the Near East you
must adopt the attitude and behaviors of the environment in which you live. So
a toxic culture of bigotry is acceptable?
This may well be the Arab way but it goes against everything Zionism
believes in. Herzl’s Zionism envisioned
Jew and Arab living in one nation, equal and prosperous. Israel’s identity as a Jewish state
does not negate that vision.
Israel’s identity as a Jewish state is enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence. Israel’s
symbols, its flag, its education system, its day of rest on Saturday, all these
things are central to the identity of its citizens even if they are not
personally central to an individual’s minority identity.
It is here that government in Israel has
failed spectacularly. By not involving
itself in religious law it has created sectarian religious conflict; by not
imposing sanction on those who agitate against Israeli Arab identification with
the country of their birth (Israel) the government has helped to poison the
issue of national identity.
As a consequence of the proposed Nation
State Law Arabic would have lost its status as one of the two official
languages of Israel. This ignores the reality of Arab
culture. Most Arabs are fluent in Hebrew
so to remove its status is provocative and discriminates without providing any
sensible justification. 70% of Israel’s Arabs
describe themselves as Palestinian - only 30% describe themselves as
Israeli. Bullying will not reverse those
statistics. What will reverse them is
working together to create a unified nation.
The Arab parties are racist parties which exist to play the Palestinian
identity card and therefore to maintain separation (apartheid). The Arab political parties are impediments to
Israeli unity.
No Israeli politician has had the courage
to tackle this violent and bigoted opposition to integration. The irony is that those parties vying for
the title of “Zionist” completely miss the point because ethnic integration is at
the heart of the Zionist enterprise.
Turkey suppresses the Kurdish language as does Syria. There is little to no room for minority
recognition anywhere in the Near-East.
But not just in the Muslim world.
If Putin needed a pretext for his invasion of Crimea it was the removal
of Russian as one of Ukraine’s
official languages. It was a decision
that Ukraine
recognized in hindsight as disastrous and it has been reversed.
The final impediment to Israeli national
unity is foreign interference in its internal affairs. Since the establishment of the State of
Israel nations have worked without respite to undermine the legitimacy and the
identity of the Jewish State. NGO’s (non-government organizations) continue to receive
significant foreign funding through mainly western governments and western
churches. It is they that have actively sought to delegitimize the Zionist and
Jewish agendas. Aaron David Miller
describes the Arab states as “nothing more than tribes with flags.” In Israel,
foreign funding has been used to encourage that tribalism and fragmentation.
Jewish history is being denied, denigrated
and damned. Instead of demanding the cessation of subversive foreign funding Israel should
regulate it. As happens in the USA, any foreign
funding must go along with formal registration of any recipient organization,
as the local agency of a foreign entity.
Any activity promoting disunity must be actively discouraged.
But more important than even this issue, in
the long term a nation needs a vision to survive. The USA has its exceptionalism through which its capitalist
version of democracy has spread globally – Iran has its theocratic vision of a
world ruled by and for the Islamic faithful. It informs and instructs the direction
of its foreign policy.
What is depressing about the Israeli elections
for the 20th Knesset? There is no self-evident
vision; there are no fundamental principles being extolled by the Zionist camp. The talent is wholly missing from the political
arena.
The Jewish people are too often harangued
for being either too legalistic or too philosophic and in both cases it is
meant to say that Jews are not anchored in the real world. It seems that Israel’s politicians are so
cynically anchored in the real world that they are incapable of working for the
common good. The multiplicity of parties
zealously guarding their own parochial privileges are incapable of sublimating
their own crude desires for the greater cause that is served by promulgating a
vision of unity and amity.
That is the depressing issue that Israel’s
more attuned voters had to confront when voting for the Twentieth Knesset on
Tuesday 17th March 2015.
God Save Israel from her politicians.
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