not to mention how virtuall all the vast Arab nations enshrine Islam, persecutes nonbelievers and no one blinks.
37
Thank you, Bret, for the only piece I’ve read in the MSM that retains a sense of proportion about the Nation-State law recently adopted by Israel.
I would have advised Israeli MKs to vote against it, precisely because it accomplishes nothing except giving ammunition to the Israel haters. And although the very negative reaction of the Druze community is, in my view, also based on misunderstanding, that national minority is one whose feelings Israel should care very much about.
But the unwisdom of the law does not make the media’s reaction to it any less hysterical. And let me be more frank then you chose to be; very much included in the category of “usual suspects” that regularly publish unbalanced coverage of Israel is the New York Times. The Times ran four highly critical pieces about the Nation-State law in its news pages (two on the front page), which variously characterized the law as “incendiary” and elevating “identity” over”democracy,” as well as two hostile op-eds by outside contributors. Apart from your choosing to devote your column to the subject today, the only presentation of a contrary view was in two very brief letters-to-the-editor.
Assuming this comment, which is critical of the NYT, is published at all, it is unlikely to be viewed with approval by many of the paper’s readers. I would ask them to google the phrase “constitutional provisions that recognize a country’s ethnic identity.” They should then ask themselves why Israel should be different.
32
I think you have missed the point Bret. Apartheid has a beginning no matter how trivial it seems to you.
23
As Zvi Barel wrote in "Haaretz": "It would be best to prepare for the amendment to the nation-state law. The improved wording will not even require effort to write. It will certainly include: ´An Israeli citizen is a subject of the state who is of Jewish or related blood, and proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the Jewish people and the State of Israel. The Israeli citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law.` The original wording was passed back in 1935 with the title: Reich Citizenship Law. Just copy and paste."
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-intro-to-racist-legislation-1.6...
Israel has democratic structures and is in a number of areas "democratic" -- e.g. freedom of opinion and press, elections, etc. But its basic philosophy, also as expressed in the "Declaration of Independence", sees the state as founded for the Jews, and all governmental brances, organs and agencies adhere to this priority, including the courts up to the highest level. There are also many mechanisms, laws, etc. -- you might even call them "tricks" -- to subvert any real democracy, which might create a true equality of all its citizens. And this is not to mention Israel´s being an occupier and oppressor of over 4.3 million Palestinians in the so-called "occupied territories" (what part of Israel that was not forseen for a state for the Jews in the UN Partition Plan of 1947 is not occupied?!?).
15
What Bibi is all about is turning Israel into a theocracy---he has been nibbling around the edges of this mission for the last decade. And depending on who is sitting in the Oval Office sometimes the nibbles are giant bites. Having spend the last month in South Africa, which admittedly the whites were far more blatant about how they treated to other in their country, any form of apartheid like legislation, no matter how harmless on the surface, takes a country and their people's in a dark direction.
16
Once again, an amazing image published with this copy. NYT graphic editors and their staff/ contributors do wonderful work.
2
Though a Jew might choose whether to identify as a Jew, history tells us that they will always be a Jew. My grandfather declared his undying loyalty to the Kaiser as he was recovering from being shot off of his horse as a member of the German cavalry on the Russian front in Word War I. “I was born a German and I will die a German.” As it turned out he narrowly escaped Nazi Germany with his young family. The Nazis proclaimed he was born a Jew and was going to die a Jew. Needless to say, due to his fortune to have the chance to leave Germany he did not die as a German, but as a proud Jew. America will never be like World War II Germany, but there are Jews living worldwide. Thank God for the presence of the Jewish refuge of Israel.
24
Mr. Stephens,
Your ignorance of the codified persecution faced by Israeli Arabs today is matched only by your ignorance of the damage to America’s democratic institutions being prosecuted by your Republican party comrades. Leaving your office once in a while, perhaps heading upstate and then on to Jerusalem, might be in order. With a stop in Copenhagen to check on your ridiculous comparison of that nation’s clumsy xenophobia with the systematic oppression of one fifth of another country’s population. It’s positively obscene for the Times to support such flippant “commentary.”
26
The nation-state basic law is indeed a scandal, putting Israel in the road to apartheid where non-Jews are non-citizens.
“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel” ... is the very definition of citizenship in a democracy.
And in the State of Israel that right is “unique to the Jewish people” - meaning just what it says, the Jews.
So only Jews will be citizens, all others are now allowed to reside in the State of Israel by the sufferance of the Jews ... i.e., all Christians, Muslims, Druze are - or soon will be - resident aliens, non-citizens.
The nation-state law doesn’t say that explicitly, but it doesn’t need to: as a constitutional law, it provides the legal basis for all that will surely follow.
Israel has forfeited the good will and support of any nation claiming the principles of liberal democracy as a core value.
28
If I had to live in a ghetto, I would certainly prefer that it be located in Denmark rather than Israel--no contest there!
Let's face reality. Israel has always claimed to be the 'Jewish state' since its founding. Despite our obvious racial shortcomings, at least the US never adopted the creed that it was a country just for European white guys. Israel, in contrast, was founded on a racist creed.
21
Did you know that the American military dropped 26,000 bombs on seven Muslim countries last year? Racism is racism, whether it is practised in America, Germany, South Africa or Israel.
12
Jews have been second-class citizens (or far worse) in many places for a thousand years. Overt anti-semitism is common throughout the West and is a plague in Northern Africa and the Middle-East. There is no Arab country where Jews are welcome or in which Jewish communities thrive-- and few in which Judaism is even permitted. This, of course, goes unremarked by the holier-than-thou Israel haters hungry for any excuse to continue the persecution of Jews by any means.
The parents and grandparents of my generation of Jews were slaughtered by the millions in Europe and their homes and property confiscated and destroyed because there was no homeland for Jews against the onslaught of Nazis and their enablers.
Against this historical background, Israel's many enemies continue their shameless onslaught, latching on to any reason to cast Israel as a pariah, an outlaw or even worse while obscuring base and all too familiar anti-semitism with purported moral outrage.
Mr. Stephens properly points out that Israel is free to draft its laws to clarify that it is a Jewish state. And it can do so solely because there IS an Israel, the myriads of Jew haters, deluded lefties, right-wing Nazis and other assorted rabble notwithstanding.
28
How reassuring. Maybe Israel has stolen the homes of the land's former inhabitants and has now "codified" a law that robes them of their dignity -- on top of countless insults and injuries and humiliations -- but at least it's not as bad as Denmark!
20
The New York Times has become the preferred newspaper of millions of us who live far from NYC. Must we all suffer Stephens' parochial endorsements of right-wing Israeli extremism? The comments on this article and others he has written suggest that he may not be the best choice for his job.
20
I have noticed, Bret, that your usual sound analysis of a problem usually only ends when the subject turns to Israel or Judaism.
That is a shame; it reveals your Achilles heel. You should try to avoid commenting on a subject as an "impartial, unbiased voice" when you cannot remain impartial and unbiased.
18
The real reason for the overreaction to the nation state law:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/double-standard-applied-to-israel-again/
7
Stephens is essentially correct when it comes to the hypocrisy of
calling Israel "apartheid" or "separation" when in fact this remains
its condition amongst the entire Muslim World.
However, I don't agree that the present legislation leaves a
status quo ante because it changes the very spirit of the law.
Israel's founding fathers truly wished that all who live there
should not only be regarded as equals but needless to say be treated as such. That's why Arabic is regarded as an official
language. As for the West Bank settlements, this despicable
law only goes a step further toward a land grab no decent
or sane Israeli could ever countenance. In this sense I must
agree with many who consider this as no better than what
Trump is seeking to do here.
8
I'm reserving my "serious outrage" for the on-going Isreali occupation of the West Bank as well as any number of other things including Syrian-Russian-Iranian actions in Syria and Donald J Trump in my own dear USA.
9
Bret is asking an old question: is there a double standard when it comes to Israel?
One need not look at Denmark and Syria to answer that question. In the 1970s the UN branded Zionism as racism (later rescinded) and the UN’s Human Right’s Council has condemned Israel far more than all other countries combined.
This despite the fact that Israel guarantees freedom of speech, religion, sexual orientation to all its residents, and wherein Arabs sit in its Parliament and Supreme Court.
This despite the fact that Israel has agreed to at least three partition plans - all of which were rejected by the Palestinians (UN plan in 48, the Clinton plan in 2000, and the Olmert plan in 2008).
This despite the fact that Israel would be putting its citizens at grave risk by unilaterally pulling its forces out of the West Bank.
And this despite the fact that, according to a 2005 Harvard study (its on the internet) there are at least 29 Muslim countries and 42 Christian countries (yes including Denmark) - is there not room in the world for one tiny Jewish country?
Why the double standard?
I’ll leave that one to the scholars.
But after 2000 years of explosions, pogroms, forced conversions and attempted determination, I am grateful the Jews again have their own country they can call home.
26
I find it difficult to see “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” as anything but the establishment of classes of citizens.
8
Attempted murder is just as much a crime as murder itself. Just because right wing extremists failed to get their "apartheid and theocracy" language codified int law this time, it doesn't mean they won't try and succeed next time. Yes, Israel is a democracy and future (unlikely) liberal governments can reverse these laws. But it works both ways. It can also get worse, much worse.
8
The main argument here seems to be this: excepting demoting Arabic language and not mentioning equality anywhere, these are the same unequal practices the Israeli state has been involved with for a long time. So what's the big deal?
The big deal is that this legislation pokes Israeli Arabs, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, secular and Reformed Jews, Druze and Christian minorities right in the eye. And just because the government can.
17
There are a number of items in this op/ed that are interesting and worthy of comment and discussion, but I did get hung up in two places.
First: '“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”'
What exactly does this mean? Only Jews within Israel have a specific right that is prohibited to others? Is that what it means?
Second, why the quasi-comparisons to events in Denmark and Syria? Doing so is no defense of the bill that, we are told, has been stripped of its "some more controversial features" and, for that matter, is unrelated to events in both Denmark and Syria.
15
“Apartheid” is in the eyes of the beholder. Mr. Stephens’s complete incapacity to place himself in the position of a non-Jewish citizen or immigrant clearly evinces his decidedly closed mind on these anti-democratic “legal” actions of the extremist Netanyahu regime. Now, as a journalist with an international readership, he personally owns not only the egregious policies but also all the negative consequences of their implementation. He has become a complicit propagandist for these excesses. Will he accept his attendant responsibilities?
13
Bret, nice try to take the edge off a law that gives political cover to Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians and non-Jews within its borders. But it won't work. The bill legitimizes Israel's disregard for international law and its borders as established by U.N. resolution.
Sure, you can argue that the bill itself doesn't formally dismantle democracy. Just like we can argue that the Citizens United decision doesn't formally ruin our election system. But both are tumors that will eventually metastasize and require radical surgery.
11
Very unusual for me to disagree with Bret Stephens. I avidly await Saturday s paper for his column and appreciate his remarks on the MSNBC Breaking News sites. But this article distresses me. It reminded me of my mother who swore that she would only marry a man that would take her to the USA. She, as a devoted Jew would only feel safe in America. Israel is not a democracy. It discriminates against Reformed Jews. Her views did change somewhat when Golda Meir became Prime Minister but her determination to never recognize Israel changed when YitzHak Rabin was killed. The orthodox will take away my rights as a woman. Not only have they restricted the rights of women but of all non orthodox Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs and the devoted and courageous Druze. The law is a betrayal of democracy.
23
Thank you Brett. I was among the ones ripping out my hair and decrying Israel’s slip into apartheid. Thank you for bringing the facts and perspective.
I still don’t like Netanyahu or the fact (I believe) that my own Conservative Judaism isn’t authentic by Israeli religious standards (although I know I attend Synagogue more often than my Israeli cousins). I don’t like the settlements or the influence of the far-right religious zealots on the government.
5
Mr. Stephens,
You and I are frequently at political odds, although there have been times when our perspectives are shared. I also enjoy the quality of your writing.
