A lot of comments on yesterday's diary took issue with the fact that I addressed the issue of Israel as "the Jewish state" claiming to represent all of Diaspora Jewry and did not address what it means to Israel's non-Jewish minorities if Israel is a Jewish state by definition.
Here's the promised diary.
Largely my statement on this is affected by an incident in a class I teach on the Holocaust at Villanova University. I always teach a unit on the Holocaust and its relationship to Zionism. A student of mine, an Iranian-American, posed the question of how and why the State of Israel was founded on someone else's land in the first place and that no one seemed to care. My answer was long and involved and took in many factors, but ultimately it came down to justifying the idea of a Jewish state in the first place. And finally, I was able to articulate exactly how I would like to see Israel as a Jewish state.
It boils down to one simple principle: Israel should be a "Jewish state" in so far as Jewish immigrants should be given preference over all others. In short, the Law of Return must remain in place, perhaps changed or enforced differently only so that the large influx of non-Jewish immigrants is decreased.
I know that's going to piss off a lot of people. I'm not overly concerned about that. The point is that to remove the Law of Return or revoke it or give equal immigration preference to non-Jews would undermine the very raison d'etre of the State of Israel, i.e., to provide a place where Jews may live as a majority and thus unharmed.
Of course ending the occupation of the Palestinian Territories is an important aspect of this raison d'etre. The occupation is what makes Israel one of the least safe places for a Jew to live. This undermines Israel's reason for existing as much as revoking the Law of Return would.
So in what other ways should Israel be a Jewish state? In a word: none.
Consider the following aspects of the State of Israel that make it an inherently hostile place for a non-Jew to live, bearing in mind that nearly 20% of Israel's population isn't of Jewish ancestry to any extent at all.
- The flag. How is the Israeli Arab supposed to relate to a state where the flag consists of the most readily identifiable emblem of Judaism in the history of the world? I'm not suggesting that Israel adopt a crescent moon or cross in the place of the Magen David, but ultimately if Israel will be state of all of its citizens, the flag has got to go.
- The seal. The seal of the State of Israel has a seven-branched candelabra and the word "Israel" written only in Hebrew. Again, how can the Israeli Arab relate to this? The seal of the state, first of all, should contain both of Israel's official languages, and, yes, Virginia, the other language is Arabic.
- The national anthem. Meir Kahane himself said no Israeli Arab could possibly relate to Hatikva, particularly these lines:
As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And forward to the East
To Zion, an eye looks
Our hope will not be lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Sorry, but it's gotta go.
- The Basic Law on Israeli Lands. The law as currently enforced states that any land owned by the Jewish National Fund may be sold only to Jews. That's blatantly discriminatory and must stop. No state is a democracy where people cannot live where they want to and can afford to live.
- A constitution. Israel has no written constitution. It operates off of Basic Laws and, to some extent, common law (i.e., adjudicated law). While this is not inherently a flaw in a country's makeup (the U.K. has no written constitution and has continued to exist for a thousand years), the issue of full equality for Israel's minorities, it would seem, can only be settled in the drafting of a constitution that contains something akin to our own Fourteenth Amendment, which provides for equal protection under the law for all citizens. Will this stop discrimination? Probably not, but at least the legal protections will be in place, making judicial review of such matters easier.
Now, I know that the reaction among many readers who sympathize with the Palestinian right of return will be this: How can you promote Jewish-only immigration — meaning Jews from anywhere in the world with no familial link to Palestine and Israel — while refugees are forbidden to return?
My answer is quite simply that I am willing to admit that there is an inherent hypocrisy in my stance here. I will clarify one point, which is that Israel ought to recognize the children of citizens of Israel born outside the state as citizens in their own right, regardless of religion or ethnicity. I'm not sure whether it does this already, but the point has been made by one commenter that parents born in Jaffa may have a child in the U.S. and that child cannot have Israeli citizenship. I don't know whether that person's comments were predicated on the notion that the Jaffa-born parents were refugees created by wars with Israel or were Arab citizens of Israel. If they're Arab citizens of Israel and the case presented is true, then the law in Israel should be changed to reflect this.
All right, that's where I stand on this. Have at me. In the meantime, I'm going to be designing the future Israeli flag. And yes, the country's name should remain "Israel." It's not as if the word doesn't appear in the Christian Bible and the Qur'an, along with the recognition that the nation under discussion sits on the same land as the ancient kingdom of the same name.