But Whataboutism is beneath you.
Whataboutism never reflects a mirror image. It is never the result of exactly identical circumstances. When you ask,
“So where are the calls to boycott, divest and sanction Denmark?”
I (and I imagine many others), repulsed as we might be by Denmark’s actions, look and look and look for Danish settlements on occupied land - and we are hard-pressed to find any (we can talk about Greenland on another date).
It is the settlements, Mr. Stephens, the never-ending settlements. That is the raw wound. Whatever else that Israel does, even something with the slightest malodorous drift, is salt.
It is the settlements. The ever-encroaching settlements. Once they stop spreading - for good - hair-trigger opprobrium will abate and - who knows? - slack may be afforded.
10
Removing equal status for the Arabic language, and declaring Jerusalem in its entirety to be the capital of Israel alone...is more than enough to alarm the international community. Because it does not reflect reality, but the wishes of a segment of the Jewish population of Israel. And because the Middle East is a tinderbox, which might easily spark a World War Three - involving the entire planet.
And yes, we do know Syria's a hellhole ruled by a man who slaughters his own people. We remember well how the Syrian war got started - by imprisoning and torturing children. We watch and read the news, and have welcomed Syrian refugees, who can tell us a lot about the realities of life in their homelands.
And yes, we've also read about Denmark...But World War Three is considerably less likely to break out in Scandinavia.
Now, back to this new Israeli law...a gift to those already eager to inflame existing hostility against Israel's Jewish population.
4
Denmark wasn't a Viking immigration project, blossoming around 1920, and sitting on a settled territory colonized by Britain or the Ottomans. That's where the analogy with Denmark ends. Denmark has never needed to acknowledge that it sits on lands of the pre-historic Heruli, conquered by the Dani -- probably, since there aren't any Heruli left.
15
Another piece by Bret justifying Israel's inexorable drift to apartheid. The only correct paragraph in the entire piece is the first one. Israel is a Jewish theocracy; this new law does promote settlements, and calling Jerusalem Israel's “complete and united” capital codifies the theft of Arab East Jerusalem and Palestinian lands in the West Bank.
14
good try!
2
Would you be in favor of a similar bill in the United States, replacing “Jewish” with “Christian”? Many of your peers in media and politics definitely would, especially Mike Pence.
18
Israel was created as the homeland of the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Palestinian Arabs would have their own homeland by now if most of them didn't reject Israel's right to exist.
24
Stop all foreign aid to Israel. Let them handle events on their own.
10
Denmark & Israel- two wrongs don’t make a right.
2
Israel and the USA have similar majority/minority situations. Ethnic whites are a slight majority of the residents of the 50 states. Jews are a slight majority of the residents in the Israeli-defined state and Israeli-occupied land. Let’s apply the principle of Israeli self-determination to a parallel “white supremacy” measure for the USA.
The preamble to the American Constitution would be replaced by a statement of purpose granting the right of self-determination exclusively to white people, according legal status to white ritual law, supporting the development of white-only settlements, and restricting immigration to white people.
No reason to complain! Americans living under white supremacy would be better off than the citizens of many poverty-stricken and war-torn and countries. Non-white children would be afforded the opportunity to learn the white language and culture by attending public school for 25+ hours per week.
Small, ethnically-centered states are a bad idea in the 21st century. Over time, the ambitious young people escape abroad to find fun and opportunity, leaving behind an elderly, old-fashioned population dependent on remittances from abroad.
Surely, young Israeli Jews envy the expansive opportunities and lifestyles of American Jews!
8
“An estimated 542 Syrian civilians were tortured to death last month by the Syrian regime, according to the Syrian Network For Human Rights. Did you know that?” No, I did not. But that I would expect from a murderous and rogue regime and unfortunately not shocked by it.
On the other hand I did not expect that Israel would deem necessary to enshrine in law national characteristics that certainly derogate minorities, some even Jewish, in the nation to a quasi second-class status, no matter how you frame it.
13
Specious reasoning. The true measure of this law is in the reaction of Arab and Druse citizens of Israel. They vehemently oppose it and feel marginalized by it. The path the Knesset chose leads the nation closer to being an apartheid state with non-Jewish residents of both Israel and the occupied territories held in a lower status.
13
If Desmond Tutu, who lived under apartheid in South Africa and knows and understands it well ( far better than the writer), calls it apartheid and "worse than apartheid", it is apartheid. I was there and saw it with my own eyes at the humiliating checkpoints, and it is apartheid and this law makes apartheid officially the law of the land of Israel which is de facto everything from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
17
Nope, many of us are just tired of our entire political structure in the US being run by a small mid eastern country. Israel says jump and we ask how high. They have a country being run by s leader of unsavory character, but then so do we.
11
One man's "symbolic codification" is another man's contractual weasel words you could drive a bulldozer through in pursuit of "national values".
14
This opinion piece by Bret Stephens, the former editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, ends with this statement:
"However else you feel about the nation-state bill, reserve your serious outrage for the things that deserve it. An estimated 542 Syrian civilians were tortured to death last month by the Syrian regime, according to the Syrian Network For Human Rights. Did you know that?"
How many Palestinians and how many Israeli's have been killed in all of the conflicts since 1947? By how much has the territory controlled by Israeli citizens been expanded since 1947? Who controls the largest open air prison in the world, the Palestinians or the Israeli's?
15
In my opinion, the new law does not go far enough. Israel and the Jewish people have been extremely generous to many of the minorities that live in Israel. On too many occasions in history, these very same minorities who wish to be treated well in Israel have treated the Jewish people shamefully.
Some simple research on the internet will show that in the 20th century approximately 750000 Jewish people who lived in Arab Nations including Egypt, Syria and Iraq, were systematically arrested, tortured, killed, robbed, and otherwise persecuted to the point that they were forced to flee their homes. Many of these communities had been successful in these Arab Nations, and some of them even predated the arab-muslim Invaders.
The Arabs engage in ethnic cleansing of the worst kind to the point that there are almost no Jews left in Arab Nations. And where did all these unfortunate people go? Mostly to Israel and the United States. They were never compensated by the United Nations, the Arab governments or anyone. The United Nations never established a refugee program for the Jewish people forced to flee Arab countries.
In my opinion, the Arab minority in Israel should be grateful that they are allowed to even live there. They certainly did not extend the same courtesy to their Jewish brothers and sisters.
18
It’s no surprise that Israel’s Nation State law elevating Jewish Israelis to a legalized privileged class over other Israeli citizens who happen not to be Jews is defended by Times columnist, Jewish American, and Dual Citizen of Israel, Bret Stephens. His attempted rationale amounts to a “what-about” Denmark and Syria, when few if any of the critics of the Israeli law would defend Denmark’s treatment of immigrants or Syria’s violations of human rights. Israel’s Nation-State is a Jewish Uber alles law that offends not only many Americans, but many Jews and others abroad because it violates the basic tenet of civilized relationships: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.
And just because many Arab countries discriminate against Jews does not mean that a state calling itself one of our democratic closest ally can do so without American objection to both calling it a democracy and also our ally. For many Americans, because of the Nation-State discrimination, Israel is no longer either. Write a column criticizing Syria or a column criticizing Denmark but don’t use them for covering up or mitigating Israel’s violations of Arab and other non-Jewish Israeli rights.
11
And why is Israel held to a different standard than Muslim nations? Isn’t the oppression in those countries much more worthy of BDS and condemnation than any perceived inequality in Israel?
22
The "outrages" in this Israeli law are a Conservative Knesset supporting Bibi in a time of political/personal, and therefore, party peril. For outrage, consider our own country: what Congress has done, and not done, in support of Trump; the Executive Orders Trump has signed bordering - no pun intended - on outright discrimination; the blatantly racist remarks of Trump emboldening hate groups and racists to act out; the "Muslim ban"; voter ID laws; police shootings of African-Americans without penalty; attacks on black athletes for exercising first-amendment rights (and more importantly, racial injustice). Guess it's easier to point out Israeli issues than face our own. And easier for us to forget: this is a people that remembers how, just 70 years ago, the world, including the U.S., stood by while Hitler was doing his best to exterminate us - I being one of them - from the face of the Earth. I don't like Israeli conservative politics any more than I like what Trump is doing to America. But I can put it in its proper historical and geopolitical perspective, which is what Stephens does in this column.
70
(a) Anything Israel does is ok because, Hey look at Syria or Denmark.
(b) This law was passed democratically, in a state that is just as democratic afterward as before. As all the laws passed in South Africa by the enfranchised fraction of the society left the Afrikaner country just as democratic after passage as before.
In both cases the country remained a neat little democracy for the group that had suppressed the rest of its residents.
(c) And by the way, the alleged repressions of the bill were already enacted long before. So, Israeli hands are clean.
(d) "The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." If you deny Jews this elementary human right, you are a bigot and an antisemite.
The obverse is, of course, that the elementary human right of self-determination of the Palestinian people is forbidden by law. If you agree with this de-legitimizing of the Palestinians, rather than being a bigot, you are recognizing reality.
(e) If Haganah hadn't driven the Palestinians out at gunpoint, the land would have remained primitive rather than developed.
Good principle for NATO to apply to Haiti, Afghanistan, Russia, Native reservations, many Pacific islands, and most of Africa. But, will they be appreciative after we develop their countries? Nope, they will become existential threats.
(e) And if you don't agree with the above, take a look at the weapons from Big Daddy in DC, and Eat Your Hearts Out.
15
The Nation-State law in Israel is another step towards making the country an authoritarian democracy, with its premier for life, Benyamin Netanyahu. It makes Hebrew the official language of Israel and downgrades the status of Arabic. It is also a step towards making Israel a theocracy.
Stephen's writes that the law is not the death of Israel's democracy. He might recall that Adolf Hitler was democratically elected Chancellor in Germany, and would have been re-elected until the end.
What Stephens does not focus on are the rights of minorities in Israel--Palestinians, Christians, Druze, members of BDS. Justice Minister Shaked said recently that if Israel's Supreme Court were to overturn the Nation-State law, there would be an explosion. That is understandable since it is only the Supreme Court and the newspaper, Ha'aretz that are standing in the way of Israel becoming a totalitarian democracy.
12
Zionist Jewish Israel is no more a democracy than were slave and Jim Crow era America and apartheid South Africa. Israel can either be a Jewish state or it can be a democracy. It can not be both.
Unless and until the 6 million Christian Muslim Arab Palestinian Israelis living under the dominion of 6.1 million Zionist Jewish Israelis by occupation, blockade / siege, exile and 2nd class citizenship in Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights and Jordan are deemed divinely naturally created equal with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness then Israel is a callous cruel cynical hypocritical inhumane inhuman mockery of democracy.
About 80% of the world's 16 million Jews are evenly divided between America and Israel. Jews living in America have achieved the Zionist Jewish dream of living in a secular plural egalitarian democracy that is good and safe for Jews.
Another 40 % of Jews live in Israel. There are no rights for either Christians nor Muslims to return to their mutual Holy Land. Arab Muslims were not the perpetrators of the Holocaust. There is no American state, territory nor possession named Israel.
10
This op ed is not unlike telling African American athletes not to kneel during the national anthem because the bill of rights gave them complete equality.
Just ask the non Jewish citizens of Israel.
17
"Israel is open to Jewish immigration. " Thank you for making me smile!
9
“We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”
--- Farmer’s Insurance Ad
The Jews of Israel having seen a thing or two in their time are not going to give up living in a country that is predominantly Jewish yet strongly identifies with the protection of minorities.
The rights of all religions, women and gays are protected in Israel, unlike in other places where they often are not.
19
I'll tell you the difference. Israel is a religious state. Denmark is a country (a nation state). They have every right to insist that their citizens understand the law and the culture as long as it's not based in religion. Law, culture and religion are not the same thing. All nation states have the right to impose law. But if the law favors a particular religion, then you are living in a religious state.
101
@CBH
Israel is not a religious state but rather the homeland of the Jewish people. Israel self identity needs to be understood not from the point of view of religion but of that of history and culture. Think for example of the ancient Greeks. One does not imagine to think of them solely from the perspective of their religion. This does not mean religion is not present within the daily life of Israel. Just as the Evangelists or Catholics have their impact on the political sphere, so do religious groups influence Israeli politics.
27
@Lgor what people stubbornly refuse to see is that Religion is by and large a hopeful fairy tail with tribal identities prone to divide and is not useful to running a country or a business. Amen.
Geopolitically however, the billions of dollars the US donates to Israel’s existence provides a useful foil to the Arab world that a culturally unified nation with a bunker mentality can provide.
1
Stephens isn't very convincing here. Just demoting Arabic from an official language to something else sends a pretty strong signal about what this bill is really about.
126
Israel has not been a democracy since the 60s, when it captured the population of the Occupied Territories, but did not give them a vote in the national government.
9
The best that can be said of this legislation is that it formalizes the second-class status of Israel's indigenous inhabitants. To “codify into Israel’s Basic Laws..aspects of Israeli identity” tells the world that all who are not Jewish immigrants are lesser beings in the eyes of the Basic Law. Israel’s founders—well, at least some of them—claimed all Israelis would be equal. History teaches us, and the new law confirms,
that was fake news.
And the new law simply makes it easier for the Israeli state to act on that.
7
As a Canadian-American Jew my reaction is: I don’t live there, it’s not my country, and if the parties concerned wish to perpetuate their 70 year-old quarrel they must both think they have good vested interests for doing so.
2
What's going on in Israel is in violation of U.N. Resolution 181, which created it along with the Palestinian state and which left Jerusalem to be governed by an international regime. Since Israel is in violation of its original charter, it's not a legitimate country.
10
Cannot reconcile this Bret Stephen piece with what I thought was the rational right winger, one I can understand if not agree with.
But this placid white washing of an extremely anti Democratic law affecting all Israeli Arabs, a large non Orthodox Jewish/Israeli electorate, all Jews in the Diaspora and all dissenter of this dangerous government is disconcerting.
Trumpism is certainly a virulent contagious disease, affecting the good sense of one and all.
These are certainly dangerous times.
8
If the law is so good why are theDruze so angry with it,and why has Netanyahu met with them every day to allay their concerns about being second class citizens.
12
Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population of Israel.
If and when the Palestinians ever come to grips with the necessity of making a peace of Israel I suspect that most of them will stay right where they are, preferring the safety and safety of Israel over the chaos and violence of Gaza and the West Bank.
7
... a peace with Israel....
... safety and security ....
2
How much money is the US putting into the Danish or Syrian economies to keep them going annually? The reason we care so much about Israel's behavior as a nation is that we are its primary sponsor.
7
The law refers to the 'Jewish People" what does that means, exactly? Is a Syrian willing to become a member of the jewish religion will be a "Jewish People"?
4
Something is rotten in the State of Denmark and Israel is the focus of International criticism. Thank you Bret for a helpful explanation of the Israeli statement of certain basic values and principles.As published elsewhere this is an Israeli nothingburger.
5
Israel IS the nation-state of the Jews who are a People, a Nation just like the French, the Irish, the Italians and so many others. The others, however, do not suffer from some sort of inferiority complex that motivates them to put those facts into a statute. France never passed a law that says that France is the nation-state of the French People. It just is.
The fact is that when Israel was established by the UN in 1948 the creation of a nation-state for the Nation of the Jews was the UN's specific intent.
Let us also re Al that Israel would not exist today as a state were it not for what the Germans did.
For Israel to pass this law was superfluous, and in a way, it kind of sticks it to their citizens who are not Jews.
BTW, this has nothing to do with religion.
4
Reminds me of the old Jim Crow laws — separate but equal — only minus the equal. Regarding that Danish rule (of which I first heard about here) it seems the author is making a false equivalence: in Denmark the apparent intention is to stimulate assimilation of the minority while in Israel the apparent intent is to further separate and marginalize them.
8
I don’t subsidize Denmark with my tax dollars.
That means I’m far less interested in what that small, not terribly important state in Northern Europe does than Israel, a small, not terribly important state in the Middle East that is somehow our largest foreign assistance recipient.
Also, I believe Jimmy Carter called the situation in Israel as something akin to apartheid.
9
So, because Syrian prisoners were killed, Israel now has the right to kill unarmed Palestinians, introduce the discrimination against its Arab population in the law and grab the other's people land. Moreover, we are expected to criticize Syria, but not Israel? Great logic, showing wonderful objectivity of the author.
10
I like Mr. Stephen's columns but am surprised that he engaged in "the what abouts?" I wouldn't claim to be knowledgeable about the law, but find the Danish and Syrian examples he cites as a weak justification for Israeli behavior.
7
Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population of Israel.
If and when the Palestinians ever come to grips with the necessity of making a peace with Israel I suspect that most of them will stay right where they are, preferring the safety, security and opportunities present in Israel over the chaos and violence of Gaza and the West Bank.
22
I profoundly dislike and distrust "The Islamic Republic" of this and the "Christian Party of That." As a Jewish American I am also antipathetic to "The Jewish State of Israel." Tribalism breeds division and hatred.
11
Israel’s curse used to be its enemies. Today, it’s its supposed “friends", of which Stephens, of global warming denial fame, is a perfect example. According to him, the new law is nothing but a “symbolic codification of Israel’s Jewish character in the face of persistent efforts to deny that character.” Let’s forget the silliness of the second part of the formulation – we know of efforts to get rid of the State of Israel, but what in heaven are those aiming “to deny [its Jewish] character”? More significant is the adjective “symbolic”, used to characterize, not the absence but the actual, deliberate elimination, in the new law, of the word “equality” that was as deliberately emphasized in the Declaration that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
“Symbolic”? Mr. Stephens explains: all the law does is “to codify aspects of Israeli identity long taken for granted by Israelis and outsiders alike.” In other words, since Arab Israelis were second-class citizens anyway, the law simply “codifies” what was a de facto norm. After all, German Jews were discriminated against before 1935. Hence, let’s be serious, the Nuremberg laws were just “symbolic.”
A lot has been said about the apartheid nature of the new Israeli law. Like many Israelis, I actually worry about a different historical analogy. I hope I’m wrong. But Mr. Stephens is not worried. Why, it’s all an artificial problem created by... the media! Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
9
If one believes that the Jewish character of Israel is a temporary thing, some sort of historical anomaly, then I can understand the frustration at a law codifying what has been the case since the UN Resolution 181 of 1948 , that established Israel as a "Jewish State" much as the surrounding surrounding Arab states are solely the land of Muslims. If the latter reality is unchallenged then neither should the former one be.
As to Denmark's clumsy attempts at instilling Danish values in "ghetto children" , a jarring Trumpian phrase if there ever was one, it should be seen as the prune Danish among better choices in the box from the bakery.
2
20% of countries in the world have a national religion, including England, Scotland, Norway, Finland, Malta, Thailand, and more than 20 Islamic countries.
13
If the law is as benign as the author claims, what’s its point?
3
How and why would one compare making Arab Israelis second class citizens to the atrocities of the Syrian civil war?
You don’t unless you have written a very weak column that can’t really make a good argument to disperse the fears that Israel will pursue a one state solution with apartheid being the fundamental principle.
10
The vast majority of the comments here show the general disdain held by the writers for the State of Israel and the double standards they have. No one seems to be concerned about democracy in England Where the official religion is Church of England, a status not given to Judaism in Israel. The real human rights abusing countries sit on the UN Human Rights council, countries such as Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Iraq, Pakistan, Qatar, and most importantly that paragon of human rights, Saudi Arabia. The constant focus on Israel shows nothing more than hypocrisy and anti-Semitism.
19
Nice try, but this whole apologist column reeks. By tossing red herrings of Denmark and Syria, Mr. Stephens is in effect saying, "we're bad, but look at these others who are so much worse." Trying to make yourself look good at the expense of others is an old, but rather shallow literary and argumentative device.
Denmark is trying to create a common understanding of their culture in people who've no idea of it at all. It is a process of inclusion to form a cohesive national identity. What would you rather they do, expel everyone not descended of native Danes of long lineage?
Israel, on the other hand, continues with this law a policy of greater and greater exclusion. Was it really necessary, for example, to demote Arabic, the language of a sizable part of their population into a now separate and unequal language? And yes, whilst their regime may not fully be apartheid in the sense in which it was enacted in South Africa, the similarities to it are getting more and more alike, rather than embracing the democratic pluralistic ideals when Israel was established. There will always be better and worse players on the world stage, and we should point out and encourage them all to work for the betterment of all their citizenry. Israel is no exception and must be willing to face the consequences of their exclusionary policies, however sugarcoated Mr. Stephens tries to make them.
7
There's no point caring about the continued slaughter in Syria because virtue signalling over the situation in Syria doesn't spill much beer in the faculty lounge or at the intellectual artiste cafe (or should I say: doesn't spill much espresso?). But Israel against the poor cute little Palestinians who wouldn't hurt a fly ... now THAT's worth virtual signalling over.
9
Under the surface of the article is the idea that criticism of Israel is illegitimate until all grievances worldwide are resolved first. “Other countries do bad things, why can’t Israel do them too”? Or better stated, “don’t look at bad things Israel does, look at the other bad countries instead.”
How far can one bend over backwards to defend Israel? Stephens’ critiques of the critiques are so hallow that they force the reader to ask if he’s looking at the issues or just looking for cheap defenses. He sets up sensational claims that he can casually rebut, sidestepping obvious criticisms.
—“the law is not the death of democracy because it was democratically passed.” Fine. But it’s nonetheless a law passed by the majority aimed at marginalizing the minority. We can agree that’s bad, right?
—“It’s not apartheid and apartheid is a cheap slur.” Using the word “apartheid” as a boogeyman doesn’t make it go away. Ask Ehud Barak, who warns that Israel is on a “slippery slope” toward apartheid. Apartheid doesn’t have to be an all-or-none, and this law is a step toward it.
These are bad faith arguments. Why is he so desperate to defend Israel at every turn?
18
It follows from what you wrote, Mr. Stephens, that every single one of your columns should be about the disasters and atrocities now occurring in Syria. Also, you failed to note such dismaying occurrences as the arrest in Israel of a Conservative rabbi for officiating at a wedding at which the groom was deemed religiously unacceptable by the Ultra-Orthodox. How can you justify that?
6
Now the spin cycle starts! Sorry Bret, but there are times when criticism is more pro Israel than instinctive defense, and this is one of those times.
Whatever words one uses, Israel is becoming more like its neighbors and less like what the US aspires to become, a country where all men are created equal. Israel does not deserve the unconditional support of the US, and morally grounded Jewish Americans would do well to reexamine their views.
20
Israel will continue to be democratic for Jewish people, for others it is not obvious. Most countries have official languages which is meant to be the language all official business is conducted. The US does not but for all practical purposes English is the dominant language and anyone living in the US not knowing English is at a disadvantage. Nevertheless one can find Spanish translations of most Federal paperwork people need to interact with. Until the Palestinian conflict is resolved there will be tension between Jews and Arabs in Israel and it should come as no surprise that Israeli- Arabs will see the declaration of Israel as Jewish state as something aimed at them.
5
Your comparison to Denmark undermines your entire piece. Denmark is not at war with its neighbors nor was it created out whole cloth by stealing land from them. It has not argued with them over boundaries, politics, or ideological fealty. It has not jailed its neighbors or prevented them free access across its borders. It has allowed non-native peoples to seek shelter, provided access to social services, and supported refugees in their bid to become citizens. Denmark's laws require participation in social norms BECAUSE it seeks to make refugees full citizens. Israel's divisive law is doing the exact opposite.
352
@Amy Haible,
Denmark might be at war with her neighbors if her neighbors consistently fired rockets at her. That said you seem to be ok with Denmark taking children from their parents for 25 hours per week to make them full citizens but seem upset that Israel passes legislation to make Hebrew the official language. It seems to me a lopsided outrage.
2
@Amy Haible What internationally recognized state allows its "neighbors" to have "free access across its borders?" NONE
5
Your comment about stealing land and at war with its neighbors rather than the other way around undermines the rest of your comments claim to objectivity.
3
As an Israeli, your assessment seems myopic. I love my country, but I don’t underestimate the intentions of our current government. “Fascism will come to America carrying a bible and wrapped in a flag” isn’t sui generis and it doesn't happen overnight.
Many of us believe this law to be a cornerstone on which to build a legal infrastructure in order to mitigate the demographics buried in this government’s trajectory to annex, whether de facto or by declaration, the Occupied Territories.
To that end, maintaining the “Jewish character” of Israel will require minority rule and whatever it takes to secure it. Call it what you will, that is the precipice on which we believe we stand, and that is the context within which this law nudges us closer to the edge.
The fact that they do not name it what it has not yet become is a tactic that history has taught us to understand.
I, and many Israelis, are fighting for the Jewish character of the State as it was defined in our Declaration of Independence; one, “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”.
At a time when Americans are fighting to preserve their trajectory towards an “ever more perfect union”, many Israelis see ourselves in a similar fight against similar forces which, in the name of patriotism, aim to derail us on our way.
435
@Janina Frankel-Yoeli While your point is well taken, the quote, "Fascism will come to America carrying a Bible and wrapped in a flag", has never been directly attributed to anyone having actually said that! Though it certainly can happen that way to many of us.
One of your arguments is that Denmark is doing something worse. Just because it's a lesser evil doesn't make it ok. And speaking of worse things, Israel is doing much, much worse with the Palestinians every day. No matter how bad the Denmark law is, Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is worse. See how that doesn't work in reverse either?
I absolutely understand that the political, public and logistical situation in Israel is incredibly complex. And this new law isn't the same as apartheid. It's not even close but it's a step in the direction of apartheid rather than away. Why is it ok to move in that direction at all?
147
@Gene The argument is cogent because it points out a double standard of treatment for Israel, versus other nation-states (Britain, France, Denmark, and all the Arab states) that enforce a cultural standard on its minorities, in a far worse way then Israel. France has a law against Muslim women covering their faces. Britain has an official state church. In the US, Chrisitian holidays are legally prioritized over the holidays of all other religions. And before Israel, for thousands and thousands of years Jews and Judaism have been pilloried by the non-Jewish world for things things the rest of the world has and regularly does. This treatment of the law by the media and the left, as Stephens points out, is over the top. It also follows in the steps of anti-semitic traditions.
9
@Gene "No matter how bad the Denmark law is, Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is worse." - No matter how bad Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is, America's treatment of the Native and African Americans is worse. Much, much worse, and those groups never dropped incendiary bomb on the colonists' children or swore allegiance to a charter which called for the destruction of the United States.
5
Trouble is, people don't need to believe what Knesset says as they can see what the Knesset does, what the Israeli government sanctions. It's not good and it's not just nor fair to the Palestinian soon-to-be majority.
11
What is happening in Denmark is disgraceful.
It feels part of a global sweep of cruelty that Israel is very much a part of. Reading Bret here you get some clue as to why some somewhat humane but dense conservatives didn't bat an eye when Reagan said "welfare queen" and then went into a fury when Trump said "Mexican rapists." Unless something is so avert, I mean really really overt, they can set up systems of rationalization that can justify almost anything up to that point. That one thing invariably leads to the other doesn't even cross their mind (or their hearts).
Arguing against myself, Bret's monstrous column justifying the shooting and killing of unarmed Palestinians, many of them very young, crossed that point and he still enthusiastically supported it. In truth this column does sound like he is wavering a bit, It doesn't have the brio of past apologetics.
5
We the People of the United States send billions of our tax dollars to Israel who with this law has made a significant number of its people second class citizens by definition.
Israel can be a homeland for both the Jewish and Palestinian people, but it cannot be so if it defines itself as a Jewish nation. Consider the difference. In the meantime, We the People of the United States ought to stop sending them our money.
12
With Israel’s so called economic high tech miracle,why do we even need to send them $? Why be a beggar Israel?
Stand on your own 2 feet.
5
An opinion column in the NY Times that attacks the press? Really? The arguments in this opinion piece are not persuasive. The Israeli nation-state bill is yet another step towards evicting the Palestinians from the land they have lived in for thousands of years.
8
Give the Palestinians back all the land the Israelis stole from them over the last seventy years and we'll listen.
I don't think you understand how sick and tired those of us who championed the state of Israel fifty years ago have become. I really don't, and the further in time we get from the era of being willing to do anything to make amends for the horrific acts of WWII, the less sympathy you will get.
Lately, this notion that Trump is "Cyrus," or "the Cyrus," or whatever, and that Trump is doing "God's work" has really rankled with us agnostics. You're losing sympathy with the secular crowd, I assure you.
As for the Danes, I'm not happy with them and I expected better. But, at least they aren't taking another people's land and forcing everyone to be Danish.
Barack Obama was the first president to turn a sharp eye toward Israel--shape up and be decent or our unquestioning support of you will be, well, questioned. I agreed with him.
Your article is a beautiful piece of tortured logic that I think is falling on many deaf ears.
16
I got a kick out of Stephens' final paragraph, where he offers up something that we SHOULD be concerned about, as opposed to the recent Israeli legislation. This is a slight variation on a standard deflection technique of Donald Trump (and certain elements within the GOP): "Look over there - it's Hillary Clinton!"
7
Keep on apologizing, Mr. Stephens, for a state that murders journalists and health workers with targeted sniper fire.
It doesn't matter what the Israeli Constitution states as long as the U.S. permits the illegal (under U.S. law) installation and expansion of settlements.
And there is already so much discrimination in the Israeli treatment of its own Arab and Palestinian citizens, from water rights to education and healthcare, that any official changes to its constitution are worthless unless they reverse the blatant injustice.
Maybe your next piece will deal with injustice rather than semantics.
17
Funny considering what your country is up to these days.
3
@Hamid Varzi. As usual, rich coming from an Iranian to be commenting on a country that does bad things. When the Chief Rabbi of Israel decides who can run in Israeli elections and when the Israeli government murders nonviolent protestors (not Hamas led throngs looking to break down the borders to kill Israeli citizens) then you may have a legitimate voice. In the meanwhile, try to reform your own Government’s terroristic ways before preaching to others.
3
Sorry, Bret, but while I think you make a great case that this law is not as bad as it's being portrayed, you still minimize the real problem, by kind of throwing in the point that the law could "impede" efforts at greater pluralism. That's the real scandal: that Israel is one of the countries that that discriminates against Jews!
I am a Reform Jew. In the United States, my religious rights are zealously protected. In Israel, not so much. So I think before you ask me to make an effort to understand the new law, you need to tell me why I show loyalty where it isn't required, rather than where it is, the U.S., my country.
9
@DM
Reform Jews, and the other non-Orthodox Jewish categories, actually lose rights in Israel.
Conservative, Reform and Reconstruction Jews may NOT have a state recognized wedding conducted by their own rabbis in Israel. Everywhere else in the world, weddings by those other rabbis are recognized, and Israel considers weddings by such nonOrthodox rabbis legally valid as long as conducted outside Israel.
This, secular Jews and nonOrthodox must either get an Orthodox rabbi to officiate in Israel, or must go offshore, such as to Cyprus, to get married by a non Orthodox.
Also, women are not allowed to lead their own prayer services at the Western Wall.
Undemocratic in both instances, those rules impose a 19th Century mentality on wedding parties and on women worshipping at the Wall.
7
"An estimated 542 Syrian civilians were tortured to death last month by the Syrian regime, according to the Syrian Network For Human Rights."
Shocking, and tragic. If we can only be outraged by one thing, it ought to be that one.
That said, do we know how many Palestinians die each year as a result of the occupation of Gaza? Not just those who die in felled apartment blocks, but the real number? How can we know? It's like Puerto Rico, but worse. We can only guess at the real cost. Can't we be outraged by that too, since it is [as Mr Stephens rightly says] at the hands of a friend?
No amount of whataboutery will wash the blood of Palestinians from Israel's hands.
10
It's hard to be a theocracy, a tribe and a democracy. Either stop the pretense or skip the first two.
12
Fact Check by a 77 year old Zionist, me: this article is false.
The Nation State Bill contravenes the democratic principles embodied in Israel's Basic Laws and avowed by both of Israel's political leaders at the time of its founding, David Ben-Gurion and Vladimir Jabotinsky.
This bill is actually another Netanyahu-device for making a just negotiated peace impossible, which is also welcomed by Hamas and Fateh.
It's past time for the world's nations to stand up for justice and for the welfare of both Jews and Arabs by dictating peace terms and enforcing them.
13
“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
I've looked up various definitions for national self-determination. Choose anyone you wish; they all render non-Jews in Israel second-class citizens. I would say this bill is more than just provocative and divisive. It's undemocratic.
186
@Ronald Aaronson
Undemocratic? Undemocratic, really?
I would suggest, Mr Aaronson, that you are one of those who wants to achieve by emotional blackmail that which you can't achieve through the ballot box.
I agree with a commenter elsewhere in this thread that the discussions on this subject could easily rise to the level of unwarranted--and unwanted--interference in the domestic political affairs of an independent nation state.
The readers of the NY Times and other liberal news outlets are absolutely apoplectic over Russian interference in our election...And now they turn on Israel for using the democratic processes of Israel, one of the most successful democracies in the world, to develop statutes that are beneficial to them as a nation.
How ironic that double standard is applied with such willfulness and abandon.
6
@The Owl
This is a false equivalence, Mr. Owl. Here I am an American in the United States offering an opinion operating under no false identity. I am violating no laws, neither ours nor Israel's and the world is free to ignore me if it chooses; at least people know with whom they are dealing.
On the other hand, a foreign government posing as American citizens offered their "opinions" in an effort to influence the outcome of our presidential election. This was in violation of our laws. If you cannot see a difference, then you are not as wise as your name would suggest. And there is nothing inconsistent about a government being able to use a democratic process such as voting to implement an undemocratic act, which is what I believe Israel did.
I might ask why you are not apoplectic over Russian influence over our election? In a Yahoo Finance-SurveyMonkey poll conducted from July 25 to 27, 40% of Republicans thought it would be okay with Russian interference in a U.S. election if it helped their side. This speaks volumes about who in this country actually cares about democratic processes.
2
@Ronald Aaronson
I see you live in the US.
Isn’t any non-Christian religion rendered ‘second-class’ here? Ask a Muslim. I’ll answer as a Jew - it’s true.
1
I'll be blunt. What Israel does is its business. No other country allows the rest of the world to meddle in its internal affairs like Israel. It's time for this bill's passage, which as the article points out contains measures that were largely in place, albeit informally, for the past 70 years. Those who find fault in this bill passage are also those who find Israel at fault for everything else. Israel shouldn't cower to the criticism, it's unjustified but most of all it's no one's business but their own.
10
So cut off the $ if they make their decisions.
5
Finally a reasonable letter in this thread. Israel is the lone democracy, albeit imperfect like all countries, in a region that is, to put it diplomatically, not hospitable to Jews. Complex indeed, to build a charter for a nation surrounded by those who wish them ill. Bibi and his economically vibrant country deserve our continued support and encouragement.
4
Mr. Stephens, your conclusions are based on two invalid premises: (1) Making the status quo into law does not merit an outcry and (2) others, like Denmark, are doing unsavory things as well, so why blame Israel? (Nowadays this is known as “whataboutism”.),
Just imagine that in the US we make racism into a law because it exists. Throwing ideals overboard because the reality is different is not a good solution.
Israel needs statesmen and it had many of them in the past but now it has mostly politicians.
Symbol and symbolic gestures are of utmost importance and can have either grave or wonderful consequences. This law does not do Israel and the Jewish people any favors.
146
@Hessam Ashrafi Good points and true. It is also valid, however, to point out the hypocrisy on the part of Israel's habitual detractors, but that does not excuse this law, of course.
1
Would I want to live in a state with such a commitment to one religion? No. However given the historic ties of the Jewish people to this land they now dominate, I can understand their desire to stay and hold sway over its affairs. Also, given the time in diaspora I can understand their desire and need for an anchor, at least HERE I am welcomed. Who would not want that? The larger issue is what happens to those who also claim the right to live in that specific land mass? Domination has gone back and forth through recorded history. Can they achieve peace, ever? As a wise many and former ambassador answered me once: not really, it will be hot and cold peace. Not a final solution. This article, this round of controversy is part of the vacillation between hot and cold peace.
@Monty Brown...
Here's an interesting question for you...
Would you live in, say, the United Kingdom?
Of course, you say.
But isn't the UK's structure such that there is an established religion there, too?
Being a "religious" state does not mean an intolerance of other religions. And if you look carefully at the Israeli acceptance of other religions, you will see that they are amongst the most welcoming of nations to religious denomination in the world, not just the Arab part of it.
8
I follow the news and, no, I did not understand from it that the bill “explicitly authorizes Jewish-only communities and requires secular courts to adopt Jewish ritual law in certain cases” and promotes “promotes the settlements.”
What a tawdry thing to do, to try to make bad thing palatable by comparing it to something worse.
7
It is true that the law could have been worse, and it is only thanks to Israel's still-functioning judiciary and active civil society, that it was toned down. And yet, the clauses that do remain in it are sufficient cause for alarm. The law has both practical and symbolic impacts. In the symbolic, the law is just the first stepping stone in an ongoing political struggle to transform Israel into a non-Democracy. This struggle is driven by both nationalistic and religious reasons, and is the most prominent expression, and should be considered just the first law in many that demote Israel's non-Jews into second class citizens.
Democracies don't just fail overnight, they do so over a protracted period of time, in which one law leads to another. Each law may appear minor and meaningless when examines individually, but when taken as a whole, such laws are necessary to change the very Democratic nature of Israel. A common theme among German citizens who lives through the Nazi era is their failure, in real time, to grasp that the ground was shifting under them. The changes were slow, minute, and accompanied by daily distractions. Once the transformation was complete, it was too late to resist.
Israel is at a similar crossroad. If Israeli citizens, such as myself, fail to rise up now, it might be too late to do so in the future. So is the alarm justified? Absolutely.
10
We seem to be living in an era when adults resort to playground cries to justify unjustifiable behavior. Mr. Stephens’ version is “look, they did it too!” And “look, they’re worse!” Instead, as Jews, we can judge the erosion of democracy in Israel purely on the basis of its own poor choices.
13
"But if liberal Americans haven’t (yet) given up on the United States in the age of Donald Trump, liberal Jews shouldn’t be giving up on Israel on account of an overhyped, underwhelming law whose effects would be mostly invisible if they hadn’t been so loudly debated.
At least you said "yet" Brett.
That time to give up may be coming sooner than later. I'm getting there.
5
Based on the 4th Geneva Convention, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law (conveniently missing in this article). This legislation essentially codifies those settlements as legal against agreement by the UN Security Council, UN General Assembly, International Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice.
What the Israel Government is doing is saying no matter what the entire world thinks is illegal, it's legal for Israel simply because they disagree, and now have introduced a law to make it so.
Certainly sounds like South Africa's position on Apartheid to me.
Be assured that this is only the first step toward full Apartheid for the Jewish state, enabled by articles such as this that circuitously defend it, and will do so even when the next round comes and proves them wrong on this one.
9
@TheUglyTruth violation Of the fourth Geneva Convention presupposes that Israel is an occupying power. Since the status of the West Bank has not been legally clarified (it was supposed to be part of the Arab state created out of Palestine in 1947, but this never happened due to the invasion by the Arab countries of newly formed Israel in 1948 and its subsequent illegal annexation into Jordan until the 1967 war), it is not at all clear that Israel is an occupying power there.
3
Mr Stephens understands and is extremely able to structure a well reasoned argument. He is also one of the most intellectual and informed opinion writers around, unless he is discussing Israel. Today he does intellectual judo to structure his argument - basically - Syria and Denmark are far worse. using his argument I guess we can say, Trump ( who he clearly loathes ) is not so bad...compared Mao Tse Tong and Pol Pot, or Kim Jung Un or Putin.
Thats enlightening.
9
While I don't even pretend to follow Israeli politics, Mr. Pfeffer seems to get it about right. The nation-state bill was “a rabble-rousing poke in the eye to Israel’s minorities drafted to excite Bibi’s far-right base.” You are probably right when you argue that the bill itself does not transform Israel into an apartheid state and that it does not spell the end of Israeli democracy. The legitimate concerns about Israel evolving into an apartheid state arise out of the events of the past twenty years. An apartheid state is not a democracy.
What the nation-state bill does do is set the stage for an apartheid state. It provides cover for judicial decisions that undermine the rights of Arab citizens. It energizes the far right and further entrenches the role of Orthodox rabbis in defining Jewish identity. The nation-state bill is not good news for Arab citizens of Israel and effectively ends Israel's pretense of pursing a two-state solution while settling the West Bank.
11
Read how false equivalences can be subtly disguised as breathtaking revelations.
6
Of course I know about Syrian human rights violations. I knew about and opposed the Assad regime long before the US began sending people there to be tortured. If Assad turned on Iran (unlikely, I know), US conservatives would show their ability to turn on a dime.
I know about Saudi Arabia too.
And I know about Israel's behavior too.
The difference between you and opponents of the bill, Bret, is not what we know. It's what we can stomach.
3
I like the Denmark example. Yes. This is not the death of Israel’s Democracy or even apartheid. However, Bibi was given the option to add more language by the opposition to generate a law with stronger Democratic values. He chose not to for political expedience and to rally the nationalist base prior to the next elections. It is a shame he did not show more leadership in the language of the law. Hence he marginalized a very loyal community such as the Druze.
Overall excellent article.
2
The bill itself may be less harmful than its publicity. But that doesn't mean its limits on other than Orthodox religious practice is innocuous.
And it may not do anything to foster settlements in the West.Bank. But what would you call the imposition of its ruling another people for over 50 years! Anti-Semitism may explain a unique focus on Israel, but that.does not make its imposition right or even ok.
The effect of the Israel-is-a -Jewish state law should not be minimized as you try to do, Mr Stevens; it is another one of many stick-in-your-eye, Palestinians, acts. It's just not the worst one.
5
No, not apartheid.
True that these outcomes were produced democratically and could be undone democratically. The odds are, they will worsen democratically. These are bounded-rational acts of a people who find themselves in an impossibly hostile neighborhood, with neighbors unrelenting in their enthusiasm for nihilism; and a brought together by a faith persecuted by others.
Given the super smart population, I suspect there is general awareness of unintended consequences. Choosing to live ultra-orthodox is fine, living in self-segregated communities is worrisome, making someone else do it or suffer consequences is straight Saudi Arabia. Do Israelis really want pockets of settlements, each competing to be purer, more adherent, more fundamental than the other?
2
We may not have given up on the United States just because it elected Donald Trump. But if it put him in office for twelve years, enthusiastically returning him again and again, that might well be a different story.
The majority of Israelis apparently support Likud or parties even further to the right. That’s their right as voters, but it’s my right to conclude from that sustained support that we (American non-orthodox Jews) and they have drifted apart in a fundamentally and likely irreparable way.
9
Good column, but why did it have to end with one of those "What about ..." references that points to an unrelated misdeed elsewhere. These "What about" references are the main tool of Trump defenders and I am sick of them.
3
"What the bill is not is the death of Israel’s democracy — it was enacted democratically and can be overturned the same way."
It may have escaped you Mr. Stephens, but rights that can be given or taken away by a simple majority vote in the Knesset are not rights at all - they're privileges granted by a government that can revoke them at any time.
Israel can be Jewish, or it can be democratic, it cannot be both.
5
Suppose the US Congress passed a law declaring the US to be a European Christian nation and set aside money to fund European Christian-only communities in areas populated by non-Europeans. Mr. Stephens would deny that such a law was undemocratic because a later Congress could repeal it? I doubt it. In any case Democracy is not merely a voting scheme. It is a set of values centered upon shared fundamental rights and equality before law.
9
Suppose the British government announced support for a national homeland for the Jewish people as in Balfour Declaration? Suppose that there was world support for this concept after the Holocaust?
5
Whether we like it or not, with immigration rising to unprecedented levels all over the Western world, this has become the defining issue of our time: Will Western nations have the right (moral or legal) to declare their demographic majorities unchangeable?
4
Talk about comparing apples with oranges.Last time I looked we weren't giving Denmark $3-4 billion a year in foreign/military aid, nor were we inviting Denmark's Prime Minister to address the U.S. Congress, nor does Denmark have a 'special relationship' with the U.S. as repeated Presidents and Presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat have stated.
39
Bingo! What happens in Israel very much reflects on us as Americans. We are complicit, just as Ivanka is with the POTUS. What happens in Syria or nearly anywhere else has a completely different relevance.
4
European social democracies have opened their borders for generations and have had to deal with trying to integrate millions of people from foreign cultures into their western democratic tradition, which has not been easy. With the fall of communism and the wars in the Middle East, the refugee influx into Western Europe , and now with Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, has made a difficult problem worse. As for Israel, why do they need to codify that they are a Jewish state, implying the other ethnic groups living there are secondary? This was always tacitly understood regardless of the claim that Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East and that they were truly interested in a peace settlement with the non-Jews living there. Only a person like Trump would try to legitimize the occupation by starving the Palestinians and trying to remove their refugee status. Under the Trump regime, how many 'friends ' do we have left , besides Israel and Saudi Arabia ?
6
The usual sophistry from long time Israeli propagandist Stephens. This bill is a slippery slope to an increasingly apartheid Israeli state. Some of its more egregious features may have been removed but the intent was clearly there and it hardly absolve it of the basic charge against it. And who is to say they won't be back. His comparison with Denmark is preposterous. The founders of the Israeli state must be turning in their graves.
I've been a life long supporter of Israel's right to exist and defend itself but the last 10 or so have been ones of increasing disillusionment with the direction the country is taking. Unfortunately, it's long been evident that Stephens believes US foreign policy should be directed from Tel Aviv and no Israeli outrage however egregious should be condemned.
50
@John Exactly.
2
My problem with the bill is that it declared Israel "the nation-state of the Jewish people." In so doing, it seemed to me, it declared Israel the country of all Jews, even though I am a Jew, and America, not Israel, is my country. Israel had no right to co-opt me and make me one of its citizens when I most emphatically am not and do not intend to become one.
The pernicious effect of the bill is evident from Mr. Stephens' column itself. Near the end, he draws a distinction between "liberal Americans" and "liberal Jews." Wait just a second. Some of us liberal Jews are also liberal Americans – and think of ourselves as liberal Americans first.
A Jew I may be, but an American I have always been and will always be. No declaration of a foreign power can change that.
54
@Ben The law is gratuitous. But not for the reasons you state. Suppose Italy had a law declaring it to be the nation state of the Italian people (and it might). Does that make Italian speaking Swiss citizens into Italian citizens?
MKR, I'd like to point out that German speakers and their descendants in the South Tirol (absorbed by Italy after WWI) are Italian citizens.
@MKR It would if Italy would declare it to be the nation state of of the Roman Catholic people and these Italian speaking Swiss citizens happened to be Roman Catholics.
"So where are the calls to boycott, divest and sanction Denmark?"
Denmark has not been at the center of theological and cultural conflict since the birth of the written word. Denmark has not sparked cycles of regional vengeance going back millennia. Denmark was not subject to the Sykes-Picot after WWI, as Western European powers attempted to carve up the contentious region for their own perceived advantages.
Can anything can stop the cycles of outrage and violence? Not that we've seen; not in the near future. The vitriolic reactions on the ground to this recent nation-state bill were nothing if not predictable.
35
wherecare the calls to divest and sanction all the arab states that enshrine Islam?
3
The reason I and many others are so upset at Israel and not at Syria is simply we support Israel and thus have an interest in Israel doing the right. We don't support Syria. We have opposed the regime. So it is just another humanitarian disaster that is beyond our control.
45
Bret
Why don’t you mention /compare the 2500 Palestinians killed with illegal cluster bombs during the last so called war (2014?) ? 500 of them children
It’s never mentioned like it never happened. Israel gets a pass. It has the right to defend itself but never be held accountable
1
I feel I've been spinned.
First, and more importantly, by the confusion between democracy and simple rule of the majority.
Secondly by the equation between "settlements" and "towns and communities in general". Really? Is this really what they manter?
Thirdly by the reference to Denmark. Really? The purpose is to further integrate non-Jewish citizens as in Denmark or to alienate them? Is it so inocent to forget the term "equality"? Moreover, in Israel today and with this law can one even talk of "state citizenship" in the Western sense?
Please, Mr. Bret Stephens. Your readers and the newspaper you write to deserve some answers...
43
Mr Stevens has his right to his opinion, but please leave comparisons to Denmark out. It is very good that the children in so called ghettoihin in Denmark, are forced to participate in the Danish day care system from age. If not, they would start grade 1 in school unpreprad and much behind in comparison to those children who have attended excellent Danish/Nordic preschooling and physical ed. activities before entering the free and obligatory education.
I beg Mr. Stevens to leave the Nordic countries ie Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden out of his opinions due to his aberrated examples. I suppose he believes we here in the well-to-do, tolerant and liberal Northern Europe do not read his opinions. The minimum I can do is to comment when justified.
I reckon there will never be peace in Israel as long as her inhabitants are not treated equally and as long as new illegal settlements are established. It is up to the Israeli politicians to decide whether to live in continuous state of war or in peaceful cohabitation.
67
As a centrist Israeli, I originally thought the nation-state law was a good idea. As formulated a few years ago by Ayelet Shaked (now Minister of Justice), it was written in the style of Israel's Declaration of Independence, and included clear statements about democracy and rights of ethnic minorities.
Contrary, however, to what you report, the legislative process did not moderate the law's language. Pressures from extremist religious and nationalist MKs caused those clauses referring to minority rights to be dropped, while language that could be used against non-Orthodox Jewish streams was added.
The resulting outcry, particularly by pro-Zionist minority communities in Israel (Druze, Cherkasians, Bedouins and some Christian Arabs), caught Netanyahu and other Government ministers totally by surprise - a mistake that the Opposition is seizing on to their advantage.
Rather than marking the end of Israeli Democracy, the response to the Nation-State Law shows just the opposite: a vibrant parliamentary opposition, empowered minority communities and a vocal free press. More power to them.
Groups such as BDS don't care a hoot about democracy, human rights or the murdered Syrian opposition. Their only goal is to weaken and destroy Israel.
Thank you for your vigilance in pointing it out.
19
@Eitan Thoughtful, as are many of the other responses from Israeli citizens. That your peice garnered relatively few recommendations is telling to me. I would guess your BDS criticism must have hit some nerves. But I recognize your ability to think on different sides of issues. Sadly, most folks just take sides within a larger group (e.g., Zionist, BDS, etc.) since it's far easier to do so versus true thinking.
Haim Ramon, former Justice minister of Israel and one of the fiercest opponents of Right and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, was interview last week on the law and to the surprised of the interviewer showed support for the law as "the right and necessary law...". When he was asked how is it the he supports such a discriminate law his answer was, "because i read it".
Thank you Mr. Stephens for reading the law and explaining that "the devil isn't so bad", exposing the hypocrisy of those (some of whom, like Ms Zipi Livni, head of the Knesset opposition, backed and help writing the law when they were part of the coalition) who are against it just because it was passed by the current coalition.
15
What don't you understand? Do you realize that this government has been systematically undermining recourse to the High Court of Justice, which makes the absence of the word "equality" from this new heinous law quite significant? You omitted the fact that when the government realized that by passing this law, it would also affect the Druze community that serves in the IDF, they then rushed to try to find financial incentives to compensate them for its passage? If that isn't a recognition of the law's inherent racist nature, I don't know what is. Israel's lack of a constitution is bad enough. It is bad enough living in a State where many aspects of life are controlled by Orthodox Judaism, where so much racism, sexism, etc. is unstated but exists (who gets to swim in what swimming pool, buy an apartment in what neighborhood, walk on opposite sides of the street), but then to suggest that American Jews give Israel a break? Of course, there are places in the world doing more horrendous things, but I still believe that the country I now live in has to live up to certain ideals, and this law does not fit into that picture. Fortunately, I still not the only person here who believes that.
136
It would certainly be interesting to have a boycott Denmark movement. But I think the concern in Israel is less one bill than the overall direction. What exactly will come next?
6
@Mike Livingston
Agreed, and in our renewed sense of fairness let's withhold all US aid to both Denmark and Israel.
1
How has the sea change in American expectations of social justice, tolerance, respect for workers, conservation of wilderness, respect for the rule of law and other keystone elements of civil society been made to take place?
It has been a death of a thousand cuts, inflicted through careful planning by people playing the long game. The Kochs are the outstanding example.
The "tiny" examples Mr. Stephens cites are wedges making way for the next round. What will Israeli society look like in 10 years?
Some things he trivializes are larger than he makes them look. "Jewish settlements" are approved, and are kosher because they are not solely on the West Bank? Was anyone objecting to building within national borders?
And the question of who can pray at the Wailing Wall defines the nontrivial to those whose fervency brings them to the wall for that purpose. In the end, it leads to the most important question: Who is a Jew? I don't think I'd like the conclusions of those who pushed this bill through the Knesset.
Mr. Stephens has an original perspective as a commentator. Today's column gets quite a bit wrong.
55
Stephens' articles on Israel all follow the same pattern of straw-man defenses then attacks on the understanding and motive of the attackers. He never grapples with the actual heart of the criticism and only focuses on delegitimization of the critic by conflating their positions with more easily refuted ones.
In this example, the main criticism is that "The right to exercise national self-determination" is the philosophical basis for democratic participation, so reserving it "in the State of Israel" as "unique to the Jewish people..." effectively eliminated the philosophical basis for non-jewish people to participate in Israel's democracy. Even if you continue giving non-jews the right to vote for now, that undercuts the legal justification for why they should be able to keep it going forward. If its normalized as something "long taken for granted" when its not really, that only makes those 'rights' more tenuous. No one has to talk about the intentions of the Israeli government to take away those rights or create apartheid to make that argument; the action itself removed one cornerstone of those rights and made them easier to take away.
Does that criticism, the main argument by observers against the bill, ever get addressed in this article? No. Instead we get a screed about the dishonest intentions of critics and what-about-ism. If you aren't willing to engage the actual criticism, its kind of a waste of column space.
113
@Danny P perhaps you should ask yourself when was the last time that Israeli or Jewish people were allowed to participate in Arab democracies? Shouldn't there be a quid pro quo?
My question is purely theoretical, of course, because the Jewish people was systematically ethnically cleansed from all of the Arab nations in the 20th century. And hardly anyone batted an eyelash about it.
4
Makes sense in a vacuum, though I’m sure some points were not addressed.
Deflection and whataboutism does no service to the argument.
23
“ And it is not apartheid a cheap slur from people whose grasp of ..of apartheid…” Yeah, Israel was so sensitive to the atrocities of apartheid, it gave apartheid South Africa the blueprint for the atomic bomb. This collusion with the apartheid regime, the sharing of nuclear technology has never resulted in any sanction on Israel. Stephens mentions Syria: he fails to note the astonishing fact that while 3rd world Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey have accepted millions of refugees, Israel has not accepted even one Syrian. This barbarity is justified on rather similar grounds as used to deny asylum to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.
He ignores prodigious evidence from surveys and polls (including the Jerusalem Post where he served as editor) that racist ideology is now pervasive in Israeli society and especially younger people. No outrage as Israelis assembled for dance and barbecue as Israeli jets pulverized Gaza in the 2nd blitz on this prison camp that left 3000 dead.
There is now the astonishing and disturbing fact: there is really no crime, no human rights atrocity by Israel and now Saudi Arabia that will be decisively sanctioned by the USA and the West generally. Yesterday, there was another immense war crime by the Saudi regime that killed Yemeni children; similar to Israeli strikes on Gaza. With our assistance, disease, starvation, famine in Yemen.
The media, NYT, WaPo…largely mute. Just Stephens, Brooks..extolling Bibi as Bibi schemes with Trump, Bolton for a war with Iran.
160
@Branagh This commentator provides an angry, distorted overreaction to a column whose point was that the coverage in the media of the Israeli bill was in stark contrast to its actual content. Does he/she think the South Africans would use the nuclear weapon information...on itself? And does she/he seriously expect Israel to take in Syrian refugees when it is surrounded by Muslim-majority/ruled countries who won't help their own people? And not taking these refugees rises to the level of "barbarity?" Then meet Donald Trump, because we won't take them either. And he/she conveniently forgot to mention Israeli's recent role in helping hundreds of the "White Helmets" successfully escape from Syria. Bibi's coalition barely represents a majority of the population. How does one find this "prodigious evidence?" And another outrage: Israelis dancing while bombing takes place. In the U.S., we're doing this every day (weren't WE responsible for the school bus bombing of the children?) How does that compare to Hamas ruling policies of celebrating the killing of Israelis and supporting the families of terrorists. And 3,000 dead? This is documented somewhere? And then the anger turns to the "West...the media, NYT, WaPo" for being mute. About what, specifically? This Israeli bill doesn't move the needle much and this column isn't meant to either. But the column sure serves as a vehicle for revealing readers' views, and prejudices, regarding Israel.
4
Israel is the most hated nation on earth--not North Korea, not Iran, not even the United States. This hatred, at least in part, is connected with the fact that Israel is Jewish.
There are three systems of belief — two religions and one atheistic philosophy — descended at least in part from Judaism: Christianity, Islam, and Marxism. All three are or have been supersessionist; they claim to be the true faith, the replacement of their predecessors.
Supersession has died out, but it has left anti-Semitism as its heir. Anti-Zionism, in turn, is the child of anti-Semitism.
26
This is shocking, a well thought out opinion on some Israel related that isn't a hit piece, amazing!
17
"And it is not apartheid — a cheap slur from people whose grasp of the sinister mechanics of apartheid is as thin as their understanding of the complexities of Israeli politics."
That Israel is practicing apartheid has been confirmed by two major academic studies involving ten scholars of international law. None of those findings has been shown wrong by Israel's defenders, who only splutter about the apartheid charge being "cheap" and attack the scholars on spurious charges of anti-Semitism. It's the denial of apartheid that's cheap.
The state of Israel was set up to ensure that one group, the Jewish people, dominates all other groups under Israel's rule, mainly the Palestinian people. It does this through racialist claims that Jews have a superior right to the land due to their (purported) biological descent from Jews who lived there in antiquity. It's laws then limit Palestinian participation in the life of the country (e.g., 93% of its land for Jews only, some jobs reserved for Jews only), strict separation of groups (residence, movement, pass laws in the Occupied Territories, a ban on mixed marriages, confining Palestinians in "reserves and ghettoes"), and punishing anyone who resists the system. Hello, that's the international definition of apartheid.
The nation-state law just made Israel's apartheid nature easier to see, as hundreds of commentators, including Jewish Israelis, are now pointing out. And you can't make the word go away by yelling about Belgium.
200
@Virginia
It would appear that you don’t understand the definition and practice of apartheid. As non-Jewish communities in Israel are entitled to both civil and religious rights, apartheid doesn’t apply.
5
Why not -
“The right of Jewish people to exercise national self-determination is unique to the State of Israel.”
- instead of -
“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
15
@Mandela
“Why not?” Because the proposed alternative is a tautology. It merely states that it is only in the unique Jewish nation state that Jews have the right to determine things for themselves as a Jewish nation.
In sum, Trump Speak
20
This article is almost hilariously out of touch. Occupation apologists and American right-wing Israel fetishists see the beginning of a seismic shift, and they are starting to freak out. Young people in the US are increasingly less sympathetic to Israeli apartheid in the territories (I concede there is not apartheid in Israel proper). Living memory of the Holocaust has almost vanished and will soon die out, along with lingering sympathy for Israel. It’s also almost inevitable that Arab-Americans will become politically much more sophisticated in the next generation, as their numbers continue to grow and even largely concentrate in a swing state (Michigan). The small cracks you see today in the US bipartisan consensus in favor of Israel will likely morph into a totally different US approach in the next 30 years. For those who think we’d “never abandon an ally”, ask Taiwan. The logical reaction to all this for people who love Israel would be to do everything possible to entrench a two-state solution on the ‘67 borders (no “adjustments”, sorry) and promote liberal democracy inside Israel. Hubris and myopia instead see Israel inserting itself in US domestic politics (which will eventually backfire) and eating up so much land that it will be impossible to have two states, meaning the world (and the US) will eventually come to support just one. It’s breath-taking to watch people who “defend Israel” hasten its destruction. I lived there for several years and actually loved it.
88
@John R Leaving aside the Israel question - the Holocaust is still plenty relevant. You refer to it, though, as if it were a mere political chip. The effects of the Holocaust on the families of those murdered will continue long after you and I are gone, despite the continuous efforts of those who don't and can't get it to banalize and relativize this human disaster by turning it into an empty word to drop when making whatever point the person using it wants to make. This reveals much about those who engage in such cold practice.
2
You can find all of the. Ra tiona libations you w ish, but this bill is not only unethical but intended as a platform for future policy. The final aim is form of nominally democratic theocracy. The law has a number of of less publicized clauses creating a framework for it. The stuggle doesn’t begin when fascist segregationist reality has taken root. Remember separate but “equal.” For many, the issue is a facile intellectual exercise. For me the question is what country I and my children and grandchildren will live in and whether it will remain a country we will be proud to be citizens of
29
I've been highly sensitized to the "tu quoque" logical fallacy, given its incessant deployment by those who would defend the indefensible mendacity of our current chief executive.
So it was with some sense of satisfaction, after reading this disquieting defense of Bibi's shameless pandering to Jewish nationalists, to see it deployed as the wrapup paragraph for this piece.
14
Always appreciate your writing and thinking. Thank yiu
6
And what would Mr. Stephens have us believe if Italy were to pass a law declaring it is a Roman Catholic nation? Or Spain? Or even Poland? Would he say to the Jews living in those nations "nothing to worry about here folks, everything will be just fine...trust me?"
78
@Tom Q seems to have missed the fact that some of these countries do indeed declare themselves to be Catholic--and some, like Great Britain have an official national religion as well. then there is the outrage over Jewish symbols on the flag that discriminate against non-Jews--while nobody seems to mind that 20 other countries have crosses on their flags and 15 have Muslim crescents. Special rules for Jews and Jewish countries?
4
@Tom Q so you are saying that British Jews should be afraid because the official religion is the Anglican Church?
3
Perhaps it was too tricky to avoid some sloppy reporting.
But pols do do such stupid things if it adds s to their electability ... and this one is yet another crook of a PM who won't go to prison.
Thanks for the Denmark example of the difficulties dealing with pluralism, identity and more.
3
It would be interesting to see the US reaction if Germany filed such a law.
Germans first! "Germans über Alles". It would be funny to see the reactions.
41
Above all, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
If you’re shrugging at most of this, you should ...
-------
That doesn't seem like something to merely shrug at, I'm sorry to say.
It seems like the most worrisome part of the legislation, yet Mr. Stephens just mentions it in passing.
38
Perhaps I missed a critical point. I hope so. But how is this NOT a big deal?
"“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
If you do not have the right to "national self-determination" due to your religion (or color of your skin, or ethnicity) you are not living in a country where democracy applies to you.
If a simple majority. (it passed in 62 to 55. 7 votes) can pass a law at any time denying you the right to "national self-determination" due to your religion (or color of your skin, or ethnicity) you are never safe.
Perhaps liberal Jews are upset with Israel because they understand if their rigbts were always subject to a vote there are times and places where they would not have fared well.
And not just Jews understand this You could probably get a 7 vote win in the House tomorrow to deny the right of self-determination to Manhattan residents if that is all it took.
That other countries are worse or that the Syrian regime murders people is no more an excuse than saying MS-13 is bad so we're going to throw brown children in cages to slow down border crossings. As I recall Mr. Stephens, you objected to that because it was a big deal. Wrong is wrong.
126
@LT national self determination does not affect civil rights. It means that Israel is not going to become an Islamic republic like Iran.
9
@LT national self determination does not affect civil rights. It's about iredentism.
1
@LT-Do you have any idea what "national self determination" means?
It has nothing to do with individual rights and equality of any individual in the state.
In legal terms, the bill is simply a defense against lawsuits in Israel that try to use the legal system to deny that Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, or to change things such as the anthem and state symbols.
Non non-Jewish citizen of Israel has had his/her individual rights as a citizen downgraded as a result of this resolution.
7
Bret, I speak as someone, a Jew, who left Apartheid South Africa to avoid the army there, immigrated to Israel and served in the IDF. You write that the Nation State law "is not apartheid — a cheap slur from people whose grasp of the sinister mechanics of apartheid is as thin as their understanding of the complexities of Israeli politics." I have lived extensively in both countries, and you are wrong. The "sinister mechanics of apartheid" are exactly what are now being instituted in Israel between, inter alia, the Nation State law, the increasing involvement of the Shin Bet in interrogating activists on the Left, and the gradual sure disenfranchisement of Israel's Arab minority. Their right to vote is a fig leaf as to the awful levels of discrimination. And that does not capture the snarling contempt that government officials actively show toward Arab MKs, let alone Arab citizens. Israel is even emulating the old South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS) in trying to undermine overseas activists, Jews and non-Jews, protesting Israel's Occupation. There is much to admire in Israel. Arab-Jewish civil rights groups. Breaking the Silence. The universities. The wonderful President Rivlin. They need to be supported. BDS is not the answer in its unlimited scope. But targeted boycotts of Israel's authoritarian institutions, settlers, and officials (starting with Dichter, the ex Shin Bet officer who initiated the Nation State Bill) are essential to retrieve Israel's democracy.
386
@David I am opposed to the Nation State bill and, as an Israeli citizen will be active opposing it. But, while I believe Israeli Arabs are sometimes treated as second class citizens, to speak of "awful levels of discrimination" is an exaggeration - the situation is hardly comparable to America's Jim Crow laws. You know more about apartheid than me - my understanding is that there were 2 separate sets of law for whites and Blacks - I fear for the future here in Israel but we haven't reached the point of apartheid yet.
18
@David Really?
Where are the two sets of laws? Where are the segregated facilities and schools?
Did you see the article in the NYT yesterday about the upsurge in Arab citizens going to Israeli Universities? Even residents of East Jerusalem who have chosen Israeli residency and reject full citizenship?
Are you aware of the massive government budgets for infrastructure improvements in East Jerusalem and Arab towns and villages in Israel - all to try and make the level of services equal to that in many Jewish towns?
Please tell me again how this is like apartheid in South Africa?
5
@David. Perhaps those quick to criticize Israel should use their energy and any associations in Washington to criticize our own government policies which are equally irrational. And as to bias, we’ve had institutionalized bias against against darker skinned minorities for so many years that we now have a chance to use the term “unconscious” bias when black men or women are killed by police. And let’s not forget Charlottesville.
1
The only place in the Middle East where religious and ethnic minorities have safety and rights is in the state of Israel. No Jew has any rights in any Moslem country in the Middle East, and only a handful remain in any Moslem country. Moslem countries are quickly moving to kick out other religious minorities, with very little liberal complaint.
Israel is a Jewish state, and Hebrew is the national language. That should not be surprising, regardless of what the Ottomans did or didn't do in the distant past.
23
@Michael H. "No Jew has any rights in any moslem country" WRONG! Michael. Jews have every right in Iran, even under the despicable Islamic Republic, except serving in the Government, and that is because of the security concerns. Remember the internment of the Japanese Americans during WW2? The Iranian Jews elect their own member of Parliament despite the fact that their low population does not warrant representation (there are one Representative for every 300,000 people. The Jewish Community is only about 20 to 30,000 strong). It might interest you to know that no Jew has ever been persecuted in Iran, even after the Islamic Revolution, on grounds of his/her religion. And while they have the option of immigrating to Israel any day of the week, they have opted to remain in a country that they call home and theirs. I know this may come as a shock to you given what you hear and read in the Media, but do some research. You can find some interesting investigative reporting on the subject in YOUTUBE.
2
" there are plenty of good reasons even for Israel’s friends to dislike the bill as unnecessary, provocative, divisive"
That seems pretty scandalous to me, someone who supports Israel for having been an island of democracy in their region.
10
Mr. Stephens would have you believe that we are looking at an innocuous piece of legislation. Absurd a notion as that would be, it also does not account for the larger picture in Israel.
They just made a lavish spectacle of the Trump administration moving the embassy to Jerusalem; they all know full well that the building will serve as a third finger glaring at Arabs.
The Israelis have been killing Gazans standing up for the their rights.
The Israelis have been busy building settlements and elevating the ultra-orthodox.
The latest bill in Israel is another part of the far right, divisive agenda, which is set knowingly to inflame and alienate Arabs.
51
For the longest time, Israel tried to restart negotiations with their Palestinian partners on the basis that the new Palestinian state would be, well, Palestinian, and Israel would be a Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority rejected this formulation. Now, they can reject it all they want, but Israel's Jewish character is a reality.
17
Thank you for going on the record
with a rational description of
Israel’s Nation-State Bill. Let’s
give Israel credit for being the
only democracy in the Middle East
and our consistent ally.
16
@Karen Any nation that sorts its citizens by religion, race or ethnicity for the purpose of conferring rights is not a democracy.
6
Maybe you should consider criticisms contained in Israeli and Jewish publications not directly controlled or beholden to the Netanyahu administration when pretending that the "media" has totally distorted a purportedly "Non-Scandal" bill. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained that while some of the bills most controversial provisions were removed, the bill still remains a primary means by which "Israel's ultra-Orthodox establishment is consolidating power." The Forward explained, this bill, the "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, sets out to consolidate the Jewishness of the country at the expense of its stated democratic and egalitarian values." The bill was not just "an affront to the 20% of the country’s population who is Arab" it was also part of "the Netanyahu coalition’s continued assault on the history of diaspora Judaism." The bill gives inordinate power to the "ultra-Orthodox," who now have an exclusive voice in government, and prevents all more moderate and liberal Israeli communities, namely "the Reform and Conservative communities in Israel," from having any say at all.
Netanyahu defended the bill, saying, "The majority have rights too, and the majority rules." Which means that there are no such things as minority rights, which means there are actually no rights at all. It sounds very much like Trump's "my people" talk.
Finally, if this is a Non-Scandal, why is the loyal Druze community taking to the streets in protest over the bill?
93
@Robert B Ha'aretz can say whatever wants, that doesn't make it true. The bill gave no additional power to the ultra-Orthodox. Please tell me how it did. What you quote from Ha'aretz is perfect example of press hysteria about the bill that has no basis in fact.
5
Symbols and statements of national values are important. Aside from the fact that it actually will limit the rights of Arab Israeli citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank, the Nation-State law makes official that Israel defines itself as ethno-religious state where Jews have rights, status, benefits and power not given to others. One effect of the Nation-State law is that it's now a lot harder to pretend that unquestioning support of Israel is consistent with democratic values.
39
The loss of democracy and democratic values need not happen in a tidal wave of tyrannous acts; it may happen ripple by ripple. The demotion of Arabic from being an official language of the state (4a), an insult to Arab citizens of Israel (imagine French demoted in Canada), appears to be mitigated by clause "4c: This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect," except that its status was under constant litigation while 4b moves the determination of status to the Knesset. The clause on settlements, "7. The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation," might look harmful only on the West Bank to someone who does not know that the government has worked at relocating Israeli Bedouin communities in the Negev and replacing them with Jewish settlements. This law makes relocation of Israeli Arab communities official government policy. This articulates "1c. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people," that other natural groups in Israel do not have this basic right. Only if (1) were meaningless would it be harmless. Much of the law is, in fact, meaningless, but it does contain an important pragmatic contradiction: "6b. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people." The law does the opposite.
21
@Henry
Of course Arab communities don’t have the right to national self determination in the state of Israel! Arab communities were granted statehood and self-determination with the creation of Jordan (occupying 80% of the territory formerly referred to as ‘Palestine’), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
As if that wasn’t enough territory, the Arab community would have have garnered yet another state in the region had they not rejected it with the expectation of destroying the Jewish state, Israel. And they’re STILL trying to win the war they started and lost 70 years ago. Meanwhile, Israel survives and thrives.
14
@Shenoa
A little nuance, please. My comment pertained to non-Jewish citizens of Israel. E.g., the Druze have supported the state of Israel and serve in the army, but under this law they lack self-determination (and they are now not a little angry about it). Israeli Arabs are still Israelis. Or do you think that equal rights shouldn't spread across all citizens of a state? What does self-determination involve? Perhaps equal rights to live in a community of one's choice and to have communal affiliations and to receive basic governmental services normally afforded others (see, e.g., "As Israel Pushes to Build, ,," NYT June 24, 2018). You cannot have a state where 80% of citizens have self-determination in a meaningful way, and 20% do not and remain just. This has nothing to do with Syria, Saudi Arabia, or any other country in the world. It is just concerns how one state treats its citizens. If the law were all symbols and meaningless grand standing, as Stephens claims, perhaps it would be as harmless as British laws governing the Church of England. But this simply is not the case. E.g., Stephens notes that the law gives Arabic language "a special status," a meaningless expression. The meaning lies in what follows: "Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law." This attempts to remove the courts from determining the use of Arabic as an official language of the country and hands the issue over to the Knesset, to do as it chooses.
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@Henry Actually the Druze have never asked for national self determination rights--something very different from equal citizenship rights. The new law explicitly states that it in no way limits the status of Arabic as already practiced under Israeli law so claiming it does so is simply false.
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I do deny that this is "a conservative Israeli government." I insist that it's an Israeli government which could not have won recognition of its statehood by the United States in 1948, and which after its partisan mischaracterization of our government to a Joint Session of Congress over the diplomatic breakthrough with Iran, has shown itself to be a rogue state.
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https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration
"The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"
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@david
Non-Jewish communities do enjoy civil and religious rights in Israel. But don’t confuse those civil and religious rights as an entitlement to statehood and self-determination.
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@Shenoa Indeed non-Jewish communities do enjoy civil and religious rights but this unnecessary basic law (Israel's declaration of Independence proclaims Israel as a Jewish state and also states that all citizens will have equal rights regardless of religion, race or gender) may diminish these rights.
@david You just forgot to mention UN Resolution 181, which established Israel as a "Jewish State". What do you think that meant?
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I can still expect more.
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Do we think the exclusivity of this legislative move and exacerbation of reverse racism will delay another holocaust or demographic crisis indefinitely? Nationalize Gaza and West Bank immediately, integrate all parties as fast as possible, especially into the universally conscripted cohesive army, take over the toxic school system of the Gazans and Palestinians, emulate South Africa (whether or not apartheid is the term to use here), and establish a true democracy from the river to the sea without delay. It would have been easier to have done this w/Rabin, and before they gave back Sinai, I naïvely assume.
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What-aboutism (killings in Syria and xenophobia in Denmark) does not excuse Israel codifying discriminatory values into law. There will always be another country behaving badly towards it's people. I hold Israel to a higher standard of equality because of the oppression many overcame. i also believe that Israelis and Americans share a special role in setting a democratic example. I was utterly disappointed by this law.
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@perhaps. Also worth mentioning is that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, so we, just by right of being U.S. taxpayers, let alone citizens of the world, have an interest in the matter.
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@perhaps
Actually the Danes are not being xenophobic but working to integrate those who have come as refugees into the customs of the country and to avoid ghettoization. And many of those who have come are integrating into the Danish system and the only way you would know some of them are from other countries is the color of their skin or other ethnic features. Most of them I ran into while visiting there recently spoke perfect Danish without accent and were working in many different businesses. They were also, in many cases, living in the smaller towns.
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The problem is here: “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” What is wrong with that? It identifies the nation-state of Israel, which is 20% Palestinian, with the "nationality" of the Jews. Compare this to France and the United States, where such declarations are constitutionally impossible. No one ethnic group that can claim exclusive title to American nationality.
At stake precisely is whether the state of Israel really (and legally) belongs to all of its citizens (who ideally are all its residents) or only to those who are Jewish.
As for the idea of Jewish national self-determination, it was achieved on this territory some while ago. What can it mean to assert it now? "Zionism" no longer designates a national liberation movement; it now indicates the ideological defense of a national security fortress state.
Do we even need nationalism and collective self-determination? This is far from clear. Maybe a nation-state should just be a political community united by a government belonging to its residents and citizens, and not the expression of a grand desire for the imaginary self-realization of a particular group.
Let alone based on the late modern idea that some groups are oppressed and politics or wars of liberation can rectify this. Lying at the basis of modern nationalist movements, this idea has past its expiry and should be mourned.
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As always Bravo!!! Thanks for telling the truth and continuing to expose the ruthless double standard that the eternal Jewish state finds itself subjected to.
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What? Israel can do no wrong?
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@Bill P What? Israel can do no right? Nor does the only Jewish state surrounded by Muslim theocracies have any right--to exist?
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This bill strengthens the Parchment Curtain drawn by the Judaic Orthodoxy along the East-Mediterranean littoral and that forces everybody to live in its shadow. Pure racism disguised in nationalistic terms.
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"... unnecessary, provocative, divisive and a transparent bid by Netanyahu to shore up his popularity in the face of corruption allegations and a military quagmire in the Gaza Strip." THAT should be the lede, as the rest is just rationalization for a bad policy!
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Bret, read the Balfour Declaration again. Then tell us everything that has happened to the Palestinians since then is a non-scandal.
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2 wrongs don't make a right - quote from my mother.
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By your tone you seem to think you are the voice of reason, calming down the hysterics. However the Likud government is so highly problematical that a high degree of alarm is warranted.
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If this law is so toothless, so inconsequential and so innocent, why was it even necessary to pass it?
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@Waldo mostly for show. Caroline Glick, a far right columnist in the Jerusalem Post put it best. She is someone you would expect to be fully supportive of this bill but in fact she opposed it. Why? Because she admits it doesn't do anything except show off to Bibi's base.
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This was interesting bordering on revelatory, but playing "what about" at the end did not set a bracing moral compass so much as play a tiring distraction-game that is only too familiar. Torture in Syria. Ok. Did you know that parents were separated from their small children who were then put in cages in this country? Anyone can do this, and it is not useful. Staying on topic would have been much better.
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"....since the days of the British mandate." just slipped that in in passing. That would be when the country was named Palestine. You were saying, Brett?
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@GM
Not a “country”...not then, not now. Perhaps you’d like to recall when and how the name ‘Palestine’ came to be applied to that region in the first place.
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Not sure of your point, but it was never a "country"--part of Ottoman Empire and then the British Empire.
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@GM
And now it’s called Israel and Jordan.
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Slippery slope. Just lik U.S. under Trump and his religious freedom task force. Liberal democracy is in jeopardy.
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The hysteria over this law is a reflection of the ongoing resistance to Jewish self-determination and Jewish-majority rule in the land of Israel. Despite 3000 years of history on that land, there are those who still cannot tolerate Jews enjoying the same rights and privileges of nationhood enjoyed by other peoples around the world. Let’s call it what it is...’Antisemitism’.
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@Shenoa
"Despite 3000 years of history on that land..."
And Jews were the only people there that whole time?
Would an impartial court today really believe that a self-serving history like the Old Testament conveys to one group a legal and exclusive claim to land that has been occupied by multiple ethnicities for millennia?
That's a bit of over-reach.
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@Shenoa, the claim here is not that Jewish people have an equal right to self-determination, but that they alone, "uniquely" have that claim. That excludes everyone else, and if you were among those people--and by a mere accident of birth you might have been--I believe you would mind that exclusion.
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@jb
Jews uniquely have the claim to self-determination in the state of Israel because the country was founded as the Jewish state. While Arab communities are entitled to self-determination and nationhood on the 5 million square miles bordering Israel....but they can’t claim Israel.
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One aspect of the bill that gives me pause is the declaration that the exercise of national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people. If this leads to the disenfranchisement of the Arab minority, it may indeed be the end of Israeli democracy. I sincerely hope that is not the case.
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@Duane Bender don't confuse national self determination with equal citizenship rights--they are not the same and one doesn't limit the other.
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@Stan Nadel
Enough already with splitting hairs. How can non-Jewish people be equal citizens in a state that declares itself the nation of the Jewish people?
Guess the thousands in Israel who are upset about this bill are just puppets of the misguided press - guess again - they are right to oppose a grab for right wing power against minorities.
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@nedhamson it is actually quite remarkable the ridiculous reaction from so many people, most of whom never bother to actually read the text of the law.
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1. “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
2. “Arabic — the native language of roughly one-in-five Israeli citizens… (demoted) from the official status it enjoyed since the days of the British mandate”.
3. “national value” on the “development of Jewish settlement,”… sounds like — and by no means excludes — West Bank settlements”.
4. “notably fails to mention the word “equality,” which has a prominent place in Israel’s Declaration of Independence”.
No, Mr. Stephens, I am not shrugging at any of this. And I am astonished that you are.
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@BWinCanada let's break this down, shall we?
1. This has always been the case in Israel. Otherwise iredentism would mean the destruction of Israel. No civil rights are abridged here. Only demands to create a separate state within the boundaries of the state of Israel.
2. This is incorrect. The status of Arabic has never been codified by Israeli law. This gives Arabic official status which it did not have until now.
3. Again, this is why Israel exists. Your demand that Israel not prioritize Jewish settlement is tantamount to demanding the destruction of Israel.
4. As Mr. Stevens points out, this is previously codified. If you have a problem with this then you have a problem with the 25th amendment which ignores the question of equality. Oh wait. It's already codified in the 14th amendment.
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@BWinCanada I'm not surprised at Stephens. Not at all.
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Zionism as a principle was always doomed to ostracize the already ostracized. Arguments after WW Two regarding the consequences of Zionism were largely ignored by non Jews since non Jews had had enough of Jewry from the Holocaust. One needs only to read DeGaulle’s letters to the French underground to understand the depth of casual anti Semitism across Europe and in the US. But that history cannot excuse the Israeli embrace of biblical rights as a renunciation of Arab claims to land people owned who never raised a weapon against the state. Let’s fight eternally since Jews are not big on eternal life outside of biblical maps. Let’s ignore the present on behalf of a past thousands of years finished. Let’s tell ourselves that we are eternally Other. As Jews we are trapped by the demand by God that we do not complain for our suffering. If so how do we consider all that happened in the centuries of Jewish persecution and genocide? Do we consider our otherness as opportunism? We are few and we are smart, and as one who has considered the ascendancy of Hamas as an ultimate test for Jews and all who despise us, I see in my old age nothing but carnage. I was in Egypt by accident with Sadat and Begin and Carter, and since then have seen nothing to rise to that occasion. Begin and Arafat, two old terrorists, deciding for their grandchildren that enough was enough is a faded memory. Today is a death drive for as far as the eye can see.
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You meant Begin and Sadat, not Begin and Arafat. Arafat never did anything of the sort, even when he stood with Rabin and Clinton at the White House.
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